Power from the Sun: Big Red, Little Green; Jerry Brown, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda

Excerpts from an unpublished political biography of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.

Copyright Roger Canfield 2011

Solyndra, the Prequal,

After decades (1984-2010) in the wilderness of National
Public Radio and Oakland California, in 2010 Jerry Brown, 72, was reelected,
really resurrected, as Governor of California where the past is often prologue. The more things change the more they are the same

It was the return of the living dead and the prequal of all solar power scandals.

The former Governor Jerry Brown with the active assistance and
inspiration of Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda is the creator, the originator of
California’s decline from the Fifth largest economy in the world to the Eighth.

Brown nurtured delusions of power from the sun and presided over “public investment” paid to political cronies.

Jerry Brown’s California has led the way in banning DDT and nuclear
power and inspiring the elimination of incandescent light bulb and the
criminalization of carbon, one of God’s own elements. Moreover, Brown’s legacy
as Governor from 1975 through 1984 thrived thereafter during the administrations of
Governors George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Republican governors, the courts and Democrat legislatures extended the
Brown-Hayden-Fonda legacy to the present day’s high unemployment, high taxes,
nanny state regulations and whacko environmental regulations.

Through his former chief of staff, Governor
Gray Davis, and RINO Governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, these
policies of the Brown era have been extended down to today where California’s
first in the nation effort to alter the planet’s climate (green house gas
regulations, AB32) and to build a $100 billion bullet train to nowhere. Though intended to benefit the entire planet they will
continue to impoverish California. This is both the legacy of Jerry, Tom and Jane
and the future of California under Brown 2.0.

Across the decades Brown’s successors have vigorously
sought alternatives to the internal combustion engine, cheap nuclear and
hydroelectric power. These have been demonized in pursuit of fantasies such as
cheap solar power and zero emission (electric) cars.

These ambitions are totalitarian. They require changing human nature, establishing utopian
socialism and altering the very climate of planet earth itself. What is
necessary is absolute power to achieve these absolute goods. The failure to
achieve astonishing environmental goals is really quite irrelevant.

The real game is absolute power.

Command and control of everyone and everything under the sun.
While environmentalists gain power and profits from public funds, they
claim politicians are conspiring with corporations to poison the public and its air and water for
political power and corporate profits.

In early 2011 many of the same faces have return for an encore under Jerry Brown. Early
Brown appointments Mary Nichols, Gerald Meral, John Laird, and Nancy Ryan
promised a renaissance of green energy and red (leftist) politics.

Meanwhile there have been decades of bad consequences in the seeking of impossible dreams.

A No Growth Economy

Beginning with Jerry Brown,
California stopped building roads, bridges, dams, canals, power plants,
refineries, mines, lumber mills, auto painting, independent gasoline stations, factories and yes, gold mines and gravel pits. The Hayden,
Fonda and Brown policies of radical no growth environmentalism, continued
thereafter, turned California’s abundance of natural resources into a scarcity
of water, energy, roads, bridges, timber and housing.

California blessed with a cornucopia of natural resources, sunshine, yes plentiful water, and fertile soils today
imports sand, gravel, timber, gold, oranges and garlic. In the Central Valley, food
basket of planet earth, California feeds its water deprived and unemployed farm
workers surplus canned mandarin oranges from China.

In a cosmic understatement of the problem, Sacramento Bee columnist
Dan Walters recently said, “It’s entirely
possible that California with its high taxes, dense regulatory underbrush,
poorly performing schools, congested and crumbling highways and water supply
issues, may have become noncompetitive in a global economy.”[1] Duh.

California’s decline toward a third world economy, culture and
government began with the first term of Governor Jerry Brown (1975-1983). Doonesbury’s and Mike Royko’s image of him as
“Governor Moonbeam”[2] obscures the true Jerry Brown.

As Rep. Tom McClintock and Gubernatorial candidate reminded us in the
2003 recall of Jerry Brown’s former chief of staff Gray Davis, the once golden
California has been bleeding businesses, people and opportunities to the desert
landscapes of Arizona and Nevada ever since Brown et al. Whole industries have been decimated (timber, tourism,
gold mining, automobiles, auto painting, furniture, independent gas stations)

Jack Stewart, president of the California Manufacturers and Technology
Association recently told CalWatchdog that California’s 12 percent of US
population is only producing only 1.5 percent of the nation’s manufacturing.
Jobs that left the state paying $69,000 are being replaced by new jobs at
$43,000. Stewart says green jobs are likely to be illusionary replacements for
those lost.[3] Jobs installing insulation and double pane windows are not replacing jobs lost in
other vanishing industries. In early 2011 some 175,000 green jobs were being proudly
claimed in California out of a workforce of 6 million. 3% green jobs do not an
economic recovery make.

Immaculate Hearts.

It all began in 1971 when Jerry Brown, drop out from a Catholic seminary and son of master builder
Governor Pat Brown, met Tom Hayden at Immaculate
Heart College in Los Angeles. Serially negligent in adherence to Catholic vows
the school invited Tom Hayden to lecture on the Vietnam War.

Who was the Tom Hayden
Jerry Brown met in 1971? Hayden was an early leader of Students for a
Democratic Society, SDS, and author of the seminal work on  “participatory democracy” the Port Huron
Statement. Hayden since 1965 had visited the Vietnamese Communists at war with
the United States and Hayden used Hanoi’s slides and numbers, the enemy’s
propaganda, in his lectures at Immaculate Heart. Like Hanoi, Hayden said, the
Vietnam War was illegal, immoral and unwinnable. Hayden sought a communist
victory in Vietnam and a socialist America by revolution if necessary.
Revolutionary Acts

After meetings with Communist Vietnam leaders in Hanoi, Bratislava and Paris in 1967 Hayden, Dave
Dellinger and Rennie Davis organized riots at the Democrat Convention in
Chicago 1968. An SDS friend of the underground weathermen, Bill Ayers and
Bernadine Dohrn, in Berkeley Tom Hayden and Robert Scheer founded their
revolutionary cell the “Red Family” and operated their International Liberation
School in firearms and combat medicine.

In the spring of 1969, Tom Hayden wrote a manifesto for the Berkeley Liberation
Movement: “We will break the power of the landlords … We will create a
soulful socialism.”[4] In the July 1970 issue of Ramparts,
Hayden wrote of liberated territories (i.e., Berkeley) where private property
would be abolished and tenant organizations would transform local housing into
communal shelters.[5] In mid 1969, Tom Hayden co-sponsored a
revolutionary shindig called the National Revolutionary Conference for a United
Front to Combat Fascism with the Rev. Cecil Williams, one of the prime sponsors
Rev. Jim Jones’ People’s Temple.

Enter Jane Fonda

Meanwhile, Hayden met Jane Fonda in Detroit at a Howard Johnson Motel in early 1971 at the Winter
Soldier “war crimes” show trials sponsored by John Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, which Fonda helped fund. Hayden and Fonda shared their slides
and beds, married and had a son who they named “Troi” after Nguyen Van Troi, a
Viet Cong terrorist who had attempted to assassinate Secretary of State Robert
McNamara.

In 1972 Hayden and Fonda’s
Indochina Peace Campaign, IPC, and the staff of Indochina Resource Center, IRC,
formed the leadership of the Coalition to Stop Funding the War (and successor
orgs.) which successfully targeted key legislators to cut funds for the war in 1973-75.[6]

Hanoi Jane and POW Edison Miller

In June 1972, Hayden
helped arrange Fonda’s infamous July tour of North Vietnam headlined by her
many radio broadcasts and her girlish glee at a Communist gun battery posing
shooting down American pilots and their aircraft. She among many others would receive
a ring made from a downed American plane, which she was photographed wearing on
her necklace.  She called America the
common enemy and, along with Tom, was honored as a “comrade-in-arms “ of Hanoi.

During Fonda’s visit of Hanoi on
July 18, 1972 Fonda met with seven American POWs at the Hanoi Hilton, two of
whom, Edison Miller and Walter Wilber were collaborators with the Vietnamese
enemy, who received special treatment and who had voluntarily made broadcasts
over Radio Hanoi. Over Radio Hanoi, Fonda
said the POWs “all assured me that they have been well cared for. … They
are in good health.”[7]

According to AP: “I was looking carefully in their eyes and they were not
glazed” she said, they were not brainwashed.[8]
Edison Miller according to Thomas Elias, “made war tapes for the North Vietnamese;
allegedly in return for better treatment than was given other POWs.”[9] Miller admitted he had made his broadcasts over
Radio Hanoi voluntarily, but that was only after resisting torture for 4-5
years and turning against the war.[10] Yet fellow POWs “claimed that … he received
special treatment, eggs, bread, bananas, and fruit, that the rest of them did
not get.”[11] Edison Miller had an open window, an exercise
area, books, an aquarium, and a bed.[12] Further,
POWs claimed that Miller was an open, active, and voluntary collaborator.  He had gone over to the enemy. Miller made a
broadcast the first, not the fourth or fifth, year of his captivity.[13]

In 1970 on Mother’s Day, Miller broadcast saying,

Mothers have been suffering loss and injury of
sons in time of war since time began. … This war is different … Their sons
are killing fellow human beings and destroying foreign countries for an unjust
cause, making our actions not only illegal, but immoral … Immorality is the
rottenness which is consuming us.  We are
a militaristic nation of the first order. … My country’s immoral and illegal
actions, which are, now culminated in the tragedy of Vietnam is America’s shame
and blight on the world’s conscience.[14]

Navy Captain, POW, and future U.S. Senator, John McCain said that Miller and another
POW made an hour long broadcast. POW McCain overheard Miller making
tapes “not only condemning U.S. participation in the war, but also the
United States as a government.”  Other
POWs said that Miller “praised Socialist systems as superior to our own.”[15]

Coming home on February 12, 1973 Edison Miller arrived at Camp Pendleton to a hero’s
welcome and wild applause.  200 Marines
stood quietly at attention in his honor. Showing his gratitude, Miller mocked
the USMC welcome– “He stopped, held up a clenched fist, and turned full
circle.” His POW commanding officer James Stockdale filed charges against
Miller, but the Secretary of Navy John W. Warner issued a letter of censure and
dismissed the charges. Miller’s public career and involvement with Tom and Jane
was far from over.

During 1972, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda formed the Indochina Peace Campaign. Among IPC
members, besides Edison Miller, were other POW collaborators such as POW Bob
Chenoweth of the POWs “Peace Committee,” and early release POW George Smith.[16]

Fonda calls Tortured POWs, “Hypocrites, Liars and
Pawn” Jerry Brown Defend Hanoi Jane

In 1973 when POWs returned en mass telling of their torture, Jane Fonda
called the POWs “hypocrites, liars and pawns.” Resolutions from the legislatures
of Colorado, Indiana, and California excoriated Fonda. The California Senate
resolution condemned Jane Fonda who “spread the lies of enemy.”

Brown Helps Fonda and Hollywood Elects Brown Governor, 1974

A politically ambitious Jerry Brown was now California’s Secretary of State. Hayden and Fonda met Jane
Bay, an aide of Secretary of State Jerry Brown, who persuaded Tom Quinn to
prevail upon Senator George Moscone to kill the anti-Fonda resolution in the
Senate Rules Committee.[17] The deed was done, the resolution failed and
the Jerry Brown and Hayden/ Fonda friendship was sealed.

During 1974, Hayden wrote a positive
article in Rolling Stone about Jerry Brown and this Watergate year Jerry
Brown had the support of Jane’s Hollywood friends for his successful
November campaign for governor against a moderate Pomona college professor,
Houston Flournoy.

Brown, Hayden and Fonda Antagonistic to Indochina Refugees, 1975

During the spring of 1975 while thousands of civilians fled North
Vietnamese heavy artillery and Soviet tanks and some desperately sought refuge
in America.  Tom and Jane led the way
opposing assistance to refugees and favoring forced repatriation. And Governor
Jerry Brown complained, “We want to dump Vietnamese” on California “which is
suffering a high rate of unemployment.”[18]

As late as April 31, 1988 Tom Hayden was
confronting Vietnamese protesters outside his house carrying a baseball bat. He
screamed expletives at the Vietnamese who objected to Hayden saying the San
Jose Vietnamese were mostly members of criminal gangs.[19]

In 1975, Hayden joined with Institute
for Policy Studies in establishing the National Conference on Alternative State
and Local Policies. Hayden “guided a group decision… to speak to issues
of [among others] …corporate crimes against the environment.”[20] Environmental issues moved up on the leftist
agenda as the Vietnam concluded.

Jerry Brown’s Staff Comes Out of Tom Hayden’s U.S. Senate Campaign, 1976

By January of 1975, as 17 divisions of North Vietnamese troops with Soviet tanks moved toward
Saigon, John Holum, a member of George McGovern’s staff, suggested that Tom
Hayden run for U.S. Senate against liberal Democrat incumbent John Tunney in
1976. No longer the revolutionary befriended by Jerry Brown, Tom Hayden now
claimed to be an ordinary liberal Democrat who had voted for Brown, McGovern
and President Lyndon B. Johnson (unlikely). Liberal Democrat and Senate Pro
Temp James Mills later condemned Hayden’s “ferocious [1976] campaign of
character assassination” against Tunney.[21]

Out of Hayden’s 1976 Senate campaign, Derek Shearer, Larry Levin, Lu Haas, Edison Miller and
Fred Branfman would receive appointments from Governor Jerry Brown. Branfman
would work on Jerry Brown’s 1980 Presidential Campaign.

Who were these future appointees of Governor Brown? Derek
Shearer, co-authored Hayden’s 1976 U.S. Senate platform and a book Economic
Democracy; IPC’s Larry Levin lobbied Congress to cut off aid to South
Vietnam and spent the last days of the war with the enemy in Hanoi became
Hayden’s campaign manager; Lucien
“Lu” Haas was a Hayden Senate campaign worker as well as a
spokesman for prior Governors and Senators; POW Edison Miller collaborator
voluntarily made broadcasts from Hanoi; Fred Branfman, Policy Director for the
campaign, had headed Project Air War a Hanoi favored attack upon US air power
after US troops left Vietnam, was an Editorial Board Member of Philip Agee’s Counter
Spy which exposed CIA agents and became a cheerleader for the Sandinista
Regime in Nicaragua[22]

During Hayden’s campaign for the U.S.
Senate against Democrat incumbent John Tunney in 1975-76, Hayden’s platform
condemned “crimes in the suites”[23] one of which was “environmental
destruction.”[24]

Campaign For Economic Democracy

In 1976 Hayden lost his run for the
US Senate, but built the organization that became Campaign for Economic Democracy, CED.

Tom Hayden and Derek Shearer, Institute for Policy
Studies admitted that CED’s “economic democracy” was a very thinly veiled front
for socialism. Hayden saw it as a “transition to socialism.”[25] It sought “to create public control over
the crucial economic decisions…”[26] including “public control of offshore drilling, land use and
water decisions.” CED had a new dream of new industries creating new jobs in
solar, transit and environmental industries. “This dream has a name:  Economic Democracy … controlling giant
corporations, … directing investments…. Ownership and control … spread
among a wide variety of public bodies…” Hayden thought, “An
honest socialist knows the image of socialism is tarnished.” [27] Hence, Economic Democracy was a useful “euphemism
for Democratic Socialism.”

Capitalism and private property were the enemy. CED
promotional brochure was titled the “Stagnant Thing in Our Midst . . .
Corporate Capitalism.” Hayden said, “… a rising demand for a
voice in the decisions controlling our lives — will spread…particularly to the
corporate world where…power is concentrated and in so few hands.”[28] CED was, said Senator Pro Tempore James Mills, a program of “public control
and ownership of the great corporations,” and that made Hayden a Marxist.[29] Corporations did great evil. A Hayden flyer
entitled “Stop the Poisoning of California” said,  “Overuse of pesticides profit only the
petrochemical industry … It’s time to put tougher controls on the excesses of
chemical age.”[30] Fueled demagoguery and public fears, Governor
Jerry Brown and his successors enacted a regulatory apparatus against chemistry
in every setting.

Hayden and Fonda also formed
the Laurel Springs Institute to indoctrinate children and adults in socialist
ideas. Heather Booth, wife of former SDS president and Hayden friend, Paul
Booth formed the Midwest Academy to perform the same functions. Hayden demanded that
landlords return their Proposition 13 property tax cut “windfall” to
renters.[31]

Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda brought the Campaign for Economic Democracy, CED, a
stalking horse for socialism and radical environmentalism into the Governor’s
Office.

Jerry Brown Welcomes Tom Hayden and Economic
Democracy into the Governor’s Office.

Governor Jerry Brown had appointed
Tom Hayden his “special counsel.”[32] In 1977, Esquire’s
Joel Kotkin met Tom sitting at a typewriter in the Governor’s office in the
state Capitol.  It was not an occasional acquaintance with power.

By 1977 Hayden had become an accessory to the governor’s core of advisors. … One
day … I ran into Hayden sitting at a typewriter in the governor’s
offices.  Hayden said, ‘I’m doing a
little work for Jerry … Now it’s the governor and the CED against everyone
else.”[33]

Hayden told Kotkin that Jerry Brown was “the only person around who can give us
power and legitimacy.”[34] Radical
Jeffrey Klein of Mother Jones put it less charitably. Brown would
“hand a curtain of legitimacy that will blur his [Hayden’s] radical
past.”[35]

Gray Davis, governor Brown’s chief of staff, future State Controller, and recalled
Governor said, “Hayden can be very helpful to us…This is not fun and games
with Tom and Jane.  It is as simple as this:  he has the troops, and he has the
funds.  You ignore him at your own peril.”[36] Indeed,
some said the Hayden’s influence meant “Jane and Tom say jump and Jerry
says ‘how high?”[37]

Hayden and Brown also appeared together at rallies dealing with rent control,
anti-nuclear and South African issues.
Fonda biographer Christopher Andersen says:

“Yet much of the Haydens’ influence was unseen.
Brown attended CED meetings closed to the press, and with [songstress
Linda] Ronstadt tagging along, spent weekends at the Hayden’s Santa Monica home
or the Laurel Springs ranch.  There they
conferred on all the important issues facing the state and nation — from solar
power and disarmament to Mexican farm workers and secretaries’ rights. They
talked about what Brown would do if elected president, and who would he would
appoint to the cabinet.  Jane, Brown
agreed, would make an excellent secretary of state.”[38]

“Behind the democratic veneer,
Tom’s very autocratic,” said a Brown official.  “With the governor behind him, he
bullies any bureaucrat he wants.” And in a whisper, “Everything he does is a way station to
power.”[39] And in an ironic development for Hayden who had planned and incited street fights against
the Daley machine in Chicago in 1968, Jerry Brown provided “a network of
patronage jobs for CED supporters, a classic throwback to the Daley-style
political machines”[40]

Brown Appoints Minions of Hayden-Fonda

In addition to “special counsel,” Brown appointed Hayden director, Solar Cal; governor’s
representative, Southwest Regional Border Commission; and member, Governor’s
Public Investment Task Force. Some 60 POWs presented Jerry Brown the
“Benedict Arnold Citizenship Award,” for Brown’s naming a former antiwar
activist Tom Hayden to a federally funded solar energy firm.”[41]

Brown Appointments of Friends of Tom and Jane, 1975-1983

The most infamous appointment of Jerry Brown was of his chauffer and a
traffic court judge, Rose Bird, to Chief Justice of the California Supreme. Tom Hayden and CED had supported Bird. After
nearly 60 decisions against the death penalty, Californians voted Rose Bird out of office in November 1986.

However, the most disastrous of
Browns’s appointments were radical environmentalist pals of Tom Hayden and Jane
Fonda, including Adrianna Gianturco.
Hayden and Fonda’s CED platform favored heavily taxing the “privilege of … private transportation” to pay
for heavily subsidized public transit with low and no fares. CED urged
disincentives for automobile usage and favored car pools.[42] Brown
appointee Adrianna Gianturco
implemented the CED platform, halted road and bridge construction, sold off
rights of way for future highway construction, created car pools and promoted
public transit in the sprawling, low density population of California.  Freeways once the wonder of the world
devolved into the roads of Bangla Desh and the traffic of Cairo.

Brown appointed many other friends of Tom and Jane to major departments
and policy positions. Some, like Fred Branfman and Lu Haas, sat in the Governor’s office along with
Tom Hayden.

Fred Branfman became director of Planning and Research, the major
policy making unit in the governor’s office. Branfman had visited Laos as a key
figure in Hanoi friendly Indochina Resource Center and headed Project Air War
using enemy propaganda, film and numbers. After the war Branfman had stayed in
the Hayden-Fonda home and became a CED founder and developer of “Jobs From
The Sun” for the California Public Policy Center. Lucien “Lu” Haas became Brown’s chief media advisor in a very media astute administration.
Haas, an opponent of the Cold War including the Vietnam War had been spokesman
for Senator Alan Cranston and worked for the George McGovern and CED and
Hayden.

Brown appointed Ruth Yanatta
Goldway (Shearer) to the Department of Consumer Affairs, the state’s
major agency for the regulation of every business and profession. Derek Shearer worked at the renamed Employment Development Department,
EDD, which developed no jobs, but handed out checks for the unemployed and the
disabled. Shearer was co-author of Economic Democracy, wrote Hayden’s
1976 U.S. Senate platform and the working papers for CED’s Santa Barbara
founding conference. He was board member of Hayden-Fonda’s radical training academy,
Laurel Springs Institute, the California Public Policy Center, and the New
School of Democratic Management. He was associate fellow of the Institute for
Policy Studies and an economic advisor to Bill Clinton Shearer who has been an
Occidental College professor since 1981. Shearer might have been one of Barak
Obama’s “Marxist professors” at Occidental where Barak Obama was a member and a
speaker for Students for Economic Democracy, a creation of Hayden and
Fonda.

John Geesman was appointed executive director of the California Energy
Commission (1979-83). Geesman had participated in CED’s founding conference in
Santa Barbara, board member of the Solar Center (an offshoot of the Foundation
for National Progress), and CED contributor. The California Energy Commission
led decades long opposition to nuclear and hydroelectric power, new power
plants and refineries pushing a conservation and alternative energy
agenda.  The Commission supported high
cost, publicly subsidized solar and wind projects. Over time the cost of energy
in California became twice the national average. Geesman returned to the
commission 2003-2008 and 2010.

Stanley Sheinbaum became a regent for the University of California. Husband of Betty
Warner of Hollywood’s Warner Brothers family he came into great wealth.
Sheinbaum financed Hayden’s revolutionary “Red Family” and “International Liberation School” in Berkeley as well as
Daniel Ellsberg and Yasser Arafat.

Gov. Brown appointed still other Hayden/CED people.
Jane Dolan, “CED member”[43], wife of Bob Mulholland and Butte county
supervisor (until 2010) was appointed to the Office of Economic Opportunity.       Brown
appointed Nathaniel Gardels to head the Governor’s Public Investment
Task Force. Gardels was the official CED contact in the Santa Monica area and
today writes for the Huffington Post and with billionaire Nicholas
Berggruen’s Think Long foundations plans to reform California. To the task
force Brown also appointed CED activists Patti Lightstone and Robin Schneider.  Also Cary Lowe.

“Affordable” Housing

Cary Lowe was also appointed
chairman of the Governor’s Affordable Housing Task Force. Lowe was a CED
tenants rights activist, member of the National Lawyers Guild, board member of
the California Policy Center, founding board member of the Liberty Hill
Foundation, board Member of the California Housing Action and Information
Network, CHAIN.[44] The CED platform for housing was to provide
affordable housing as a right through:
rent control; land as a public utility; reduced residential property
taxes; tax speculative profits; pension fund financing, cooperative/non-profit
ownership. In short, expropriation of
private property in stages. In December 1978, Governor Jerry Brown joined Tom
Hayden at a Los Angeles town hall meeting with 500 renters.  A February 1, 1979 article in the Los Angeles
Times reported that Hayden’s CED and the Coalition for Economic Survival,
headed by Reverend Al Dortch did “the bulk of the tenant political
organization” in Los Angeles and Santa Monica.  Dortch, a former IPC activist, was very aggressive and said his group
was “an organization which challenges political and economic power
structure…” The Coalition was thrown out of meetings of the Los Angeles
County Board of Supervisors.[45] They had better luck with the City of Los
Angeles.  Dortch, Cary Lowe, Hayden, and
Governor Jerry Brown literally harassed the Los Angeles City Council into a
rent moratorium and eventually a rent control ordinance[46] reducing the rental
housing supply and increasing rents in unregulated market.

In a 1988 “Dear Member” letter, CED’s
Executive Director, Cathy Calfo, claimed that CED had “successfully fought
for affordable housing.” CED’s leadership in rent control, no growth and
slow growth in every community where it had power contradicted this claim and
led to housing shortages and inflated housing prices.

Tom Sowell observes, “After the environmentalists and others pushed for
heavy-handed government restrictions on building anything anywhere, San
Francisco housing prices rose to become more than triple the national average.”
The impoverished housing supply has created a great market for government bonds
(1C, 2006) and redevelopment agencies to build a symbolic few affordable
housing units for a few with great fanfare. California’s post WWII building of
cheap housing for returning veterans and a booming economy, was killed.

Today Cary Lowe is a land use attorney and planning consultant
recommending that housing be made green, keeping it very expensive and very
unaffordable. Jerry Brown’s legacy was making housing unaffordable for millions
of Californians.

Larry Levin, became staff
director of Western Sun. Levin had been the top IPC lobbyist and visitor to
Hanoi while the people of South Vietnam fled Soviet tanks in April 1975. By
2010, Levin returned as a spokesman for Berkeley’s far left State Senator Loni
Hancock. Margaret Gardels, wife of Nathan Gardels and a CED contributor, was
appointed regional director of the federally funded Western Sun.

Jimmy Carter Competes with Brown for Hayden-Fonda’s Favors.

In December 1977 Tom Hayden showed up as Gov. Brown’s California delegate to the
White House Conference on Balanced National Growth and Economic Growth. CED’s
impending endorsement of Jerry Brown likely led to a Carter invitation for
Fonda and Hayden to the White House the following February. Carter’s generous
federal appointees out of the ranks of SDS, VVAW, IPS and NACLA had also eased
the way for the Tom and Jane.[47] Carter
was very receptive to Hayden and Fonda’s anti-war sentiments having pardoned
all 10,000 draft dodgers and offered those opportunities to some deserters —
the first day after his inauguration — on January 21, 1977.  One of Carter’s top aides and a close
political and personal friend was Peter Bourne who was an admirer of Fidel Castro
active in Vietnam Veterans Against the War whose Winter Soldier war crimes
conference Jane Fonda had helped finance.

In February 1978 Carter, who could not find time to meet the wives of troops
Missing In Action in Vietnam [48] met privately with Tom Hayden accompanied by
Peter Bourne in the Oval Office of the White House. According to Max Lerner in
the New York Post of February 10, 1978, the visit was stimulated by
Carter’s dislike of Jerry Brown. Carter wanted Hayden’s independence from
Brown.  In return, a Carter aide said
“Tom and Carter are dedicated to the same thing — making the system more
responsive,” making Hayden “an inside-the-system Democrat.”

Hayden gave president Carter a copy of Working Papers on Economic Democracy produced
for CED by the California Public Policy Center.[49]

Hayden:  “We would like our Economic Democracy
considered as a legitimate part of the national debate and we would like a way
to plug our ideas, … into [the president’s] office”

Carter:  “That would be fine.”

Through friendships with both Jerry
Brown and Jimmy Carter, taxpayer funds flowed into Hayden’s CED and his allies.

Carter Patronage to Hayden and Fonda

President Carter had placed 60’s activists, most known to Hayden and Fonda, into his
administration and funded 60’s activists outside of government.  He appointed Sam Browne, antiwar activist, to
head up ACTION with the assistance of Lee Weiner of the Chicago Eight.  Marge Tabankin, led VISTA She had been a
Hayden recruit in his Newark community organizing before riots there in 1967.
Tabankin was a national Student Association leader who signed Hanoi’s People’s
Peace Treaty in Hanoi.  John Froines of
the Chicago Eight worked for OSHA.  CED’s
housing expert, Ed Kirschner handled government loans for the National Consumer
Cooperative Bank for Jimmy Carter and economic democrat Derek Shearer was put
on the bank’s board of directors. The banks provided loans to cooperatives and
nonprofit organizations serving the low income and homeless.

ACTION funded staff for the San
Diego CED (via the Youth Project labor)[50];
Tom and Jane’s CED training arm, the Laurel Springs Institute (VISTA Volunteer
training); Western Sun (Hayden, Director); Citizen/Labor Energy Coalition
(Hayden, Co-Director); and the CED research arm, the Center for New Corporate
Priorities (Derek Shearer’s wife’s organization).  VISTA’s
National Director, Marge Tabankin had first met Hayden in Newark, joined SDS,
and signed the Peoples Peace Treaty in Hanoi, etc. VISTA’s Regional Director,
Loni Hancock, also knew Hayden from his Berkeley days and Larry Levin later
joined her Senate staff.

In 1978, a CED training and research arm, the Center for New Corporate Priorities
(CNCP), received $126,000 from the Department of Labor, under the Comprehensive
Employment and Training Act, CETA.  The
CETA funds were used to covered the salaries of (CNCP’s) director Ruth Yanatta
Goldway (wife of Derek Shearer), and of CETA laborers used by CED affiliated
groups — California Public Policy Center, California Housing Research Council
(successor to CHAIN), and the Coalition for Economic Survival.[51]

Power From the Sun. SolarCal, 1977-78

Back in California Jerry Brown appointed Hayden-Fonda friends to SOLARCAL. SolarCal was Hayden’s creation. The April 17,
1977 issue of the San Diego Union described Hayden’s “public solar
energy corporation.”  Fred Branfman
said Solarcal was a Hayden originated “solar development bank” in the
June 18, 1977 issue of The Nation. The June-July 1977 issue of CED
News proclaimed CED “leadership … in the development of a state
owned solar industry.”  The December
1, 1977 issue of the Daily Californian said SolarCal was a product of
research by CED and the California Public Policy Center.

Stanley Sheinbaum, the Stern Fund,
Abelard Foundation, New York Community Trust, Pacific Alliance, Foundation
financed Fred Branfman’s study Jobs From the Sun released in February 1978, for
National Progress, DJB Foundation, Daniel Ellsberg and Stewart Mott.[52] IPS funded California Public Policy Center (Fred
Branfman) and the Pacific Alliance (Alvin Duskin)[53] lobbying assistance for “a public solar
energy corporation.” Hayden, Branfman, and antinuclear activist Alvin
Duskin testified before the state legislature and local CED members worked on
key legislators. CED activists and friends of Tom and Jane had endorsed
Solarcal: Rep. Ron Dellums, Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally, and Daniel Ellsberg.[54] SolarCal was officially established on “Sun
Day” 1978 with a four-day CED sponsored celebration in Berkeley.

Many CED-affiliated persons were appointed members of the Solar Cal Local Government
Commission. The most noteworthy were:
Supervisor Barbara Boxer, Marin County …… elected to Congress in 1982 and US Senate in 1992; gay activist and
future member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Harry Britt; Supervisor
Wesley Chesbro, Humboldt County, elected to the State Senate in 1998 and
Assembly to the present; Supervisor Rod Diridon, Santa Clara County; Supervisor
Jane Dolan, Butte County; Supervisor Dan McCorquodale, Santa Clara County
elected to the state Senate in 1982; Councilman John Means, City of Bakersfield
– later candidate for the state Assembly; Supervisor Gary Patton, Santa Cruz
County, later Planning and Conservation League; Councilman Wilson Riles, Jr.,
City of Oakland and later California Superintendent of Public Instruction.

CED Supports Brown’s Political Ambitions

It was certainly no wonder that Hayden and CED
endorsed Governor Brown’s upcoming Gubernatorial re-election in 1978.  Endorsing Brown ensured that Tom had not
completely alienated the Democratic Party establishment from his future
political options.[55] And Fonda
promised to raise $3 million to Brown’s impending run for president in 1980.[56]
The solar and other patronage did go forever unnoticed.

Political Patronage Scandals

Bill Wallace wrote articles in October 1979 in the radical Berkeley Barb.  Wallace said, Hayden’s

political machine … put CED members on the payroll of Western Sun, … obtained federal
funding from CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) … to pay wages
to CED members for doing CED work, (and)…. used [another federally funded]
… Santa Monica crime control program called Communitas, … a quarter of a
million dollars, … to promote rent control … dear to CED’s heart, but
completely unconnected to crime control.

Wallace said Brown’s appointments were using taxpayers’ monies to build Hayden’s
personal political machine, his “community action groups”.

Border Commission

Brown’s appointment of Hayden to the Southwest
Regional Border Commission also added Hayden’s political ally Richard Ybarra
and CED’s San Diego founder and Laurel Springs director, Shari Lawson to the
public payroll.  By 1979-80 the Democrat
controlled California Senate and Assembly, Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy and
Senate Pro Tempore James Mills, fought
Jerry Brown’s prior appointment of Hayden to the Southwest Border Regional
Commission alleging cost over runs[57]
making future funding of the Commission dependent upon Senate confirmation of
Hayden.[58]
By December 1980, Hayden resigned to “rebuild progressive grassroots
forces.”[59]

Western Sun

Brown had also made Hayden the Director of Western Sun, a federal solar project
funded by the Department of Energy.  The Barb’s
Wallace said Hayden “many political allies…on Western Sun’s [Federal]
payroll.”  Mark Vandervelen,
lobbyist of Friends of the Earth, said, “It’s just a big solar pork
barrel. … Tom would … scream if some right-wing Republican put … his
cronies on the payroll … (and) then used them to do precinct work for his own
re-election campaign.”

Wallace reported that Larry Levin, a CED member, a Hayden campaign manager in 1976 and
now the Western Sun field representative met to discuss federal grants with CED
allied officials in Berkeley and Oakland in 1979.[60] Levin had
spoken to CED activists in Berkeley on the subject of “The Battle Against
Corporate Power.”  Judy Corbett, a
Western Sun consultant, and her husband Michael, a Davis political activist and
future mayor, were CED fundraisers.  Two
other CED members also were paid consultants for Western Sun — Kit Bricca of
Santa Clara and Keith Bray of Sacramento. Hayden had received $82,000 from the
Department of Energy for Western Sun as start up monies — well spent.  Others noticed that it was used “to hire
his leftist cronies.  All the people
hired and all the sub-contracting has been to CED members,” according to
SUNRAE, a Santa Barbara solar power group.[61] Other
solar-power groups felt “frozen out.”
If you were not with CED, “you can just go fish.”  And one environmentalist told the Barb’s Wallace
that Tom Hayden was simply a “Piranha of the Left.”  Another told Wallace, “This is really a
no-win situation for the left … the fallout will go to discredit the
movements …anti-nuke, solar power, the whole schmear.”[62]

CETA

In 1979, the Center for New Corporate
Priorities, which had been founded in 1970, returned what remained of its CETA
grant and closed its doors. Later the Los Angeles Times reported that
the Center had “ . . . at least three participants engaged in political lobbying
activities on CETA paid time…”[63] Closing the Center may have headed off the
Department of Labor’s impending investigations of CNCP’s alleged misuse of
public funds.[64]

Overall, from 1978-1980, Hayden’s CED received $743,000 in federal funds.[65]

Hayden used appointments
to wield power within the Brown administration.

Preventing Crimes …of the Landlords

The CED affiliated Comunitas in Santa Monica, headed by Hayden ally Rev. Jim Conn,
received $334,761 in grants from the Department of Justice (DOJ) for crime
prevention efforts — “safe houses, block clubs, and neighborhood
councils” — among women, seniors and minorities to provide
“grassroots” crime prevention services such as neighborhood alert and
target hardening against burglars, muggers, rapists and such.  In fact, Conn’s Communitas focused on block
organization, precinct work and information night meetings on Santa Monica’s
Rent Control initiative. Jim Conn was treasurer of Santa Monicans for Renter’s
Rights headed by CED and Santa Monica City Council members Ruth Yanatta and
Bill Jennings.[66]

A Communitas publication, “A Short History of Ocean Park,” described
its “crime prevention” activities:
land use regulation to reduce development; forced relocation of
businesses; eviction protection for nonpayment of rent; and stricter rent
control.  Communitas wanted to prevent
economic “crimes” that might be committed by capitalists — apartment
owners, small businessmen, and homebuilders — those obvious class enemies of
the people identified at CED’s founding convention.

Thus two grants to Communitas and the soon defunct Center for New Corporate
Priorities helped fund community organization — house to house, among seniors
and low income people, in Santa Monica for the benefit of a CED affiliate Santa
Monicans for Renters Rights, SMRR, which succeeded in 1979– passing one of the
strictest rent control measures in America, electing a majority of the rent
control board in 1979 and in electing a majority of the City Council of Santa
Monica in 1981.  Mayor Goldway appointed
her husband and Hayden’s intellectual mentor, Derek Shearer, to the City
Planning Commission.  She may have placed
CETA employees into CED positions as well.
About the misuse of funds we have a sympathetic George Cornell interview
of Hayden: Noting that no investigations have resulted in prosecutions, Hayden
said, ‘The whole thing is totally made up so it’s got you in a position where
you have to write there’s been no prosecution — which makes it seem like,
well, he must have used his influence with the governor to squelch that.’[67]

Brown’s Continuing Political Favors

Besides subsidizing their far left payroll,
Hayden and Fonda called upon Jerry Brown for many controversial political favors

Dennis Banks.

In 1978 Hayden persuaded Brown to block
the extradition of Indian activist Dennis Banks for sentencing in South Dakota
for his actions in the 1973 Custer County Courthouse riot. At Wounded Knee
Banks and/or his compatriots occupied a courthouse, firebombed a building,
burned two police cars, and injured seven police officers. A South Dakota jury
convicted Banks of assault with a deadly weapon, but he fled to political
sanctuary in California. Governor Brown refused to extradite Banks back to
South Dakota for sentencing.  Banks was also on the lam for firearms possession charges in Oregon.[68] In March
1976, Hayden had called Banks a “political and philosophical leader of
great importance. …  Both claimed Banks
faced death if Banks was returned to South Dakota.”[69] Brown granted Dennis Banks political asylum in
the sovereign state of California on April 20, 1978.

People’s Temple, December 1978

Jane Fonda said, “The church I
relate to most is called the People’s Temple” as it offers “a sense
of what life should be about.” Many of Tom and Jane’s friends were great
admirers of Jones’ community of socialism, peace and justice. Joining the Black
Panthers Governor Jerry Brown attended Jim Jones services at the People’s
Temple in San Francisco as did his Lt. Governor, Mervyn Dymally.  Hayden’s memoirs Reunion, is
dismissive the exotic “religious” cults of many of his old friends in
the New Left, but he does not mention Jim Jones. Attorney Charles Garry said of
Jonestown, Guyana “For the first time, I saw a world where there was no
racism, sexism, ageism, elitism no poverty.”

On November 21, 1978 Leo Ryan, D-San Mateo, and 933 Americans died at the hands of
Jim Jones at an airport outside Jonestown, Guyana. The Congressman and his
entourage traveled to Guyana to investigate constituent complaints of mistreatment
and found the classic Marxist cult of personality and oppression. Jones used
public humiliation, purges, radio Havana, informers, beatings, sex and drugs to
control commune members and to make his socialist revolution.  Back at the commune 933 died in a mass
murder-suicide ritual, drinking cyanide laced grape Kool-Aid.  Subsequent investigation showed that the
“Reverend” Jim Jones planned to move his commune to the Soviet Union
and that $7 million expropriated from his parishioners was to be given to the
Communist Party – of the Soviet Union. One of Jones’ agents, Mike Prokes and
two others left Jonestown with $500,000 in cash earmarked for the Soviet
Embassy where Jonestown leaders had had weekly meetings.

Lt. Gov. Dymally had intervened with
the government of Guyana to help Jones establish his slave colony. Ignoring
Jones’ long-term infatuation with Marxism and his decision to “infiltrate
the church,” the California left had successfully protected Jones from his
critics — Temple defectors and an occasional journalist.[70]

Joan Baez Confronts Jane Fonda et al, 1978-79

In the fall of 1978 in Berkeley,
site of Ho Chi Minh Park, Doan Van Toai spoke to a cool audience about
Communist oppression. Doan was a former Viet Cong agent who had toured American
college, been arrested six times by the Theiu-Ky government, welcomed the North
Vietnamese liberation of Saigon and taken a position confiscating private
property. Disillusioned Doan had a meeting with folk singer and pacifist Joan
Baez who spent $200,000 investigating the Vietnamese human rights record.[71] On May 30^th,
1979 Baez, published an “Open Letter to the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam,” condemning human rights violations in Vietnam in a full-page
newspaper ad in five major metropolitan newspapers. Baez’s asked the North
Vietnamese to stop the imprisonment, torture and clearing of mine field with
political prisoners.

A grim mosaic

The jails are overflowing…

People disappear and never return.

People are shipped to reeducation centers, fed a
starvation diet …

Forced to squat bound wrist to ankle, suffocated
in “conex” boxes.

People are used as human mine detectors, clearing live mine fields with their hands and feet.

For many, life is hell and death is prayed for.[72]

Prior to publication Tom Hayden and
Jane Fonda “led the charge on the West Coast”[73] to suppress the publication.[74] Fonda mailed members of the anti-war movement —
including 25 of the Baez signators.
Fonda said, “The repression was not
as bad as the predicted bloodbath…” Baez says, “whoever wrote the
letter…was extremely careless and wrote,
‘I don’t know if we can expect the Vietnamese to turn free millions
of people overnight.”[75]

Jane Fonda called the Vietnamese
refugees, “misfits”[76] Tom Hayden railed against corporate oil
dictators. “It’s the yacht people who caused the boat people’, he said.[77] Similarly, Jim Wallis, frequent war
protester, SDS leader at Michigan State, friend of Daniel Berrigan, editor of Sojourners,
an advocate of Marxist-Leninist social justice and a cheerleader of the Viet
Cong said “Many of today’s
[Vietnamese] refugees… are fleeing to support their consumer habits in other
lands.”[78] Wallis would become President Barack
Obama’s spiritual advisor on matters of morality.

Fonda told Baez she was aligned
“with the most narrow and negative elements in our country who continue to
believe that Communism is worse than death.”[79] Officially, Tom Hayden “endorsed”
Jane’s letter.  He probably wrote it. [80] Jane Fonda said, “We never criticize
revolutionary regimes, don’t you know?”[81] By late
July, a backtracking Jane Fonda said, these “attacks … imply that I am
unwilling to be critical of the new government in Vietnam.”[82]

Baez remembered, “A campaign
was launched to stop me…. The phone rang off the hook with ultimatums and
suggestions that I was naive, that … Toai was … CIA.” Hayden pals Fred
Branfman, William Kunstler, and Gareth Porter of the Indochina Resource Center
were particularly vehement. Baez says, “all hell broke loose…I was a CIA
rat.  ‘It’s an honor to be called both a
CIA rat and a KGB agent,’ I responded. ‘I must be doing something
right.”  Kunstler said Baez was
“cruel and wonton” adding “I do not believe in public attacks on
Socialist countries, even where violations of human rights occur.”  Dave Dellinger wrote, “You have to [be]
naive to [think] that a Leninist revolution will allow any independent
thought.”[83]

Peter Collier says, “Tom and Jane … were opposed to Baez.  So …
was the coalition of old-line communists, neo-fellow travelers, and
unreconstructed sixties radicals… There were no enemies on the left.”[84] These
were clearly friends of Hanoi and Moscow in the United States. The official
party line was published in the New York Times of June 24, 1979.
“The Truth About Vietnam,” said, in part, said, “we are appalled
at you recent attack on Vietnam and embarrassed by the ignorance it displays.
…”

The Baez charges were “Outrageous … without
foundation …without a scintilla of documentation. …Some 400,000 servants of
the former barbaric regimes were sent to re-education camps … agents of the
former repressive regimes.  …  Vietnam now enjoys human rights as it has
never known …  the right to a job and
safe, healthy working conditions … education, medicine and health care …
[which] we in the United States have yet to achieve.”[85]

The ad had provided two clip-out coupons:
One demanding billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Vietnam and
the other seeking volunteers or money for a Soviet front — the U. S. Peace
Council. Really. The Soviets cared about the Baez attack on Jane Fonda. A Los
Angeles Times article, “Soviet Press Backs Miss Hayden” in the
August 15, 1979 issue, had a few words Joan Baez and Jane Fonda.  About Baez, the Soviet press said, “She
must have been ‘singing with someone else’s voice … Recently she sang in
Seattle … where a strong crowd … [confronting her] holding up signs
[saying] ‘The CIA likes Joan Baez’ and ‘Joan Baez likes the CIA.’ Thus sayeth Sovietskaya
Kultura about Joan Baez.

About Jane Fonda, the Komsomolskaya Pravda said she is “a symbol of
American freedom fighters like Angela Davis, … The name of Fonda is today on
all the blacklists of America… .  She
is like Joan of Arc and they are threatening her with the same fate.”  Yet “Even the strong of the world are afraid
of her.”

Other American friends included the
American Friends Service Committee, whose letterhead was used to denounce Doan
Van Toai as a “CIA lackey.”[86]
Philadelphia SANE Nuclear Policy Committee honored Tom and Jane with
their 1979 SANE Peace Award.[87]

In early August millionaire Fonda
held a $25 fundraiser for an airlift of supplies to Vietnam, Operation
California, attended by hundreds including Robert Vaughn, Mike Farrell,
Governor Jerry Brown’s first sister and future state Treasurer and later
gubernatorial aspirant Kathleen Brown Rice, Brown aide Tom Quinn, CED activist
and POW-collaborator Edison Miller. Fonda hadn’t changed her mind about Vietnam
— the refugee problem could be attributed to American “government
bureaucracy and red tape get in the way of helping those in dire
straits…”[88] Peter Collier observed, “Tens of thousands
of people are mired in unspeakable tragedy while Hayden and Fonda mince words
to avoid offending the Stalinist Gerontocracy that runs Hanoi.”
Collier described Tom and Jane holding a Hollywood gala to raise funds for the
boat people, as if their problems were caused by a natural disaster, “a
potato famine,” rather than political repression.[89]

Jerry Brown Stands By Hayden and Fonda

On October 8th, Governor Jerry Brown honored Jane Fonda at a “Salute to
Women” breakfast in Los Angeles.

Even before the Baez problem
would run its course, another ghost of Hanoi past would appear.  In 1979 at the urging of Jane Fonda and Tom
Hayden Governor Jerry Brown appointed Miller Supervisor of Orange County.

Edison Miller

Tom and Jane recommended that Brown CED activist[90]
and former POW and Hanoi collaborator, Edison Miller, to a vacancy on the
Orange County Board of Supervisors.
Miller’s credentials looked especially fine to the Haydens. As a POW
Edison Miller had met Jane Fonda in Hanoi in July 1972[91]
At a minimum, Edison Miller had been a cooperative prisoner when talking to
antiwar activists and back home Miller worked on Tom’s Senate campaign and
served on CED’s steering committee.[92]

Organized opposition to Miller mounted:  The
California Democratic Party Chairman (Richard O’Neil); the two local Democratic
Assemblymen (Dennis Mangers, Richard Robinson); a top U.A.W. official (Bruce
Lee);[93] and, of course, the Republicans opposed the
Miller appointment.  The Republican
Lieutenant Governor, Mike Curb threatened to appoint someone else if Brown
traveled outside of California.[94] The odds
of Edison Miller being elected in his own right in 1980 appeared low in
conservative Orange County.[95]

Governor Brown was still wanted “to shore up the left” and to gain access to
Hayden’s political machine and Fonda’s money.
The perception was that “Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden could call 50
actors and 50 rock stars and easily raise millions.”[96] Why the
money?  Jerry Brown was running for president.[97] Jane may
have already made her promise of $3 million, though denials of any fundraising
promises would continue for months.[98]

On July 13, 1979, Jerry Brown finally appointed Edison Miller to the Orange County
Board of Supervisors as “the first ex-POW from the Vietnam War to hold
elective political office anywhere in the nation.”[99] Tom
chuckled when he told a crowd of 40 CED activists, “We’re invading their
most privileged strongholds. … It has terrified the political
establishment.”[100]

Once appointed Miller hired five CED members for his conservative Orange county
staff.[101] One, Fred Branfman,  telephoned the good news to
his friends across the country.  Miller fired Branfman.  Not to worry — Branfman
found work with Governor Jerry Brown.
Still another Miller hiree, Pamela Bigelow, had been accused of misusing
CETA funds while at the Women’s Law Center of Southern California.

Edison Miller lost to Bruce Nestande in his first election in June 1980 and blamed
his friendship with Tom and Jane.[102]

Meantime, Jerry Brown appointed yet another Hayden choice to the Santa Cruz Board of
Supervisors —  Chris Mathews.  As the appointed supervisor, Mathews
appointed a “pesticide protester” to the County Agricultural Advisory
Board who had been convicted for planting bombs on a crop duster.[103] Mathews would be defeated at the polls in
1981, but Gary Patton an ally of the Hayden’s would serve there into the
nineties on environmental and other issues.

Jane Fonda on Arts Council

In 1979 Governor Jerry Brown made
still another appointment that caused him even more trouble than Edison Miller
and Chris Mathews — Jane Fonda to the California Arts Council.  Brown appointed Fonda in March, but the
appointment required confirmation by the liberal Democrat led State Senate.
Curiously, Brown had actually pursued the likely controversy. Jane said,
“Drop a bomb in there, blow it up, get people talking about it.  He liked the idea.  I’m hot and there is this controversy surrounding
me.”[104]

After the Baez affair, Hanoi Jane
really didn’t have a chance before the State Senate, which resoundingly
rejected her (28-5) on a bipartisan vote. Democrat Ruben Ayala said, “She
waived her right to serve…. when she went to North Vietnam and did her little
thing.”[105] Governor Jerry Brown defended Jane, “If these senators were as tough and big as
they like to think, why didn’t they invite Jane Fonda to be heard and call her
to her face the names they called her like a bunch of little kids?”[106]

While Jane later said she was
surprised by the Senate’s rejection, Fonda was well prepared with a four and
one half page speech — “hold for release 10:00 a.m., Friday, July 27,
1979” — and an op ed prepared for the Los Angeles Times.  She said it was “a witch hunt … the
spirit of McCarthyism …”

That was the script — tears, anger, and shouts of “McCarthyism.”

In her Arts Council Statement, Fonda said,

“It saddens me … Art can bring people
and nations together, heal their differences, create understanding and respect
where conflict exists,” said America’s greatest film propagandist of class
conflict.  She, artista politica,
opposed injecting “politics into what should have been a discussion of my
merits as an artist to represent the arts community in California.”[107] And “They excoriated my name and reputation
in the most vicious terms. … These Senators appeared to have forgotten the
meaning of Democracy.”  It was “… paranoia, narrow mindedness, … tactics of McCarthy and Nixon …
,” said Jane.

And as for her six years supporting
the enemy in war, “I became a patriot … out of concern for what was
happening to my country and to help end the needless suffering of the
Vietnamese people and the American servicemen who were ordered to fight.
…” The clincher, the campaign theme to come.  “Never again must the spirit of
McCarthyism intimidate us.”[108]

Baez?  “I have spoken with Joan Baez about the
boat people.  We have a common concern
… .”  Another misunderstanding.  “I am perfectly prepared to criticize
brutality, torture or violations of human rights anywhere, regardless of the
ideology of the government involved. …”

The Los Angeles Times dutifully printed a slightly revised version of her original prepared statement
for the Arts Council.[109]

Nearly 300 Hollywood luminaries signed[110] an ad on August 8th defending Fonda from the
fearsome California State Senate:

“THE CALIFORNIA STATE SENATE HAS SAID JANE
FONDA IS NOT A QUALIFIED REPRESENTATIVE
OF THE ARTS.

THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY DISAGREES.

“The leaders of the fight against Jane Fonda, a two time Academy award winning actress, have
characterized her as a traitor. This tactic is all too reminiscent of … when…
Joe McCarthy labeled hundreds of prominent members of the arts community as
communists in order to deny them work. …. We affirm that we will fight any
resurrection of the specter of McCarthyism in California or our nation.”
(McCarthy had nothing to do with the Hollywood’s homegrown black list).

Tom said that it was an example of
the “poisons of history, that are passed on unless they are
expunged.”[111]

A week after the Hollywood ad, State Senator Paul Carpenter, D-Cypress, responded with a paid ad in the Los Angeles Times
on August 15, 1979:

McCarthyism.  Telling lies about people

and then persecuting them on the basis of those lies.

When Jane Fonda accused the State Senate of McCarthyism.

SHE became the McCarthyite.

The State Senate never once lied about Jane Fonda.

She DID travel to Hanoi and make anti-American tapes …

American prisoners of war WERE severely punished because of her visit.

It is Jane Fonda — not the California State Senate — who

is guilty of McCarthyism.

Free speech. … Jane Fonda has free speech. …

In America she is free to say what she thinks. …

The people of California — and their State Senate — are also free. …

[T]hey have decided they want no part of Jane Fonda as their representative.[112]

Though only 12.5 per cent of the liberal Democrat dominated State Senate had voted in her favor, by late August
the people of Californian narrowly split 49-45 per cent in favor of Fonda and
by 54-39 per cent they supported her appointment to the Arts Council.[113]

Tom Still a Revolutionary?

James R. Mills, a liberal Democrat and President Pro Tempore of the California Senate said, “Not only was
[Hayden] a Communist, he was a Stalinist…He lies to us now… He say’s he’s a
Democrat”[114] Mills said, “He denied ever having advocated
violence, revolution and public ownership of business in America.” Yet “his advocacy”
was in “public print” [115] In an interview with Larry Liebert published in
the August 27, 1979 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, Tom said:  “I never believed that there could be a
successful violent revolution in the United States.”  Hayden also denied he had ever been a
Socialist or a Marxist.[116] Columnist Joe Scott  described “confessions,
not nearly as complete as … St. Augustine.”  Scott cited then quoted Hayden in CED’s
September 1979 newsletter: at “the actual moment of showdown” between
two major political forces, “… power is to be won by either by an
overthrow of the existing government or a peaceful transfer at the polls.”[117] Old Ramparts friend, Peter Collier mocked
Hayden “unequivocally disclaiming any past connection with Marx or revolution … that he was always a liberal Democrat …”[118] Collier
said Hayden “… gives something like a broad wink…We’ll have to take him on faith as our Manchurian candidate.”[119]

Brown for President, 1979-1980

Hayden and the CED’s statewide
steering committee endorsed Brown for president in December 1979 promising full
organizational and fundraising support.[120] As leader of “a political machine in a
gentle sense,” Hayden was forced to visit local CED chapters to
“explain” the Brown endorsement.
Despite a $3 million commitment from Fonda, Hayden said that CED’s
support was limited to the New Hampshire primary.  Hayden said CED owed Brown since he had
raised the nuclear issue when other presidential candidates had not.[121] Brown’s
alignment with Hayden’s anti-nuclear and pro-solar agenda had gained him
notoriety as Doonesbury’s and Mike Royko’s “Governor Moonbeam.”[122] Democrat state Senator Paul Carpenter, ran paid
newspaper ads in New Hampshire in January 1980 — tarring presidential
candidate Jerry Brown with the red brush of Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.[123] Brown did
poorly in New Hampshire.  Tom Quinn,
Brown’s campaign director said that Hayden “simply couldn’t produce. …
Hayden … clearly hurt Jerry … .”[124] In late May 1980, Tom Hayden endorsed
Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy.[125]

Jerry Brown remained loyal to CED. A 1981 CED fundraiser at the Beverly Hilton
featured Jerry Brown’s father and former governor Pat Brown as well as CED
member and farm worker organizer Caesar Chavez. Entertainment notables included
Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, Robert Blake, Margot Kidder, Fonda, and Gloria Steinem.[126] Margot
Kidder[127] made a fundraising tour of northern California
for CED in late 1981.  Fonda’s films “Julia” and “Nine to Five” were used as draw for CED
fundraising in 1981.

Medfly

In 1981 led by CED member Bob Brownstein, CED opposed aerial spraying of a
pesticide, Malathion, against the Mediterranean fruit fly then threatening to
ravish hundreds of California crops. Governor Brown delayed a decision until
his chief of staff, B. T. Collins — subsequently a leader to create a Vietnam
veterans memorial, a state Assemblyman, and a critic of Hayden — broke the
policy crisis by ridiculing CED. Collins drank a glass of the stuff before TV
cameras.[128] In 1990 Tom Hayden appeared on Ted Koppel’s
“Nightline” still opposing the spraying to stop the Medfly.

Hayden Given Assembly Seat, 1981-1982

In 1981 Hayden-Fonda political allies Governor Jerry
Brown and Speaker Willie Brown paved the way for Tom Hayden by intervening to
prevent an anti-Hayden gerrymander[129] in the California Assembly. Cleared to run in
1982 Hayden’s campaign “brochure” was a
slick 24-page book.  Signed by Jerry
Brown’s father, former Governor Pat Brown. It showed Hayden, “… is a normal
human being who is just like everybody else:  He has a family, he’s     a father, he fishes, he plays softball.”[130] The Los
Angeles Times got the picture, “[H]e is a regular guy that just happens to
be an exceptional fighter for progressive causes.”[131] Hayden
also loved dogs and children. Perversely, there was great enthusiasm for Hayden
among Republican politicians who felt Hayden hurt the entire Democrat ticket.[132] Lu Haas,
a CED activist and the Governor Brown’s media advisor, said “ [R]ight
wingers…won’t let it die.  It’s a form of Red scare.”[133] Thereafter Hayden’s long political career in
Assembly and the Senate[134] was halted only by term limits and unsuccessful
campaigns for other offices.

Brown’s Political Legacy

As late as February 1989, Hayden put his whole machine, including his top political operatives, Bob
Mulholland and Cathy Calfo, behind electing former Governor Jerry Brown to the
Chairmanship of the state Democratic Party. CED leaders Bob Mulholland and
Cathy Calfo became political director and executive director of the state
party. This continued into 1991-1992, when the new chairman, Phil Angelides,
selected Bob Mulholland as his own political director.  Mulholland had been on Hayden’s payroll for
15 years since his 1976 campaign for U.S. Senate and today remains a major
spokesman for Democrat party apparatus in California.

Brown leaving office in January 1983 did not end his legacy.

Governor George Deukmejian 1983-1990.

A law and order and fiscal conservative former Attorney General George Deukmejian
gave little attention to environmental matters which had their own growth
momentum in the state bureaucracy, the Democrat legislature and in public
opinion. Short of abolishing an Adrianna Gianturco construct, the Caltrans
Office of Bicycle Facilities and the Office of Appropriate Technology,
Deukmejian’s 1985 budget increased spending on environmental projects.

During the Deukmejian administration the state bureaucracy and the Legislature
aggressively moved against high public perceptions of dirty air and water and
toxic chemicals. Governor Deukmejian renewed the broad mandate of the
Environmental Affairs Agency over the Air Resources Board, Solid Waste
Management Board, State Water Resources Control Board, and the Regional Water
Quality Control Boards, Outer Continental Shelf, Office of Offshore
Development, offshore oil and gas mitigation. Thus the bureaucracy plodded
forward on the Brown-Hayden-Fonda environmental jihad against corporate
poisoning of air, water and life, both human and wild. In an atmoshere of
sustained hysteria, the State Legislature enacted new legislation: the
California Clean Air Act, Integrated Waste Management Act, Beverage Container
Recycling and Litter Reduction Act, Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act,
Proposition 65, Drinking Water Well Protection Act, Underground Storage Tank
Laws of 1983, Toxic Pits Cleanup Act, Hazardous Waste Management Act and
Hazardous Waste Source Reduction and Management Review Act. The regulatory
apparatus and ambitions grew unchecked[135]
year after year.

In his closing hours Governor Deukmejian vetoed a property tax exemption bill for
Solar Electric Generating Stations built by Luz Limited International. Without
this subsidy LUZ went bankrupt and the construction of large solar power
projects were halted for years thereafter.

The Transition: Wilson to Davis to Schwarzenegger

When he was elected Governor in 1990, Pete Wilson appointed Sierra Club Director Doug Wheeler to
run California’s Resources Agency overseeing departments regulating
California’s water, forests, fish and games. Despite Wilson’s tied to corporate
California, it was the reign of the spotted owl, kangaroo rat and suckerfish,
the decimation of the forest products industry, manufacturing, and an assault
upon agriculture and rural communities dependant upon the development of
natural resources.

After Wilson, Governor Gray Davis carried the Brown legacy forward. Brown’s former chief of
Staff, Gray Davis appointed Mary Nichols as Secretary of the California Resources Agency and
former Assemblyman Tom Hannigan to direct the Department of Water Resources and
Jonas Minton, a rafter from Planning and Conservation League as Deputy Director
of DWR. Minton a fierce opponent of water storage continued Jerry Brown and
Gerald Meral’s animosity toward dam construction[136]
and obcession with water conservation including toilet to tap recycling of
water.

Davis signed a California-only law demanding the manufacture of more efficient vehicles to cut greenhouse gas
emissions. This measure charged the California Air Resources Board with achieving
“maximum feasible” cuts in greenhouse gases. In one irony MTBE was
added to gas to reduce emissions, but by early Davis made an executive order to
eliminate MTBE as a gas additive. It polluted water.[137]

Davis signed  an environmental justice statute to ensure
the “fair treatment of all races, cultures, and incomes” in environmental
laws and regulations. After rolling blackouts of electrical power, caused by an
electrical restucturing law creating loopholes for market manupulation,[138]
Davis declared an  emergency and ordered
the California Energy Commission to speedup the backlogged application process
for 38 new power plants, the first in decades. Gray Davis would be recalled, in
part, because his slow respose to the energy crisis.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bonnie Reiss, a Hollywood friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger became a
principal advisor on environmental issues. As a member of Norman Lear’s
Environmental Media Association, Reiss was a leader among Hollywood’s
environmentalists. [Lear owns a 26-car garage and tells everyone else to get
out of their cars] Yet it was Fonda-Hayden’s
Hollywood “brat pack” Network: Jeff Bridges, Tom Cruise, Morgan Fairchild,
and Daphne Zuniga[139] which formed the Earth Communications Office,
ECO, and made Bonnie Reiss its executive director.

Broadly promoting an anti-market, anti-private property agenda, Reiss’s ECO helped
rewrite Hollywood scripts to deliver environmental ideas such as global warming, green house effect, deforestation,
and cloth diapers. Reiss’s ECO mounted hysterical and anti-business plots about
toxic waste, animal rights, recycling. In the late eighties Reiss said, “We
have only ten years left to do something.” Reiss opposed reforms of
environmental regulations blocking the restoration of California’s roads, water
and electric supplies. Hollywood’s own Arnold Schwarznegger, advised by Bonnie
Reiss, counts as his own legacy California’s law against carbon and climate change.

Jerry Brown replaced Schwarzenegger as Governor returning to same game with many of
the same players. His legacy was waiting for him. Brown had campaigned, in
part, on producing 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020. Awaiting him in
the legislature were bills to: toughen regulation of toxic chemicals in
consumer products; make 30% of California Energy renewable (sans
hydroelectric); and require automakers to build lower emission vehicles.

Despite the distraction of a $25 billion budget deficit, Brown’s early appointments
indicated Moonbeam had returned.

2010 Brown Appointments, 2010

Governor Brown reappointed Mary Nichols to the California Air Resources
Board, spearheading California’s effort to clean the air of planet earth all by
itself. This is to be done by criminalizing and imprisoning carbon, a natural
element in our cells and the air we breathe. Whatever. The earth’s climate will
be changed for the better and lots of people will get jobs, government and
government subsidized jobs. This measure, AB 32, and Mary Nichols herself, are
proud legacies of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yet Nichols has her own continuing
provenance. As part of a Toxic Network in 1986 Mary Nichols helped the
Hayden-Fonda team pass Proposition 65,[140] the Safe Drinking Water Act. Producers and
users of chemicals were engaged in the “manufacturing of death” according
to spokesmen for the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund.[141]

Hence Prop 65 required the regulation of any chemical at any detectable level —
“zero emissions” that are “less than detectable” — in the
water supply for anything that might cause cancer or birth defects. Proposition
65 covered virtually every economic enterprise in California and every commonly
used product –aspirin, beer, cola, paint, vitamins, peanut butter, paper, nail
polish, table salt, white out, soap, gasoline, spot removers, paint and varnish
removers.
Tom, Jane, and CED on their own had contributed and loaned over three
quarters of a million dollars — $766,000 to enact Prop 65.[142] By 2010 the State of
California listed some 800 chemicals as cancer causing and a like number as
having reproductive toxicity, causing birth defects. Only a dozen or so
chemicals, e.g. Saccharine, have been delisted. Experts set “safe harbor’
levels for cancer causing chemicals and “maximum allowable doses” for
reproductive toxicity. A massive bureaucracy holds forth.

Nichols, affiliated with the Natural Resources Defense Council (of Alar apple panic) also supported the
Hayden-Fonda’s “Big Green” initiative in 1990. It took 13,000 words to describe
Big Green’s comprehensive plan for clean air, water, soil and food.[143] As a package that effort failed at the ballot
box defeated by claims it didn’t go far enough. Not to worry it came back in legislation.

In 2011 Jerry Brown appointed river rafting and dam-busting Gerald Meral
as Deputy Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency charged with saving Delta
Smelt to the detriment of the human users of water, see Chinese oranges above.
Meral, wildlife biologist formerly with the Environmental Defense Foundation
opposing all dam projects except their destruction and opposing pesticides used
to kill weeds hiding burrowing animals weakening flood controlling levees.
After serving the first term of Jerry Brown Meral worked for the Planning and
Conservation League, PCL, a coalition of groups that included Friends of the
Earth, Californians Against Waste, Friends of the River, the Audubon Society,
Greenpeace Pacific Southwest, the Wilderness Society. PCL supported a $900
million “mountain lion” habitat[144] and CED candidates for office.[145] PCL also helped Hayden and Fonda in closing down
the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant outside Sacramento.

In 2011 Brown appointed John Laird Secretary of Natural Resources. A former
Assemblyman and a self-described gay progressive, [146] Laird was a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing
Committee[147] with which Tom Hayden was also affiliated. CED supported his run for
the Santa Cruz City Council where he and most of his colleagues were
self-described socialists pushing for rent control and aligning themselves with leftists in Central America.[148]

Brown has appointed lesbian Nancy
Ryan as executive director of California Public Utilities Commission. She is an
advocate of alternative fueled vehicles, renewable energy resources and reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions. She served previously as Senior Economist and Deputy
California Director at Environmental Defense Fund, concentrating on reducing
greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and power plants, curbing air pollution
from diesel engines and restoring rivers and watersheds.

Déjà vu all over again?

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[1] http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/16/3327302/dan-walters-even-browns-5-year.html#ixzz1BDg1Z26d