Picking a President

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

If it comes down to it – and there is an open convention and it comes down to a floor fight for the G.O.P. nomination – don’t despair. The turmoil may be good for what ails us. For the first time in a generation a major party’s nomination would be decided at their national convention rather than in primaries and caucuses. We’d  likely see  a political drama play out as of old – as a brawl rather than a coronation.

At this writing (the day of the Illinois primary) the race is still Mitt Romney’s to lose. He has 495 of the 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination. He may still make it before the last primary in Utah on June 26. But before Illinois, Rick Santorum  had 252 delegates, Newt Gingrich 131 and Ron Paul 48. But it has remained a challenge for Romney to capture the souls of conservatives and put the Santorum challenge to rest.

The party’s last convention-floor fight was between Ronald Reagan and President Gerald Ford in 1976. (Ford survived the challenge but the clash hurt. Ford lost by only 2 percentage points to Jimmy Carter in the general election. Four years later Carter had to fight off a challenge  from Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy. That clash  contributed to his defeat in 1980 to a resurgent Reagan.

We learn the Republican officials are “bracing” for the possibility of a pre-nomination battle  between the party’s establishment (which favors Romney) and the Tea Party movement (which favors the more conservative Santorum and Gingrich, if not Ron Paul). According to the New York Times “the Republican National Committee has alerted the Committee on Contests to be ready for action...” before the convention is called to order at Tampa in August.

I’m old enough to remember the conventions on the radio.  Alabama was memorable because it came first in the alphabetical roll call of the states. “Mr. Chairman,” the leader of the delegation cried out, “Al-ah-BAMA, the Heart of Dixie, the Yellowhammer state, home of the Long Pine Tree, the beautiful camellia,” or something close to it, keeping the country in suspense before telling us the vote.

Many of the states did the same, seizing the limelight to promote the splendors of back home. Often a delegate jumps up to address the convention. At length, the official in charge signifies, “The chair recognizes the senator, governor, representative, or whomever and for whatever purpose.  ...”

I’m sure the legendary smoke-filled room played a role in these proceedings, where the party elders gathered to make a president. This is less true today since primaries are considered a more democratic way to go about the business. But I remember Walter Cronkite once saying that the smoke-filled room had its faults, but, on balance, it worked pretty well. The party elders knew the candidates, knew their secrets, their skeletons, their strengths and weaknesses, and by and large the country fared O.K. No doubt this is a subject worth pursuing in another column or two.

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Everybody Wants to be a Millionaire

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

The G.O.P. leader in the House, John Boehner, seemed to open the door to a compromise on President Obama’s tax-cut plan.  Boehner (no pun intended although his name is pronounced Bay-nar) has been the bane of Obama’s existence, a Captain No of the party of no. But when asked Sunday by Bob Schieffer of CBS News if Republicans would hold the tax breaks for most Americans ”hostage” to keep the lower rates for the wealthy, Boehner said:

“If the only option I have is to vote for some of those tax reductions, I’d vote for them.”

In other words, he would let the Bush gift that keeps giving to the rich expire at the end of the year but keep the middle class tax cut.

Maybe, l thought, Obama’s recent speeches to represent Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, as the guard dogs of the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us were paying off.

But not so fast. Boehner’s sidekick in the House, Eric Cantor, wasted no time calling for a bill that would not exempt anyone, rich or middle class, from a tax cut. On the same day McConnell introduced legislation in the Senate that would safeguard the tax cuts for the rich.

Did Boehner misspeak or was he telling us that he could vote for something that even Barack Obama supported? Was he feeling the heat from the president’s efforts to say, in so many words, that Boehner and McConnell were out to rob the middle class to pay the rich? After all, a figure on the order of $700 billion in revenue “would be lost to the top 2 percent of earners in the next 10 years if their taxes do not rise,” according to the New York Times.

Obama wants to keep the Bush-era tax for 98 percent of families who earn less that $250,000 but leave the top 2 percent to pay what they did before the Bush tax breaks took effect.

I’m writing this on Tuesday, but so far as I can tell no other prominent Republican in Congress has yielded an inch in the resolve to reject a compromise.

It doesn’t make sense. The country is in desperate economic straits. People want jobs, homes, income and they are scared. And yet the Republicans reject compromise on legislation that represents a small step to spread the tax burden equitably. In an election year this would seem suicidal. But it’s working. The political winds are at their back. The polls are predicting a G.O.P. sweep in November.

When I’m in search of logic, I sometimes turn to the Lady Friend. I don’t know if her analysis makes sense, but she said, “People in this country think that if they work hard, keep their mouths shut, and play by the rules, they’ll be rich. Everybody wants to be a millionaire and think they have a chance to be one.”

This column originally appeared on Sept. 16, 2010.

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Jailing Bankers

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

In the fallout from the savings-and-loan fiasco of the  late 1980s, more than 1,000 bank and thrift executives were convicted of felonies. But, we’re told, the rate of prosecutions for financial fraud today is less than half of what it was 25  years ago.

Last year, Chares Ferguson, the director of “Inside Job,” while  accepting his Oscar for the best documentary, complained, “Forgive me, I must start  by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a  single financial executive has gone to jail.”

That may no longer be true. This year a major mortgage lender  was convicted  of conspiracy,  sentenced to 30 years in prison, and, as of January, was seeking a retrial.

Last week in an Op/Ed piece in the New York Times, Phil Angelides, a former state treasurer of California and the Democratic candidate for governor in 2006, (he lost to Arnold Schwarznegger) asked, “Will Wall Street Ever face Justice?” Angelides chaired a bi-partisan commission set up by Congress in 2009 to study events that led to the collapse of financial markets the year before.

What triggered the article was a speech by Attorney General Eric H. Holder. In his remarks, Holder asserted that in fighting financial fraud the Obama administration’s “record of success has been nothing less than historic.”

Not so, dissented Angelides. Americans have “a gnawing feeling that justice has not been served.”

He wrote: “Claims of financial fraud against companies like Citigroup and Bank of America have been settled for pennies on the dollar, with no admission of wrongdoing. Executives who ran companies that made, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities  remain largely unscathed.”

Further, he said, his commission was given only “meager  resources” to do its work although trillions “in household wealth” were lost in what Angelides described as a “financial assault on our country,” resulting in an estimated 24 million jobless or underemployed.

A Senate investigating committee, he said, was also obliged to carry on with only a handful of staffers.

Nonetheless both investigations “turned over rocks and exposed disturbing financial practices,” and gave evidence of foul play to the Justice Department. But even in cases where evidence of fraud and misrepresentation was strong, “inexplicably,” Angelidas said, there is no sign that the government has launched a serious investigation “to thoroughly examine who knew what when at these banks.”

Angelides advocates a series of measures the government must take to permit a thorough investigation, pointing out that “it’s already been nearly eight years since the FBI’s now famous warning of an epidemic of mortgage fraud.” And added, “the American people need to believe that a thorough investigation has been conducted; that our judicial system has been fair to all regardless of wealth and power; and that wrongs have been  righted.”

It’s hard to find fault with what Angelides is saying. But, the Lady Friend, for one, wonders why the United States has been unable to follow Iceland’s example. She’s said this ever since she heard the small democratic nation dealt with its banking crisis by jailing many of the bankers who broke their laws and deceived their people.

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Religion and Politics

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

Rick Santorum is making a case for religion in public life. He declared that he does not believe “in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”

In fact, Santorum, a Catholic, said  that he felt like “throwing up” after  reading the speech John F. Kennedy, delivered in 1960, pledging strict separation of religion and politics. Kennedy did become president, and the first Catholic elected to the office.

Since Santorum and other Republican aspirants to the  presidency have made an issue of religion in politics, I thought it might be interesting to know what role religion played in the lives of some, if not all, of the big names in our history. The quotations are taken from “The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents” by  William A. Degregorio, Wings Books,1993.

George Washington1st President: “Episcopalian. However, religion played only a minor role in his life. He fashioned a moral code based on his own sense of right and wrong and adhered to it rigidly.”

Thomas Jefferson 3rd President: “Jefferson grew up an Anglican, but from early adulthood professed faith in a Creator uninvolved in the affairs of this world. He relied  on precepts, but he had little use for the church itself.”

Andrew Jackson 7th President: “Presbyterian. Although not especially religious, Jackson was not the heathen many churchmen believed him to be. He frequently skipped Sunday services… but he also  enjoyed reading the Bible and considered himself a practicing Christian.”

Abraham Lincoln 16th President: “Although his  father and stepmother belonged to a Baptist church, Lincoln never formally joined. In Springfield (Illinois) and  Washington, he attended Presbyterian service. Lincoln acknowledged that he belonged to no church but wrote ‘I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion, in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular.’”

Woodrow Wilson 28th President: “Presbyterian. ‘My life,’ he said, ‘would not be worth living if it were not for  the driving power of religion, for faith, pure and simple….’ In the White House  he read the Bible daily, said grace before meals, and prayed on his knees each  morning and night.”

Theodore Roosevelt 26th President: “Dutch Reformed… A firm believer in separation of church and state, he considered it both unconstitutional and sacrilegious to stamp In God We Trust on U.S. coins and as president tried unsuccessfully to have the legend removed.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd President: “Episcopalian. Rarely spoke about his faith. His wife and others close to him maintained that he believed in God and divine guidance but had little patience for complex dogma. He was well versed in the Bible and believed that a succinct guide to life could be found in the Sermon on the Mount.”

Ronald Reagan 40th President: “Disciple of Christ, Presbyterian. Reagan often expressed deep faith in God but as president rarely attended Sunday services. He believed in a divine plan in which everything happens for the best. Yet he also believed in free will.”

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Think Supreme Court

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

As Robert Reich sees it, the question in Election 2012 could come down to this: “How many billionaires does it take to buy a presidential election?”

In last Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, the former U.S. secretary of labor and professor of public policy at UC Berkeley argued that President Obama lost a chance to take the high road on fundraising. By endorsing a super PAC in his bid for re-election, he ratified the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United in 2010 which, as Reich pointed out, “opened the floodgates to unrestricted campaign money through super PACs.”

The president’s people say Obama had no choice. The question was decided in the Republican primaries. What happened? Florida happened. Mitt Romney’s super PAC easily delivered Florida, dropping Newt Gingrich to third or even fourth place. Reich cited the president’s campaign manager, Jim Messina. He explained that the White House did not want to “unilaterally disarm” by not exploiting the same tactic.

But what if Obama had stuck to his guns and eschewed super PACs? Reich doesn’t believe Obama’s refusal “to play the billionaire election game would have been unilateral disarmament.” He points out that the president was “a hugely successful fundraiser” for the 2008 election, taking in “an unprecedented $745 million,” much of it in “an unprecedented amount of small donations.”

Reich suggested what Obama might have said to rally the public: “More of the nation’s wealth and political power is now in the hands of large corporations and fewer people since the era of the robber barons and the Gilded Age. I will not allow our democracy to be corrupted by this! I will fight to take back our democracy!”

In Reich’s view, if  Obama had taken “a strong stand” against super PACs, he would have offered voters a choice: a campaign “financed by millions of small donors” or “a Republican campaign underwritten by a handful of America’s most powerful and privileged.”

But Obama is a pragmatist, no tilting of windmills for this fellow. Under fire from an obstructionist Republican House of Representatives and Senate Republicans, he vainly sought to bargain with his foes at the risk of looking weak, even naïve. This is not to say he doesn’t have core beliefs. Reich’s hope is that if Obama is re-elected  and sincere about the issues he cares about, he will  “go to bat for a system of public financing that will make it possible for candidates  to raise enough money from small donors and matching public funds that they won’t need to rely on a few billionaires pumping unlimited sums into super PACs.”

Upon reading aloud from Reich’s piece, I turned to the Lady Friend and said, “In this election one could argue that no matter who wins the people lose.”

“Think Supreme Court,” the Lady Friend replied. “Obama’s made two good appointments in his first term. If he wins in November he’s sure to make more.”

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

An Apology to Pawnbrokers

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

In last week’s column I made an unfortunate reference to pawnbrokers. I was writing about the unholy alliance of big money and politics in this election year. I quoted Theodore Roosevelt from a letter he’d written to a British friend in 1913. In the letter TR denounced government by very powerful men of wealth “but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.”

TR chose a poor example to make his point, and I was wrong to recycle it. As a friend reminded me, pawnbrokers provide a useful service in hard times by lending money at interest on personal property left with the broker until the loan is paid back.

But I was surprised when a reader wrote that she “assumed” that I “fully realized the atrocious anti-Semitic implications of using” the Roosevelt quote about pawnbrokers. Well, I didn’t. I am Jewish, I was born Jewish and I will die Jewish, but I have never thought of pawnbrokers as uniquely Jewish, and, of course, they aren’t.

According to my edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the trade is one of the oldest known to mankind. It existed in China 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. Pawnbrokers come from all races and creeds.

A word may be due Theodore Roosevelt. He was no bigot. Long after his death in 1919, the Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter recalled for the television cameras a conversation with Roosevelt who said, “This country will never demonstrate that it is a democracy in the full reach and range of that conception until we will have had both a Negro and Jewish president of the United States.”

But the last word belongs to the woman who wrote to me in defense of pawnbrokers, namely her father. This is what she said:

“He got up every day whether sick or not and went to work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day.

“He began working at the store while still a child and took it over permanently at 18 to support his families while his brothers were away at war.

“He went without much, so we could have an education.

“He had guns put into his face and kept going back.

“He swept his sidewalks every day and cleaned his awning.

“He avoided stolen merchandise and kept perfect and exacting records.

“He always obeyed the law.

“He charged miniscule interest, as registered by CA (California) state law, especially in contrast with today’s bank cards and payday loans.”

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The Pawnbrokers Take It All

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

In waging his campaign for the nomination, the embattled former House speaker lost credibility by advertising himself as an historian. Now Newt Gingrich risks looking like a mouthpiece for a gambling boss “with  important financial interests in China,” as the columnist E. J. Dionne Jr., pointed out in the San Francisco Chronicle.

As we saw in the news, first Sheldon Adelson – a Las Vegas casino operator – wrote a $5 million check and then his wife wrote a $5 million check to resuscitate Newt Gingrich’s campaign. Meantime the tycoon passed word to Mitt Romney that he can count on even more generous support if he becomes the Republican nominee.

According to the New York Times, the relationship between Adelson and Gingrich goes back years linked to a mutual concern for Israel’s safety and, more broadly, to Adelson’s anxiety about the  direction he believes the president is taking the country.

Mitt Romney reportedly was not greatly disturbed by Adelson’s first $5 million to the pro-Gingrich PAC, but was “stung” by the second $5 million from his wife.

Adelson, the Times said, has made an effort  to reassure Romney that if he is the nominee he can count on the casino magnate’s deep pockets to do “whatever it takes to beat Obama in the fall.”

As for the president, he is retreating from his position on fund-raising. In 2008 he rejected support from outside groups and argued against taking money from special interests in politics. But the world was made anew by the Supreme Court’s Citizen United 5-4 ruling in 2010. It has made it easier for outside groups to raise unlimited sums to help elect the candidates they favor – a windfall for corporations and the wealthy and conceivably a mortal blow to democratic government.

In recent days, Obama has spurred wealthy Democrats to step up their fund-raising efforts to transfer fortunes to Democratic groups to compete against the Republicans who got the jump on the White House.

“We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind out back,” said Jim Messina, the manager of the president’s re-election campaign.

Part of the reason for the lag in Democratic fund-raising may not be entirely due to the president’s hesitation about outside group. It may also be because of Wall Street’s anger at his steps to police the banks, as the New York Times suggested.

The alliance of big money and politics has been a corrupt bargain throughout our history. Theodore Roosevelt addressed the question in 1913. He said:

“There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations....But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government  by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with ‘the money touch’ but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.”

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Newt Gingrich Without Tears

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

He advertised himself as the smartest person in the room. His rivals may have meant well, but they did not know how things worked in Washington. They were not historians like Newt, had never served as speaker of the House  (though he failed to acknowledge he resigned in disgrace.).

They also had never worked closely with Ronald Reagan like Newt. In fact Newt rated scarcely a mention in Reagan’s diary, and, according to  Lou Cannon, the late president’s biographer and a former Washington Post reporter,  Reagan had little to do with the congressman.

It’s too soon to see how the Florida primary plays out for Republicans in the days ahead. Funny things happen on the way to conventions. But it’s not too soon to take note that the ex-speaker was the first to play the race card, coded, of course, as when he called President Obama “the most successful food stamp president ni American history.”

When Juan Williams, a Fox News panelist, in a debate a couple of weeks  ago in South Carolina, suggested that  his remarks might be  “intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities,” Gingrich sneered, “I know among the politically correct, you’re not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.”

Republicans in South Carolina lapped it up.

In 2010, as Charles M. Blow reminded us recently in the New York Times, Gingrich told an interviewer for a right-wing publication that President Obama adhered to a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” outlook. He added, “I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating – none of which was true.”

The source of Gingrich’s defining moment about the president was an article in Forbes which, he said, gave him the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Bararck Obama.”

The article was by Dinesh D’Souza, a native of India, an author of  conservative Christian books, and the president of the King’s College in New York City. In the article Gingrich cited, D’Souza said:

“Our president is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of Luo tribesmen of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated  African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”

Gingrich’s enthusiasm for D’Souza’s rhetoric heaped poison on the political landscape.

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

You Can Go Home Again

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

Out of the blue, I heard from two ancient pals over Labor Day. I’d last known them up in Eureka in the early 1960s when John F. Kennedy, the last of our glamour-puss presidents until maybe now, was in the White House.

I’m still a little shocked from the calls. But it was good shock, stirred memories.

Rod, who lives in Paducah, Kentucky, was noodling around the Internet, when he saw where I’d written a book with stuff about Eureka. The phone rang out in our house, shattering the holiday slumber.

Rod, now retired, was the city planner in Eureka, but too honest and too intelligent to keep the job for long. His opposition to a shopping center outside the downtown cost him. He’d argued the move would gut the heart of the city, and he was right. The painful proof has been visible to this day.

Bob, who got my number from Rod and is now nearly 90 and lives in Whittier, called the very next day. He was the city manager, the first, I believe, in Eureka’s history. But he was too honest and too intelligent, and he eventually paid the price as well.

But you got to hand it to Bob. One day the fast-talking fellow who ran the Chamber of Commerce, a stooge for the big boys, came to Bob’s office, and, in so many words, told Bob that if he wanted to keep his job he had to be more cooperative. If he didn’t go along, all the visitor had to do was pick up the phone to a few people, and the city would be looking for a new city manager.

“So what did you do?” I asked Bob.

He chuckled. “I threw him out of my office.”

This called for a big laugh since we both knew the odious fellow.

But Bob, in fact, was pushed out of city hall. Eureka’s loss was his gain. He went on to top jobs. For a time he was the treasurer of Los Angeles.

Rod, the city planner, who also fared well after Eureka, said he would never forget the characters who “abounded up there.” He remembered the publisher of the paper, my boss, “the jolly, fat orangeman,” chasing me down the street begging my forgiveness about something I’ve long since forgotten. And someone named Herb, “a former Barnum & Bailey clown, who ran Herb’s Kosher Kitchen at the back of one of those long narrow skid row Two Street bars.”  And the Two Street “`squatter lady‘ who lived in a colorful waterfront shanty and wore the most colorful clothing and a stovepipe hat with a single flower in it.” And other characters, long gone, as Two Street has vanished into respectability with book stores, boutiques, coffee shops, and a store front museum.

The two old friends said they were going to buy my book. I started to thank them, then caught myself and said, the hell with it. I’m picking up the tab. Money should not taint those memories, I added, even as the Lady Friend is shaking her head.

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Who is Mitt Romney?

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

“A Life Hidden Behind the Adjectives,” is how the New York Times framed it in a review of a new biography, “The Real Romney,” by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman.

I have not read the book, but in her article about it, Michiko Kakutani, an American Pulitzer-Prize-winning critic for the New York Times, points out that journalists have described Mitt Romney “as robotic (not unlike Al Gore), father-haunted (not unlike George W. Bush), disdainful of hands-on politicking (not unlike Barack Obama) and capable of complete  flip-flops on hot-button issues (not unlike Newt Gingrich).

“He has been hailed,” she adds, “for his analytic business skills as a turnaround specialist, and assailed as a job-killing vulture capitalist; lauded for his skill in getting health-care legislation passed in Massachusetts and criticized by both the left and right for subsequently trying to distance himself from that achievement.”

Is there a core to the man, or should we dismiss him as another charlatan? According to Kakutani, the authors write that in his campaign against the liberal Ted Kennedy for the U.S. senate in 1994, he dumped ideology for strategy; whatever worked was the credo.

We learn from Kakutani’s review that Romney had joined the Republican party only the year before the race against Kennedy, and had supported Democratic Congressional candidates and Paul Tsongas, a radical liberal., in the Democratic primary in 1992.

Small wonder there is unease among Republicans. A few days from an important primary in South Carolina, Mitt Romney, the recognized front-runner, under pressure to release his tax returns, acknowledged he pays a tax rate of around 15 percent. This is a great deal less than people making $50,000 or  $75,000 or $100,000 a year.

Almost all of his income, Romney explained to reporters on Tuesday, comes from investments made in the past, capital gains on mutual funds, his post-retirement share of profits and investment returns from Bain Capital, the company he once headed, and hundreds of thousands of dollars from speaking engagements ($41,592 per speech) from February 2010 to February 2011. He also earned  a small amount from a book but that money he gave away. According to the New York Times story, President Obama “paid an effective federal tax of just over 26 percent on his 2010 returns, the most recent available.”

Romney’s good fortune, which he shares with other people of great wealth, stems from  a radical shift to the right in federal tax policy in the 1990s and widened a good deal more when George W. Bush was in the White House. According to the Times, as a result of the change in federal tax policy, income on investments have been taxed at much lower levels than wages and salaries that make up the earnings for the great majority of people.

Romney might not have been so eager to acknowledge his tax rate had his rivals not pushed him hard to release his tax returns in their debate on Monday night. Romney looked rattled, like a bad actor who’d forgotten a line in his script. “I’m not opposed to doing that,” he said. “Time will tell.”

After a night to sleep on it, he told reporters in the morning that the April tax season seemed to be the “traditional” time to do so, in step with presidential contests in the past.

Gobbledegook.  It doesn’t take a political scientist to see that by April the people in South Carolina and Florida would already have voted, as his rivals have pointed out, and the Republican game is over.

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

As 2012 begins, I’d like to look back at the first year of my mayorship and take note of several issues I worked on, along with major developments in our city.

Transparency

One of my goals as Mayor is to make the work of our city more accessible and transparent. Today, City Council meetings are digitally recorded and can be heard live. The recordings are available on the city website.

Budget

Last June, the City Council adopted a budget that projects a small surplus without transfers from reserves, representing a substantial turnaround in the city’s fiscal well being.  Development of fiscal year 2012-13 budget has  commenced. My overriding goal, which I am confident will be achieved, is another budget that is balanced without drawing upon reserves.

Business Development

On my first day in office as Mayor, I met with Dr. Patrick Kennedy of OSIsoft, Inc., the largest private employer by payroll in San Leandro. He outlined a plan to build a high-speed fiber optic loop around the city, using conduit that the city had already installed. OSI would pay for installation costs.  A portion of the fiber would be given to the city and the remainder would be used to attract a new set of businesses to San Leandro.

My response was an enthusiastic “Yes, let’s move forward.” Staff studied the proposal and recommended that the City Council adopt it, which we did. You can learn more about the project, called Lit San Leandro, at www.litsanleandro.com

Another significant project that advanced in 2011 was the Village Marketplace which will be located at the former Albertson site on East 14th Street. The plans for the development include a Fresh and Easy market, a Peet’s Coffee, two restaurants and two retail shops. There will be outdoor dining, and a plaza with a fountain and public art.

Public Safety

The number of serious crimes in San Leandro increased by about 4 percent in 2011 over 2010. Crime fluctuates from year to year and 2010 was a historic low for crime in San Leandro. The number of serious crimes in 2011 was less the annual amount in 2007 through 2009.

If you are the victim, however, one crime is too many. Everyone can play a role in making San Leandro safer. We need to be the eyes and ears of the police as even during peak periods there are only about 15 police officers on patrol (more can be deployed in an emergency). The police department publishes crime prevention tips and a newsletter at www.sanleandro.org/depts/pd/prevention/programs.asp

City/School Partnership

The city undertook several initiatives this year to build a more solid partnership with our schools, including:

• Providing a third police officer assigned to the school district for high school campus safety;

• Negotiating with Waste Management to provide free trash and recycling services to our public schools in its new contract with the Oro Loma Sanitary District, saving the schools over $80,000 annually; and

• Conducting a joint meeting of the full San Leandro and San Lorenzo School Boards and City Council, the first such meeting in over a decade, to discuss areas of common interest.

Disaster Preparedness

For the first time in several years, the city allocated funds for the services of an Emergency Services Coordinator and disaster preparedness programs offered by the Alameda County Fire Department (ACFD).  Starting on January 19, 2012, the ACFD will offer a Community Emergency Response Team class at the main library. The multi-week class trains people to take care of themselves and neighbors in a disaster. There is no cost for this training. Visit www.acfdcert.eventbrite.com to register for the class.

New Facilities and Programs

In April, the San Leandro Senior Community Center opened.  Our Senior Services Program promotes healthy independent living, enhances quality of life, and builds a sense of belonging and community among older adults, caregivers and families.

With much barking and excitement, the San Leandro Dog Park immediately south of Marina Park opened in September.  The park is divided between areas for small and large dogs. We also dedicated the nearby Luster Knight Memorial, which commemorates the life of caring, giving, and community involvement by former firefighter and Park and Recreation commissioner Luster Knight.

Our library now offers eBooks and audio books for download to variety of devices. Titles automatically expire at the end of the lending period, so there are never any late fees.

In conclusion, I thank City staff, City Commissioners, and the many volunteers in our community for their commitment to improving San Leandro. I also thank my colleagues on the City Council for working together as a team in the best interests of our city. For me, it’s been a year to listen and learn, a year to plan and build, and I have renewed faith in the future of San Leandro.

Are there other steps we should be taking to better address the needs of San Leandrans? I welcome your input. Please contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 510-577-3355.

Does Daylight Savings Time Save Energy?

By Mel Lavine

Special to the Times

I suppose this is as good a time as any to talk about it – three weeks in from the winter solstice (December 21), the shortest day of the year.

Researchers in Sweden, analyzing data from 1987 to 2006, have found that when daylight was saved more lives were lost, but that in the autumn, the day after falling back, fewer lives were lost.

According to the findings, heart attacks increased by 6% the day following the “spring forward” to Daylight Savings Time. Contrarily, in autumn, the days after “falling back,” Swedes had 5 percent fewer attacks.

An hypothesis drawn from the investigation is that “waking up earlier has an adverse effect on some people.” Or stating it another way, “vulnerable people might benefit from avoiding sudden changes in biologic rhythm.”

As we make our annual trek towards daylight saving time, so do many ask, does it save energy? The question has been asked since World War I when DST was  first put into practice in Germany.

The Lady Friend probably speaks for many when she maintains that the switch gets her confused, throws her off her rhythm. “I don’t like it. I never believed it saved energy.”

A study by University of California researchers at Santa Barbara in 2008 said much the same. Their research showed “surprisingly little evidence that DST actually saved energy...on electricity consumption in the U.S. since the mid-1970s.”

“Our main finding,” wrote Mathew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant, “is that – contrary to the policy’s intent – DST increases residential electricity demand.” Not by much – estimates of increase are about 1 percent – but DST is the culprit for the increase.

The researchers credit Benjamin Franklin, the all-American sage,  with making the discovery in 1784 that people were sleeping during sunlit hours in the early morning and burning candles for lights in the evening – a penny-wise and pound foolish lifestyle. He believed that if people adapted to starting earlier in the day in summer, when the day is longest, they could save on tallow and wax.

Franklin even playfully proposed firing cannons to wake up people at dawn and a tax on window shutters.

Were Franklin around today, it’s not likely – whatever the research on daylight saving times says – that he would change a word of the prescription he wrote for the good life in 1773 in his Poor Richard’s Almanac:

“Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”  DST or No DST.

Mel Lavine was a television producer for many years with NBC News and CBS News in New York. Contact him at his e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .