The Shonbrun Report

America is Not Broke

2011-04-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

In the fall of 2008 a giant mud ball - created by Wall Street financial schemers and irresponsible big bank mortgage lenders, hit the fan - and it splattered on just about everyone in our country and even globally. The result of these frauds has resulted in double-digit unemployment and millions of home foreclosures. In order to stanch an economic meltdown and crash that threatened to reverberate at home and internationally the Bush Administration instituted bailouts for some of the largest banks and investment corporations. It was a necessary action agreed upon by a majority of the most respected, credentialed and acclaimed economists.

The close to one trillion in bailout money to these “too big to fail” corporations was supposed to go, in part, to loans to businesses to create economic stimulus and toward readjusting improperly made mortgage loans, but it hasn’t. The ranks of the unemployed and under employed have hardly budged, but the richest 1 percent among us received tax cuts amounting to hundreds of billions. About 400 wealthy Americans now have more wealth than 150 million Americans combined!

Even more egregious and mind-boggling than this incredible imbalance is the astounding fact that some of the biggest banks and corporations in America pay NO taxes or a pittance of what would be their fair share. In 2009, after having been complicit in the crash of the American economy and despite earning record profits, Bank of America and General Electric paid $0 taxes. In fact GE got a tax rebate of $3 billion. All the while we are being told that there’s no money for schools, food programs or health care, and that it’s the fault of the public sector. Yes, it’s the greedy teachers, firefighters and social workers that caused the crash on Wall Street, not the corporations that pay no taxes and the CEOs who make 500 times the average employee that have destroyed the middle class and absconded with the wealth.

Former Secretary of the Treasury and renowned economist Robert Reich states: “The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protest Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.” He goes on to point out that if this richest 1 to 2 percent were taxed at the same rates as 50 years ago, they’d be paying in over $350 billion more this year alone, “… which translates into trillions over the next decade.”

This theft of the American economy has got to stop, and that’s why a rally on the Plaza and demonstration in front of Bank of America will take place on Tax Day, April 18 at 5:00 P.M. America is not broke. Its wealth, our wealth, has been stolen and is being hoarded by the big corporations that pay no or a small semblance of the taxes they owe, and the super rich tax evaders.

On Monday the 18th we will present a bill for taxes to the Bank of America owed to the American people. We need you to walk with us in a peaceful protest and make your voices heard. Enough is enough. We will not be cheated and lied to by those who drove us into the worst recession since the 1930s, obliterated our jobs and took our homes. This is the day to make the deadbeats pay.

A Sunday Sermon

2011-04-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Friends-

Let us begin Sunday's sermon on an economic note with some pertinent quotes:

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the engine of job creation.
 -- Ronald Reagan

I never met a small businessman yet who didn't have one finger up his ass and the other on the scales. 
-- Mad Dog Howard

Now that you've had time to contemplate the socio/politico/financial-o/religio implications from important figureheads of note it brings us to consideration of the greasing of favored municipal projects through CA Redevelopment (funding) Agencies. Witness the mad scramble of county and city electeds and their administrative staff to secure RDA bucks for vital projects to combat blight and/or generate local revenue.

Among these worthy enterprises are a new massage business on the Plaza - no biggie, just 25 Gs to cover oil expenses - and a few bucks to the Jazz Plus Festival because, well, just because. Then there are the poor, starving non-profits huddled in the cold, begging bowls in hand as they line up for a little bond money largess. Now we're talking a little bigger buck-a-roos: $500,000 for the Community Center, and an undisclosed amount for the Visitors Bureau, because God knows we don't get enough tourists. Better line up soon, Sonomates, to get your piece of the $16 million pie for whatever biz or gig you'd like to get a little cash for. It's going fast.Better grab it wile you can before Big Bad Jerry gobbles it up.

...

Casting our net further we observe the spectacle of New York's Peter King, a stalwart Republican Congressman who is going to rout out the nests of Islamic terrorist cells in our midst.

Taking a page, possibly a chapter or two out of Sen. Joe McCarthy's book, King has determined that American Muslims are either (1) plotting to attack us, or (2) not informing the authorities about legions of Muslims plotting to attack us. How does King know this, you might ask? Well, because, he just does. Why should he provide proof when he just knows this in his bones? Who cares about facts or evidence or such other inconveniences when what's really important is his unshakable conviction? Just like poor old Joe; so misunderstood. Here is Rep. King, trying to do God's work and protect America from her enemies, and loonies on the left are demanding his well-coifed head.

Don't let them get you down, Pete, even if they refuse to see who's hiding under their own beds. You're the guy to go under there and get 'em! And let's not forget, good old Pete knows about terror tactics and the killing of innocent civilians for that express purpose as a once staunch supporter and mouthpiece for the Irish Republican Army. Pete knows about this shit because he was into it up to his massive eyebrows. Nothing like on the job training, eh?

...

And finally, just like the ever elusive Where's Waldo, the same query might be asked of our valiant President and his conspicuous absence in Wisconsin. Remember when he boldly told us when on the campaign trail in 2007:

"If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself." "I'll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner."

Oh how stirring those words. How Presidential-ist. No doubt the Pres. is just picking out the right shoes, making sure the VP can handle matters in his absence, and will be jetting down to WI or wherever labor needs him to support the cause. Right on, Mr. President. Mr. President? Barack?

Sticks and Stones…

2011-01-19T10:16:00.000-08:00

Despite the old adage it’s known by most that the impact of words – harsh, accusatory, judgmental or condemnatory – last and fester far longer than bodily bruises. Words matter. Ask the preacher or the politician or the pundit. Ask the dictator. First come the words, then the actions.

Since the latest tragic event in Tucson we are hearing from politicians and pundits alike – some of them – to turn down the inflammatory and violence-oriented rhetoric, to cool the hate speech, and to understand that such words have consequences, as we’ve been told so may times. It happens every time these kinds of brutally insane and heart-wrenching rampages occur.

Of course words matter. It’s an old, old story, but we’ve only to look a short way to past history: the rationale for stolen land because its inhabitants were godless savages; an excuse for slavery, one of the depths of human depravity, because its victims weren’t fully human; the Nazis’ rise to power on the defamation of Jews; the oppression and subjugation against women and minorities and their relegation to second-class status; the McCarthy Era, and the arousing of our nation to go to war in East Asia or the Middle East through fear and the demonization of some “enemy.”

Calls for more civil discourse, less personal attacks, and easing off violent, militant words and symbols are heard throughout the land, as always follows tragic, senseless killings, and while this is the proper and right response, it is undermined by a fundamental hypocrisy in our culture: We are a violent people.

We tell our children that problems cannot and should not be solved by violence, and that our differences cannot be rectified through aggression, but what do we show them on the world stage?

We invade countries that we disagree with when we believe it is in our interest to do so, and we manufacture the reasons and rationales to get our people to accept, support and fight in these wars. But ‘invade’ is a too surgical, too clinical word. It does not describe the reality of the act. A recent example: Before our military set foot in Iraq in 2003 we rained bombs and missiles on sections of the country for two weeks. Remember “shock and awe”?

Those bombs and missiles not only destroyed, rendered into rubble, buildings and infrastructure, they tore apart human beings: families, babies and children of people who just happened to be living in the wrong place, at the wrong time. These were other human beings, no different than our families, friends and neighbors; no different than us. Our military, before and during the invasion of Iraq killed, brutally and violently murdered and maimed a countless number of people no different in their hopes, dreams and desires than you or I. That’s the reality of war. Indiscriminate bombing and so-called collateral killing was done in Vietnam and Cambodia as well, and there’s no reason to believe it will not happen again.

We tell our children not to engage in violence to solve their problems and it’s the first thing we resort to. We exhort our children and our fellow citizens to eschew violence and physical aggression while at the same time manufacturing and selling arms – machinery that kills people and destroys cities and countryside – to practically all the nations of the world. We spend about half of our entire budget fighting and preparing to wage wars. How can we tell our children, tell ourselves, to seek non-violent solutions when our actions belie our words?

We are currently cautioned by out leaders, the putative more reasonable and intelligent ones, to cool the rhetoric and incitement to violence-laden language, while at the same time sending drones to kill designated enemies regardless of who else happens to get killed or wounded in the process. We preach non-violence and at the same time justify the use of torture. Torture! We have a Congressman recently calling for the assassination of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange – not a trial to establish innocence or guilt, but an assassination; a mob hit. This is and other such utterances are the level of discourse from some of our political leaders and extreme right wing pundits.

How can we expect our people to behave respectfully, to debate differences honestly and logically, to keep our national discourse civil when the reality of how we act and what we say projects just the opposite? Only when we stop exhorting and resorting to violence in order to get what we want will we be able to bridge the divides that have grown deeper and wider in our country. Only when our actions mirror our words will we be able to advise our children and tell ourselves and the rest of the world how to live in peace. Will such a time ever come?

Why Should We Care?

2010-09-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

Some of us have been active in political, social justice, civil rights or environmental causes for a good bit of our lives if we’re now in our 60s and 70s. We might have been active in marches, demonstrations and rallies for one cause or another, to some degree of commitment or another. Some have truly put their asses on the line and gotten jailed, beaten or worse, while others have taken a less dedicated but still active engagement in trying to change things.

Those who took action in causes did so because they believed it was the right and just thing to do, that it was an obligation as citizens in a democracy to be engaged in our society and because we thought we could change the world and make it a better place. Now I find myself wondering if any of it, certainly most of it, really mattered and here are the reasons for what in truth is a deep and abiding pessimism.

Taking stock, on the plus side there’s no denying that in the realm of civil rights great progress has been made. It took a hundred years for the Proclamation ending slavery to take hold through the establishment and protection of Congressional Acts, but it did happen. No efforts or sacrifices on these behalves were wasted and some were courageous beyond the dedication of the many. On the plus side have been legal environmental protections, including wilderness and wildlife conservation, although the record of enforcement of these safeguards has been very spotty. And there have been significant advances protecting and regulating the rights of labor from abuse and exploitation, though the minimum wage is an absurdly low rate of pay in today’s economy. Add to these positive and progressive advancements Social Security and Medicare and it presents a somewhat impressive picture of accomplishment. But despite these gains the question remains: Do we stand in a better place in this time, in this world?

We need to consider the state of our country and the world in order to answer that question.

There can be little doubt that the paramount, overriding and profoundly affecting crisis we face – we humans around the world – is global warming and climate change. This will literally change the face of the planet and impact billions of people and other species as well. This is the biggest game changer for the human race save perhaps a nuclear Armageddon, which is easily not beyond possibility.

Runner up on and in league with climate change as a global scale crisis (the word problem doesn’t begin to do it justice) is that we must abandon fossil fuel energy and convert, all of us, to sustainable, non-polluting forms of energy. Obviously these first two imperative crises are entirely interwoven. Thirdly of global scope is the rate at which we humans are depleting the Earth’s resources; resources that humans depend on, anyway.

We know that the oceans are being over-fished at a rate where certain species are bound for extinction and other fish stocks are being reduced faster than supply is sustainable. Less than 1% of the Earth’s water is potable and that supply is dwindling due to unprecedented world population explosion, man-made pollution and warming climate. Drinking water has become a corporate commodity joining the list of shrinking resources. The replenishing of fresh water is governed by rainfall, which in turn depends on climate conditions. Agriculture is dependent upon fresh water supplies and when this vital resource decreases the world’s food supplies are affected. The rate of planetary desertification is well documented as well as increasing drought and famine in certain parts of the world. Rainforests and woodlands are being clear-cut to accommodate human needs and can never be replaced once gone. Yet humans keep on reproducing like there’s no tomorrow; almost racing over the cliff to extinction like lemmings. Very smart.

Focusing the lens here at home in America we have this picture before us: a steadily declining democracy, once a republic, but one that has been usurped by mega corporations whose only interest is the bottom line. It employs armies of lobbyists to deliver its messages, cajoling and or threatening, to politicians and their parties who in turn do their bidding. Anyone naïve enough to believe this isn’t so is beyond the reach of logic. The military/industrial-corporate complex is now and has been for decades so well entrenched as to be untouchable. Government … politics, as it’s played out here, is for and by the corporations, which for the most part control elections by lending or withholding monetary support in an electoral system dependent upon it. It’s a neat trick and big business interests have pulled it off. They even own the media so as to have in-house public relations “information” spinners to manipulate mass appeal and acceptance.

In short, we the American people are bought, sold and owned by the corporate masters that are driven only by profits; principles, morality, integrity, justice or any human philosophical attribute that strives for a greater society is absolutely inconsequential. It’s the result of unregulated, unrestrained capitalism that is driven by greed and short-term monetary gain. We, all of us, are completely in their grip, and knowing this they can occasionally throw us some bones in the form of watered-down legislation, e.g., health care “reform” or Wall Street “reform.”

And it doesn’t much matter who gets to play president, or to which party those pompous, posturing asses strutting around as self-important politicians belong, big business runs the show and the military polices the world enforcing its demands. The people always get screwed. It’s only a matter of degree. The corporations – oil, defense, insurance, banking, media, et al. – are international, multi-national behemoths, richer and more powerful than most of the nations on Earth; they rule and we all work for the companies whether we know it or not.

Corporate industry doesn’t want an end to war – it’s very profitable and life is cheap. Large corporate industries deny global warming and climate change because it will affect profits; it’s not good for business. Cleaning up industry’s pollution of land, air and water is not in businesses’ interest; it costs too much and cuts into profits. Business wants everything for sale including water suitable for drinking and air suitable for breathing.

If one needs proof of these claims simply look around. Unemployment is the highest it has been since the 1930s [www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10herbert]. Our government pours hundreds of billions into wars, national security agencies, military bases in hundreds of countries across the globe and weapons systems powerful enough to destroy the world in an afternoon, but we really don’t give a shit about our schools, our crumbling cities, highways and bridges and all the rest of it. Political claptrap is mouthed about caring about these things, and priorities, and the like, but it’s a lot of crap when we look at where the money is really spent. It’s spent on war, preparing for war, arming for war and using our military might to enforce U.S. “interests.” It’s in our interest to be in Iraq or Afghanistan, or in league with Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, we’re told. The U.S. has between 700-800 military bases around the world protecting our interests [www.globalresearch.org]. Is that so, one wonders? Whose interests? Well it’s not my interest; is it yours?

We are literally awash in pollution – from industry, agriculture and what has become our everyday life. We all know there are islands of crap, plastic and other non-biodegradable garbage, larger than some states and growing by the day. There are dead zones in our oceans where nothing can live because the oxygen has been so depleted because of human-made pollution. Our answer to this is to double our (world) population every 20 years – world population in 1950 was 2.5 billion and in 2010 it’s 7 billion [U.S. Census Bureau] – effectively increasing scarcity of vital needs and resource degradation, and enhancing human suffering to unprecedented proportions. But who gives a rat’s ass, and who won the Big game is what we Americans want to know. That’s what we care about.

For all these reasons and many more I believe it’s end game, checkmate, bill paying time. We’ve fouled our nest to a point beyond repair, we’ve sold ourselves to consumerism for the ephemeral promises of happiness, and maybe worst of all believe we can pull our sorry asses out of the fire because we’re so damned smart. Yup, pride will do us all in, just as we’ve been told all along. Pride eradicates intelligence, pushes reason aside and obscures the reality of what is before our eyes. Maybe it’s our greatest sin because it makes us believe when there are no grounds for belief. It blinds us to see and feel what is real and what is really going on.

What can we do about it? My answer is not a fuck of a lot. Many I know disagree with that prognosis. They say we can change government by working inside the system. If we’re Democrats we can work within the party to make it more progressive, enact progressive legislation and change the game. I wish I could believe that, but I don’t. Others say we must build a green/progressive/peace-oriented third party to compete with the big boys, but that doesn’t seem feasible either. The current political system is rigged against that happening. Flukes like Ross Perrot’s libertarian challenge, or Huey Long style populism arise every now and then, but these only serve to advantage one of the two parties; they’re not fundamental game-changers.

I believe that we’re dug in too deep, and ironically instead of trying to dig our way out we just keep on digging deeper. Whether the world ends in a whimper or a bang remains to be seen, but our unsustainable ways of being on this planet in every respect have failed. What it would take to change our ways – great disasters or miraculous epiphanies – I don’t know. That Prince of Optimists, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, delivered what I’d call a remarkable speech, especially from a politician, at a conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2002. It’s far too long to reproduce here, but can be accessed at www.praxispeace.org. At one point in the speech, reflecting on our human proclivity for making war, Kucinich says: “Though flames of war from the millions of hearts and the dozens of places wherein it rages, may lick at our consciousness, our gaze must be fixed upward to invoke universal principles of unity, of co-operation, of compassion, to infuse our world with peace, to ask for the active presence of peace, to expand our capacity to receive it and to express it in our everyday life. We must do this fearlessly and courageously and not breathe in the poison gas of terror. As we receive, so shall we give [emphasis added].

Can we grow to understand that all humanity, all living creatures and Nature itself are one family and that we inhabit one world, interconnected, interdependent and interrelated to the whole? Whatever is done to or for one part, one individual, one group, one nation, affects all. Until it’s understood at the most fundamental level that we are literally all in this together we cannot hope to extricate ourselves from a spiral of death and dissolution in the only world we have. Perhaps, maybe we can reach this understanding despite all the signs that point the other way. All things are possible, I suppose.

Ground Zero Intolerance

2010-08-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

The controversy over a Muslim community center and mosque being constructed in close proximity to the WTC’s “Ground Zero” is an exercise in bigoted illogic. The argument goes: It was people of the Muslim faith that perpetrated the horrific murders of thousands and therefore a mosque near that site is an affront to all Americans. Here’s the trouble with that argument.

While it’s true that the people who ordered, planned and executed that monstrous crime are Muslims, they are members of a small minority of a radical, extremist and murderous faction of that religion of 1.2 billion practitioners, who ardently disavow them, their perverted beliefs and their methods, here in this country and practically every Muslim country. Painting all Muslims with a brush of terrorist or terrorist sympathizer makes as much sense as condemning white Christians for the crimes of Timothy McVeigh, or aligning all Southerners for the acts of the KKK. Do we say no Catholic churches near schools because there are some priests who have abused children?

Because every religion seems to give rise to some faction of radical, unlawful, psychopathic extremists does not mean it is emblematic of the principles of that religion, and is in fact the antithesis of those beliefs. A radical, orthodox Jew assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Rabin some years ago. Are all orthodox Jews terrorist murderers? Drawing such conclusions is preposterous.

And, more important, it’s dangerous. It’s an excuse for bigotry and persecution. It’s a pretense for denying the civil rights of a group of Americans by innuendo, and if it works this time it makes it all the more easy for it to happen again, whether it’s Muslims or some other group.

It’s a situation that is being cynically and unethically employed by some politicians to gain support in some quarters in order to gain votes. It is an appeal to the basest instincts, innate prejudices and unwarranted fears of some of our citizens by self-serving politicians and those who abet and encourage bigotry, hatred and distrust – the bottom-feeders of society.

There is another argument that is being put forth that sounds reasonable, but on examination is flawed. There are those who are saying – DNC Chairman Howard Dean on the national scene and Sonoma County Supervisor Shirley Zane locally – that the Muslim organization proposing the community center should be sensitive to the opposition to its location and find another site further away. Taken to its logical conclusion that means unpopular decisions should be tried in the court of public opinion and disregard constitutional laws established to protect civil rights. Think what this kind of bowing to public pressure would have meant to the great civil rights struggles fought valiantly in our country over the years.

Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg of NYC for defending the Muslim center on First Amendment grounds and dispelling critics’ cries of sacrilege. Obama should have had the courage to stop after his first comment instead of equivocating, and Democrats like Harry Reid are political cowards. If President John Adams were alive he’d be the legal advocate for the Muslim group wanting to build in lower Manhattan. He and the other founders knew it was the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights that was the backbone of our democracy, the framework upon which all the constitutional protections are constructed. If it crumbles we all go down with it.
…………………….

Comments:
C Castelli

You could also have thrown in:
1. It's not a mosque but a cultural center (which encourages interfaith tolerance and harmony).
2. The owners of the proposed cultural center are neither sunni nor shiite but sufi.
3. The cultural center would be 2 blocks (and out of view from) ground zero.
4. Nobody is objecting to the strip clubs facing ground zero.
5. This story first broke in December of 2009. Nobody paid any attention until right wing conservatives thought they had an election issue. At the time many relatives of 9/11 victims thought the cultural center was a good idea.
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J. Lynch

Marvelous
I absolutely agree.
As much as I detest ridiculous people devoted to goofy religions, sects, cults –all of them–often used to justify blowing people up, raping and mutilating women, bombing functioing cities and their citizens, judging others or used as a distraction form living in this world as we know it, of course you can worship anything anytime anywhere. The mosque construction will create snme jobs?
It's the "worship" bit that is skewed.
Please let us remember the Koran preaches hatred, and Allah liked little boys.
Ditto the Roman Catholic church!
I'm with the Native Americans:
The spirit is in the land, the trees the rivers and streams, the animals the stars. "Religion" is all around us and in us. Looking for some man-made "lemonade twaddle," as Soren Kirkegaard called religion, is a waste of time, in my humble opinon.
Frankly I'm fed up with catholicism's sanctimonious rules & regs re who can have an abortion, get married, or admit to having sex with 8 year-old boys, and dopey conversations about bloody birkas, the twaddling Koran, the fairy stories in the Bible whatever? It's all irrelevant.

Let's figure out how not to overpopulate, stink up the planet, and clean up our act here.
We are the only species on the planet that dirties its own nest. We are now defacating into water we are about to drink!
LA is currently recycling sewage for human consumption.
Not a good thing
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Dancing with the Demons of Mind

2010-06-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been an emotional whirlwind, bouncing from utter fear, to anger, to resentment, to resignation and philosophical acceptance, and back and forth between these poles like a billiard ball. Worst of all is the not-knowing – do I have cancer or not – and with that question the mind projects all the possible scenarios, and the captive audience of one gets to enjoy the whole circus. And it’s everything but dull, and you begin to re-appreciate times of boredom and ordinary dullness.

I would never usually begin with, “It all began,” but it all began about six months ago when I got some lousy numbers on a PSA test. For those who don’t know, as I didn’t, PSA stands for Prostate-Specific Antigen blood test, and any PSA value higher than 4 usually indicates an enlarged prostate gland and about a 50% probability of having cancer. An enlarged prostate in men over 60 is not unusual at all, but if a doctor, a competent one, sees a number greater than 4 in your PSA blood test it’s a warning flag. Interestingly the medical profession has lowered that base number from 4 to 2.5. My local GP, spotting a number of 4.65 advised I see a specialist and get a second PSA as well; both of which I did.

The second PSA doesn’t look any better and I’m not freaking out or anything, but it’s got my attention. So off I trot to Dr. X, who looks like a kid to me, but then again anybody under 50 looks like a kid to me, and he checks me out. I’ll spare you the details. He gives me what I presume to be the standard tutorial about prostate health, what the numbers can mean, operative word being can, and based on this info I decide to let things go for about six months, get another PSA then and see where things are at. Dr. Kid concurs and off we go to our separate lives.

So for the next six months my mind is noodling with thoughts of life and death, and all the things I’ve not done, not seen, not accomplished and other such titillating conjectures, but it’s not a full time occupation and I get on with the tasks of the day.

Time passes – cut to fluttering calendar pages – and it’s off for another PSA. Numbers higher. It’s now in the 5s. Another meet-up with young Dr. X. We agree that the only way to find out what’s really going on is taking the next step – a biopsy. He gives me all the medical particulars and I tell him I’ll give him my decision in a couple of days; all the while thinking, I want a second opinion.

One thing needs to be said at this point. I’m not going to reveal the outcome of this story until it’s necessary so that the reader can experience a taste of the aforementioned ‘not-knowing’ as did the writer. Makes for better drama, anyway.

Local primary Doc agrees about second opinion and sets me up with a “hot shot” in Marin. Dr. Hot Shot gives me the once over, not the most engaging of fellows, making me feel more predisposed toward Dr. Kid, and agrees with prognosis to get a biopsy. Okay, thinks I, the dye is cast. I schedule one with Dr. kid: he’s my guy – I’m going with him. He looks at you when he’s talking to you and listening to you.

Now the worry barometer kicks into high gear. There’s the fear of the biopsy – the fear of the pain. Always an attention graber. Then there’s the fear of the outcome, the great, existential door-prize, which I’m becoming convinced is my immediate fate, along with Dennis Hopper, not someone I’d buddy up with going across the great divide, but one doesn’t get to choose in such matters. Now, as they say, the mind is focused, and oh how I’d like some mind-bendingly boring ordinariness,

When you can set aside the palpable fear of the biopsy procedure for maybe a few minutes with the news on TV, the pageantry of national and global misery, or get caught up with the blessed relief of kitchen remodel work, there’s still the underlying dialogue in your mind about your death, you’re no-moreness. It seems almost unbelievable. You’ve always been you, ever since you can remember. How can that just disappear? Cease to be? Stupid thoughts, but up they come anyway.

And then how do you handle the whole thing? How do you play it out? I’ve got to be brave about this, I tell myself. I have to handle this with dignity, courage and mature resolution. But I’m scared shitless, I confess to myself. Get over it, you pussy, I slap myself straight. And then there’s the wheelbarrows of self-pity. It’s not fair, everybody is living much longer than 69, 70. My dad made it to 86, as if it’s a scorecard, and goddamn it, it is.

Around and around, sleepless nights, visiting every room of the internal lunatic asylum like Dr. Demento on rounds. All the usual distractions come and go, but under cover or lurking behind the next corner is the worry-demon, ready to pounce. And numero-uno on the top 10-worry list is the biopsy. Just the word is enough to conjure nightmares.

So, comes Biop-day, and I, now known as the patient, ride off to Petaluma for a new experience, which in and of itself turns out not to be a big deal. In fact it’s a small deal, not painful, nor a barrel of laughs either, and lasts less than a half-hour.

Dr. Kid and I exchange pleasantries. I call him by his first name and invite him to do same. After all, I figure if he’s going to be mucking around my innards we should be on a first name basis. He’s very patient with his visibly nervous patient, and a snip here and a snip there, and one is back in the car and headed home.

Now comes numero-two-o on the worry barometer, far surpassing the easily handled biopsy number. Now comes all the possible results, from get your affairs in order to a litany of chemical and nuke treatments, and all the surgical stops between. My mind, a labyrinth of things to worry about that I’ve long wandered, hardly ever dares entertain positive outcomes. Maybe it’s just habit or simple superstition, but I’ve never been one to accentuate the positive.

I won’t get an answer until Friday so there’s ample time to endlessly review how the bad news is going to be broken, which kicks off scenario-like coming attractions of how I’m going to deal with it. Brave, courageous and bold, or sniveling, complaining, pitiable whelp? Or both for that matter. There’s no dearth of possible melodramas to consider that all end with the demise of my favorite character in the play. Call me narcissistic, but I’ve grown used to me over the years, and I like my life and I’m not ready to exit the stage.

Okay then, Friday rolls around and it’s meeting time with Dr. Kid for results. Short wait in office in local hospital, escorted into a private room, and before I have time to read the same line in some newspaper story more than a few times in comes young Doc. And he’s smiling. A good sign, my inner genius notes. “Good news,” says he, or something to that effect, “there’s no cancer.” He goes on to give me some other happy medical data, but I’m not really hearing the details. I heard what I wanted to hear and the rest are throwaway lines. I note young Doc looks sincerely happy and I like him all the more.

“Do you mind if I let out a war-whoop?” I ask him. He smiles uncertainly, but nods agreement. I let one go; hospital or no hospital. I’ve been doing a from the gut, from the soul, really loud whoop when overcome with exceedingly great moments of joy in life for years now. There are times, not many, when it’s the only thing one can say.

No moral to this tale, nor wisdom gained or newfound understanding of the curious state of being alive, in a body, inexorably decaying and a consciousness that keeps you aware of all the disparate things that are happening to something you call yourself. And you go about living it out day by day, hour by hour, worrying, rejoicing, getting angry, sad and disappointed, as well as laughing and crying. And all in all very thankful that you get a chance to keep doing it for a while longer.

Ordinary Days, Occasional Disasters

2010-05-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

Sunday afternoon. Read the paper – the PD – takes about 20 minutes. Didn’t finish a NY Times Sunday paper until Wednesday. It’s raining on and off. This is not supposed to happen here in May. World’s out of balance. Nature’s not happy.

Quite a week. Oil rig explosion turning out to be an environmental catastrophe of monstrous proportions. Guy tries to blow up Times Square and all who happened to be within radius of his bomb, had it gone off. I wonder if this guy will ever think about the totally innocent people he might have murdered, and how those deaths would have devastated their families and friends, other innocent people, now that he’s got the rest of his life to do nothing but think about things? Just ordinary people – vendors, out-of-town families, cops and others, moving through Times Square – who’ve got nothing to do with this guy’s hate, this guy’s sick, demented soul. All on what would have been another ordinary day. And then to boot it was all capped off by a stomach-churning roller coaster drop in the stock market reminiscent of 2008. Oh, God, here we go again!

But it’s Sunday, and it’s raining, and the dog needs walking. An ordinary day in a sea of ordinary days, except on those days when something goes haywire. The whole deal is very unpredictable, but we’re lulled into thinking it’s not by the ordinary, damned blessed ordinary, days.

The oil rig explosion, killing eleven workers, and massive spill taking out lord-knows how much wildlife, and poisoning the LA wetlands and shoreline for an indeterminate time is the big dose of reality we Americans need to face. If we want oil we are going to have to accept that there will be occurrences like this. I don’t say accident, I say ‘occurrence’ because what happened might have been preventable.

The flying fingers of blame point to a government agency, the Mineral Management Service (MMS), a Secretary of the Interior extremely thirsty for off-shore drilling, a President who touted for it with an assurance that all was safe in the hands of greater technology, not to leave out the corporation, British Petroleum, itself.
Were safety precautions, known and used by other drilling operations, disregarded because of costs? According to a Wall Street Journal article of April 28, “The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn't needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.” The article goes on to point out that regulators in two major oil-producing countries, Norway and Brazil, require them. According to environmental lawyer Mike Papantino, former vice-president Dick Cheney’s energy task force decided that the $500,000 switches were too expensive and BP wasn’t required to buy them. BP claims they’re not necessary because there are other back-up systems to prevent spills of this nature. How’s that workin’ for ya BP and MMS, as Palin would say?

Speaking of BP, Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen states that it has, “One of the worst safety records of any oil company operating in America. In just the last few years, BP has paid $485 million in fines and settlements to the US government for environmental crimes, willful neglect of worker safety rules, and penalties for manipulating energy markets.”

And speaking about other corporations involved in this disaster how about good ol’ Halliburton, the company responsible for the faulty cementing leading to the explosion? Even the maligned and notoriously lax U.S. Mineral Management Service reveals that cementing is “the single most important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period.” And as for former Colorado Senator Ken Salazar, now Secretary of the Interior, he has lobbied strenuously for increased offshore drilling and easing environmental regulations. It was MMS, a bureau of Salazar’s Department of Interior that issued BP and other oil companies categorical exclusions from Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) that might have pointed to the dangers of the deep-sea drilling operation. Mr. Salazar, as well as Mr. Obama have a lot to answer for.

However the responsibilities play out, of one thing we can be certain, other occurrences like this one will happen again. It will happen again because we are all addicted to oil. All of us, or at least 99.9 percent of us. That’s the plain truth. We burn it, use it to make all kinds of stuff we’ve come to depend on, and it’s how we live. Maybe some of us are more profligate, but we all share in our dependency on it. At least for the foreseeable future.

So we have to accept that rigs are going to blow somewhere on the planet that harbors rigs, and workers will die, and the unfortunate environment that’s in the way, animals and plants, other innocent victims, will pay a terrible price. That is the reality, and it applies to nuclear reactors as well, which when they blow will be a fatal error for millions of humans. It’s the cost of these kinds of energy.

The same reality applies to terrorist attacks – they will be tried. Safety is not assured. There is no way to guarantee security. It’s a fact of life. Measures can be taken to reduce the risks, but there’s nothing foolproof. And living in constant fear is no alternative. Being alive is a risky business.

And then the ordinary days lull you back to sleep, until another crazy thing comes along to wake you up. And how about that crazy stock market?

But it’s a Sunday afternoon, the rain is letting up, the dog is getting noudgy and it’s time to pick up a grilled chicken from the Mexican market. Thank the fates it’s an ordinary day.

Thanks to gregpalast.com and allenroland.com for additional information for this article.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

2010-04-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve had so many jobs since I was eighteen I can barely remember a fraction of them in the ensuing fifty years. It’s usually the worst one that spring to mind, some lasting not even a full day, some far longer than ever expected or desired. Jobs I had in college were so great in number and brief in endurance it seems as if every week I was doing some mindless, boring task until getting the boot or quitting, and they all just shmush together in an amorphous glob stuck in some corner of my memory bank.

But one I had during the interminable college years was all too brief. I answered an ad to test a nasal decongestant for about a week, the only two qualifications being having a cold, and having the ability to breathe. I was eminently qualified for the second part, having been able to breathe successfully for the prior twenty years, and I faked the cold, which is easy when you have allergies. Imagine, getting paid for breathing! Where are you going to get a job like that … outside of politics?

Then on the flip side there were jobs I quit the same day I began. One such h beauty was at a ski slope exchanging ski boots for patron’s shoes. Started out easy enough. You gave the size ski boot requested, took the person’s shoes, tagged said shoes, put them on a shelf and gave said person the corresponding tag number. Piece of cake – at first. Then people started coming in thicker and faster, all in a big hurry to get out to the slopes. Pretty soon I was furiously searching for the right boot size, tagging the shoes and stashing them on the shelves as the lines got longer and the demand for rapid service increased. By the end of my morning shift I was grabbing, tagging and stashing so fast I never checked to make sure I was giving the corresponding tags to the right people. I was moving so rapidly to keep up with demand I’d hand out tags to any hands stuck out in front of me. Figuring I’d made dozens of mistakes in these first few hours I concluded the prudent thing to do was to quit, well, actually to quietly slink away before end of day when the skiers returned to claim their footwear. For all I know those people are still looking for their shoes and that was 30 years ago.

Then there was the job in college working as a file clerk for the ILGWU (International Ladies Garment Workers Union). I’d be handed a large stack of file folders, put them on a metal roller cart and wheel them into a cavernous room with row after row of floor to ceiling numbered metal shelves containing a gazillion files. The top row of course were well out of reach and only gotten to by using a rolling stair contraption like the ones in libraries.

That was the job. Find the right place for the file in the right row on the right shelf and repeat. And repeat, and repeat, until the boredom was palpably nauseating. I did last the whole day though, which I considered some kind of an endurance record, and at least some of the files made it to their rightful place.

Which brings me to the subject of jobs and work at a time in our fair land when the shortage of which is no laughing matter. Awful jobs abound, but having no work is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. We all know we can’t survive economically without a job, at least with some modicum of comfort. There is, thanks to those who fought for it, a safety net when there is no income and not the wherewithal to meet bills and expenses, but such a bare subsistence level is nothing one wants to have to face. And yet far too many of our fellow countrymen/women are in this camp. I suppose it’s an accomplishment that we do not let people go without food or shelter in our country – there are agencies and facilities that provide for those in need – though when one drops to that bottom level of threadbare existence the prospects must be grim, bordering on hopeless.

But work is so much more than a job or wages. It’s so much a part of our identity, who we are, our sense of self-worth or even our reason for being. For so many of us, work gives us meaning – no matter what the task. It can be our source of pride, of fulfillment; the deep sense of usefulness. Even if and when one no longer needs to earn a living and can retire to a life of pure self-indulgence, it seems all too often that without the need to work, at something, one withers and dies. It could be said that the human need to work, to engage with life at some level, even if it’s cerebral and intellectual is as hard-wired into our DNA as the other imperatives.

Goofing off is great, and here I speak with some authority. Vacations are splendid, and simply doing nothing, woolgathering or stargazing can be sublime, but not for long. Sooner or later the urge to be doing something, to be working at something, arises, and one gets back on the wheel and picks up a hammer or a broom or a pen and sets about some task. It’s an integral part of being a human.

Which is why we invest so much of our lives in working, doing jobs, even when we’re not paid for it. It drives volunteerism – the need to be useful to some one or for some thing. Somewhere along the line of my life I learned a most important lesson, and that was it’s not the job that matters, no matter how odious that work might seem, but the attitude toward that work and the decision to do it to the best of one’s ability that matters. Herein lies self-respect.

For these and myriad reasons it’s now so important that jobs be generated and people put back to work. This is the government’s primary tack at this time; to get Americans working again, not just for the sake of the economy – that amorphous concept we all talk about and barely understand – but for our people to feel whole again.

Millions of us, individuals and families, whole communities were mugged, rolled, robbed and left for dead by a bunch of venal crooks in Armani suits and Gucci loafers. Well-dressed con men, but fraudulent cheats nonetheless; many of them the same high-paid hucksters Bush gave tax breaks. One or two, a Madoff or a Ken Lay go to jail, but the vast majority gets even bigger bonuses, and continues to scheme new ways to fleece us sheep. Why aren’t our jails overflowing with these low-life miscreants?

It’s no wonder people get apoplectic, don ridiculous costumes and rail against government, even when the administration in power wasn’t the one to blame. And it’s no laughing matter when the unhinged and the violence-prone among them are further incited by hate-mongers and the political stooges who fan these flames. It’s a dangerous time in our country when the deranged and the closet racists are easily manipulated and their furor turns to violence.

If President Obama, a well-meaning and temperate fellow in my estimation, wants to restore our country to some semblance of normalcy, he’ll follow in the footsteps of FDR when he took the wheel and got the masses of unemployed working and productive again. And then, if he’s half the man FDR was, he’ll come down really hard on Wall Street and the big corporations that have been screwing the public with reckless abandon since the restrictions and regulations were s__t-canned by Reagan in the 80s and Clinton in the 90s. But that’s for another little fireside chat.

End of an Era

2010-03-03T09:38:00.000-08:00

It began with an assassination and it ended with an assassination. John F. Kennedy was murdered in 1963, and John Lennon was murdered in 1980. The time encompassed what is commonly referred to as “The Sixties,” which, I posit, started in the 1950s and ended at the dawn of the 1980s. Here’s the reasoning: The spirit of the 60s began with the Civil Rights Movement – boycotts in the South; the Freedom Riders; sit-ins; the murders of children in churches and the other infamous, brutal murders in retaliation to the movement for rights, – which started in earnest in the 50s. The 1970s saw the culmination of the Vietnam War, the rise of the anti-war movement, SDS and student unrest, Women’s Liberation, the mind-altering drug scene well entrenched, and the burst of creative energy and music pinnacles that all but died by 1980; the dawn of disco.

Nonetheless, it was an incredible short span of time that presaged and in fact cemented major changes in our culture and society. Some of these shifts in thinking and behavior transformed what had been the accepted ways and norms for centuries before, others reflected a realization that humanity, a certain portion of it at least, experiences heightened times of creative artistic expression during certain periods of time. From an historical perspective it seems to come in spurts, for reasons that can only be speculated. Perhaps such times of artistic creativity are intertwined with politico-socio and cultural changes, and perhaps each drives the other. This seemed to be the case with that time we call The Sixties.

Rock ‘n Roll shook things up in the mid-Fifties – simple melodies, heavy beat and vapid lyrics – and at the same time there was a renewed interest in folk music by contemporary artists who added new expressions to the old base of protest, and sometimes prayerful, music. What RnR lacked – meaningful lyrics; songs about something – the new folk music had in abundance. Rock and folk began to overlap and blend as the war in Vietnam took hold and young men faced the draft. A nation’s attention turned to its young men, and families with eligible sons and brothers, and more and more the music became about what was happening in the country and its impacts on the citizenry. The music became a commentary on the times, and a loud expression of questioning and discontent, dissent and rebellion. Music’s heroes caught the essence and the spirit of what younger people were feeling, and used music as a way to inform, stir and unite. There was a rebellion going on in parts of the country and in some of its citizenry, and the music became a focal point and a sound track to the events of the time: JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, LBJ’s terrible lie, Nixon’s madness, 1968 in Chicago, ’69 at Woodstock, and a renewed drive toward expanding civil rights for all excluded segments of society. The music and the times were inextricably intertwined.

Maybe what we incorrectly label The Sixties, covered a span of 25 years: 1955 to 1980. These were the times of fundamental transformation from how we believed, thought and behaved, and its repercussions are with us today, thirty years later. Sure there were events and stirrings in the country before the 1950s upon which later events would arise and were the results of. Ending segregation and bestowing full citizenship on women and minorities had antecedents in earlier times and struggled over decades to reach fruition, but the apex and turning point of these movements did not happen until the Sixties. The war ended ignominiously in the Seventies. Peoples’ thinking changed during these dynamic times, the effects of which are felt today, though we pay it less mind because what had been new ideas about culture have become commonplace. And that’s progress. And, yes, progress and regression often seem to be in constant conflict. That just seems to be the way people, societies, are. We progress incrementally; much to the frustration of those who want to move faster toward completing the goals that arose half a century ago.

An era bracketed by two deaths. One man represented a dream of a new kingdom, and new and vibrant Camelot on the hill that would replace the old way of doing things. Like all dreams it was largely fantasy, a concocted chimera to dazzle and eventually manipulate, and like such dreams … it sounded good to a people who wanted change. The other man’s premature death, the other John, signaled the end of the dream. He told us this plainly. The Dream is Over. No more Beatles or belief that things do not change. No more reliance on icons and false images, and identification with saviors or heroes for your hopes and expectations. Believe in yourselves, he told us at the end. That’s what he was going to do. He was going to find out who he actually was, what kind of person he was, once detached from habitual beliefs. I think he wanted us to know there was a better way and that we have to find it on our own. Or as Dylan said, “Don’t trust leaders, watch your parking meters.” It was, all in all, a hell of an era.

J.D. and Me

2010-02-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

I first met J.D. Salinger back in the 7th or 8th grade; can’t remember exactly. Not the author, of course, but his (perhaps) alter ego, Holden Caulfield, the catcher in the rye. It would have been around 1953,4. Ike was President. “I Like Ike,” said his campaign buttons, but my family, being good New York Democrats, liked Adlai; not much rhyme there.

The Korean War, which wasn’t a “war” despite the fact that lots of people fighting in it were dying, was either winding down or over, as I recall. It made the news sporadically, and it was only newspapers and radio in those days, TV not yet ubiquitous. The so-called Cold War was going on, and we learned about using the subways as air-raid shelters, and practiced ducking under our school desks in case the Russians had decided to drop a nuclear bomb on us – as we had on the Japanese. It was an uncertain time in the country and in my own life as well. And then Holden, his cap on backward, came along.

I went to a private school in NYC, my hometown, from the 2nd grade through the senior year in high school. The 2nd grade class I first entered was small. I don’t think there were more than 15 kids in it, probably fewer, and all boys. Private schools, usually called prep schools, were segregated by sex, economic class and racially as well, though there might be token minorities from wealthier families, or scions of well-off families from Latin American countries. But, like Holden’s prep school, these were (almost) all white, all same sex, middle and upper class bastions of privilege, and all were rigidly hierarchical. Acceptance of and obeisance to authority was the mind-set of the day, as was so in the past and would remain so for some years to come.

Coming into this school in the 2nd grade I was a newcomer. Most of the others had been there since kindergarten. It took awhile to make friends, not being an outgoing type, quite the opposite in fact, but I did fall in with a small clique of boys, three or four of them. We connected through sports, which I always loved and still do. We remained a tight coterie for five years, until the 7th grade. Then there was a falling out among this band, and they kicked me out of their midst. It seems so trivial now, almost 60 years later, but at the time it was quite devastating. I went from five or six close friends, kids I’d known since the 2nd grade, to no friends in a class of about 30 by then. Not a fun time. Then I met Holden and we became friends.

He said out loud what I’d only thought. He explained my inchoate thoughts and feelings to me: the resentment, the longing to stay a child though on the cusp of adulthood, or feelings of tenderness or longing that could never be allowed expression no less even harbored. He spotted the phonies, of which I’d been one, and he felt things that weren’t permitted in the world I knew, where authority wasn’t questioned and hypocrisy wasn’t made evident. No one said what he or she felt or what he or she really thought. We’d been programmed entirely differently. And Holden walked into my isolation and alienation and unexpressed longings, and in a sense saved me. It saved me from being alone, knowing that someone out there knew and understood an adolescent’s misery. A catcher in the rye.

J.D. Salinger died this year, 2010, an old man in his 90s, an enigma and self-imposed recluse. I read recently that early on, when he and his books first became renowned, he enjoyed his celebrity. That may be true, but it didn’t stay that way for long. For most of his life, Salinger eschewed celebrity, notoriety or accessibility. In fact he jealously guarded his privacy and remained outside and apart from any need for attention; certainly a rare bird in today’s world of desperate “Look at me!”

I’ve read his books, more than once, and as so many others waited for the next one that was never to come. Rumors abound that he continued to write even after he’d stopped publishing, that there are books and other manuscripts secreted somewhere where he lived in New Hampshire or some other place, and perhaps may get published some day. But that’s all just speculation as of now. Maybe in death J.D. will stay as mysterious and as inaccessible as he did in life. Maybe he just no longer needed acclaim, or felt the desire to express what he thought and felt. Perhaps his Buddhism had brought him to that place of detachment and unconcern with achievement or recognition or any of the morsels ego feeds on. Whatever his motives for reclusion, or need to be apart from the world’s goings on, will probably stay a mystery unless it’s revealed in some future publication of his writing; if in fact there is any.

So one is left to sit and wonder what becomes of Holden, or Franny, or Zooey and the whole Glass family. Which one was Salinger, or was he more likely all of them? Why did the teacher quit teaching? Was he fed up with us; with himself, what he saw all around him in the news of the world? It must have seeped through his fortress of solitude. Then a thought comes up – if he truly wanted anonymity why not live in another country? Why burrow in rural New Hampshire where, sooner or later, some will seek you out? Or was that part of the plot? Was he saying, “If you want me, truly want me, you’ll have to come and get me?” It seems that some did, and he was a man with a wife and family, so he was known to a privileged few. What he was like as an ordinary person is anybody’s guess, but I’ll always admire that he chose ordinariness and what must have been a plain existence in isolated countryside. Life comes down to routine and immediate relationships in such slow changing settings, and the distractions constantly dangled before us can be shut off, or at least limited,

I have a hunch he continued to write. Where his thoughts took him, what he wanted to observe, how he wanted to construct a story, what he thought he might say to us is, again, anybody’s guess. But I, for one, want to know.

This guy, in the guise of a disillusioned teenager, had entered my life, crossed my path, and made me see things differently. I was spoken to by someone I felt in league with, and who understood what a shitty place the world could be sometimes, and who would easily comprehend your pain. At the same time he sparked the rebellion and resistance you felt but kept at bay. He unlocked the resentment and anger that lay just under the surface, about being shoved forward, competing for some prize that must be had, or following some path that had to be taken. There was this driving pressure to become something, someone, when what you wanted was to slow down and find out who you were. Holden understood this. He understood me. It’s become a life-long pact this connection to the character and the author who fathered him. Enough of Holden rubbed off on me then to last a lifetime, and for that I’m grateful. But, oh, how I’d love to know what old J.D.’s been thinking about all these years.

A Different Take on Change

2010-02-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

It’s time for a major change and probably half of our population isn’t going to like it. Here’s the change: It’s time that women take over leadership in the U.S. No, wait a minute, make that the whole world. Why, you ask – I’ll tell you why.

Women are probably smarter than men or at least intellectual equals. Everyone who’s been in our school system, which is just about everyone in the U.S., knows this. Historically they were excluded from the academic world and were therefore at a disadvantage, but when given the chance to compete with men at basic and higher education they’ve proven equal or better at such learning skills.

Women are by and large emotionally more mature and less aggressive than men. Look around, with some minor exceptions it’s plain to see. Women don’t usually start wars, fight in armies, join gangs bent on violence, and try to physically impose their will, intimidate, or coerce others. Women like to talk about things; men like to hit each other. Men’s aggressive and violent nature has led humanity to constantly wage war, exploit and subjugate the weaker, and generally has caused mayhem and misery wherever their path has led. Can there be any denial of this?

Yes, yes, there are some exceptions in both sexes one can always bring up: women warriors, women tyrants, psychopathic and sociopathic women throughout history, as well as men who don’t behave as aforementioned, but in aggregate this percentage in any society is so small as to be statistically insignificant. Women tend not to destroy and tear asunder, but to build and maintain. Men like blowing the crap out of things.

Maybe all this is biological – genetic, chemical and/or psychological, but the fact remains women are superior when it comes to valuing life and men are superior when it comes to destroying life forms. Women tend to cooperate, men tend to compete. Which attribute do you think is more conducive to a (reasonably) sane and harmonious world? Which attribute is likely to lead to conservation and which to annihilation? What has the history of men as leaders and the dominant sex shown us? Men have become so proficient at aggression and destruction that they’ve created the very weapons that can, in one afternoon, reduce almost all life on the planet to ashes and ruin; forever lethally polluted with radioactivity. We know this to be a fact.

So in light of everything we know to be true about men and women, played out over millennia, it’s time for a radical change. All leadership positions – government, industry, education, health care – you name it, has to be turned over to women. And here’s the kicker; even the head of household roll. Ooh, that must hurt, guy readers.

But freak out not, guys, there’s plenty for us to do. Most of it involves upper body strength, but not everything. Let’s look at this logically. What are we best at? Yes, drinking beer or wine or whatever and getting loaded; getting all juiced up on sports; arguing; showing off; having pissing contests for arc and distance, and screwing or imagining screwing every female on the planet. Oh yeah, and barbeque. I think that about covers it; the important stuff anyway.

So that still leaves us with what to do. What should guys be doing all day? How about housework? Upper body strength is very handy for this. Farm work? Yes, by all means, perfectly suited. There’s construction and environmental reclamation. There’s public safety work – police, fire, crossing guards, etc., – and men can still be doctors, lawyers, CPAs, teachers and the like; they just can’t run any hospitals or firms or organizations. That’s the lady’s; excuse me, the women’s domain.

Sports are still totally open to guys, but they can’t own any teams. The women owners and CEOs will make the trades for players, and in the long run it’ll probably be a more even playing field vis-à-vis team strength. Guys can still own small businesses and do their club things – Moose, Rotary, Lions, etc. – play softball, touch football or basketball on weekends and pretend they’re pros, and coach and talk about sports endlessly, as always.

There’s other stuff guys can do and are equipped for, but I’m afraid shopping is not one; for that we need robots, but when it comes to leading the country or making big decisions that affect populaces, uh unh. One small exception would be installing Sarah Palin in any leadership position; we’re talking qualified women here with reasonable intelligence. Guys, we’ve had our turn for tens of thousands of years, and we all know that slightly below the surface, or blatantly outright we’re still barbarians.

So suck it up, guys, it’s time the women took over. They can’t possibly do any worse than we have and odds are they’ll do a lot better and we’ll all be happier. If they screw it up in the coming millennia we’ll talk about a change then.

The Business of America

2010-01-28T11:37:00.000-08:00

At long last the Supreme Court has made a decision that real Americans can get solidly behind and ended second-class citizenship for long-oppressed corporations. Restricted for decades, their freedom of speech curtailed and stifled, corporations could only spend limited amounts on election campaigns; a disgraceful defiling of their First Amendment rights. Not since their greatest hour – preventing Al Gore from becoming president – has the court triumphed in the cause of free-market democracy. Finally corporations, their tiny voices choked by the campaign finance reform fanatics, can be heard throughout the land. Their long-overdue full personhood has been established, and they are now free to speak their minds, and support with their heard-earned fortunes the righteous and deserving. Bite on that liberal Democratic (redundant?) surrender-monkeys.

Only trouble is they didn’t go far enough. Everyone knows corporations are persons and deserving of individual rights – so why can’t they vote, or run for office, or get married if they want? Why are corporations left out in the cold, their little noses pressed up against the glass window and excluded from the warm inner sanctum of full citizenship? This was a glaring oversight in jurisprudence, but it’s only a matter of time. Rejoice fellow real Americans and imagine the incredible mess we’d be in now if Gore had become president. One shudders to think. We’d all be forced to marry trees and put clothing on animals.

A wise person once said, “The business of America is business,” and boy is that ever right! America IS a business, and who better to run America Inc. than a corporate CEO? Do you want some non-profit, social worker do-gooder running the show? Somehow those types, the entitlement-crazed, civil liberties-demanding, labor-worshipping, human rights babblers have hi-jacked government and turned it into a peacenik day care center. But those days are over thanks to our Supremes.

And don’t fall for those Democratic alarmist scare tactics about foreign governments stoking corporations to buy elections and their candidates of choice. What possible motive could China, Saudi Arabia or N. Korea have in manipulating American politics? And don’t be swayed by accusations of “activist judges” and right wing hypocrisy; everyone knows” activist judge” only apples to liberals. And don’t forget, we are America Inc., and we are always looking out for and listening to you. Rest easy, corporate America has your back; and all your other parts as well.

Will Shonbrun is a Sonoma writer and trouble-maker. His work can be seen at: http://shonbrunreport.blogspot.com. His seminal treatises, “Will Shonbrun is Not a Lunatic” and “You Wouldn’t Fart in the Presence of God” are out of print, but if you email him at: willshonbrun@vom.com he’ll send you something.

In Defense of Dueling

2010-01-14T13:16:00.000-08:00

It’s time to bring back dueling. Yes, dueling, that ancient, time-honored way of settling disputes. It worked for our ancestors and even our revered founding fathers, save a fussy few, saw no problem with it. The trouble was women and others not considered full and equal citizens didn’t get to participate – another glaring weakness in our Constitutional system.

Now I know that some of the more weak-stomached, overly empathic, prissy rule-of-law types – read, Democrats, so-called progressives, organic tofu-munching, hybrid-driving, godless humanitarians et al. – might deem this a somewhat radical proposal. But consider: Dueling is totally bipartisan, non-discriminatory (with a little tweaking) as to gender, race, age, ethnicity or economic class, and American as apple pie and political corruption. Republicans, conservatives and libertarians should embrace it as it’s both very old school and keeps government’s nose out of our private affairs.

Democrats should welcome it as well as it would put an end to the tedious and bullying Senate filibuster. Furthermore it would hasten the settling of domestic disputes – women have a shooting gene as well; remember Annie Oakley? And it’s a handy way of dealing with one’s critics and other annoying malcontents.

In defense of dueling let us reflect on the service it lent our nation when the unfairly maligned Aaron Burr plugged ol’ Alex Hamilton before he could pen another of those nit-picking, elitist intellectual, legally dense Federalist Papers, which no one except Republican-appointed Supreme Court nominees has ever read. Think of the degree of honesty dueling would bring to all business transactions – used car deals, credit card disputes, stock brokers and insurance sellers, real estate peddlers and a wide range of corporate CEOs. It surely would make someone think twice before trying to sell some poor sucker a phony bill of goods; politicians and bankers take note.

And it’s economical: only financial outlay is for a gun, and any school kid knows how cheap and readily available these are, and some bullets, which you can pick up at Wal-Mart’s. I like the old one-shot deals that came as pairs in hand-tooled wooden boxes myself, but I’m a sentimentalist. Think how much time and money it would save in courts, trials and lawyers. Almost eliminates any need for tort reform.

So for pennies on the dollar and a way to shrink government and make it work more smoothly – nothing focuses a politician on the need for alacrity and cooperation like the threat of being drilled by a colleague or constituent – dueling is the logical choice.

Let’s not get turned aside by a few queasy feelings, let’s suck it up like the real Americans we used to be, and get behind the God-given right to kill for our beliefs, or grievances, or whatever. Just go to: bringbackdueling.com to lend your support, and donate to this worth cause.

Health Care Reform: The Ideal vs. the Real

2009-12-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the Act
Falls the Shadow
--T.S. Elliot

A hot topic of debate among progressives regarding health care reform is whether the current Senate bill is worth keeping or should be jettisoned and the whole process started over. What a final Senate bill will look like is anybody’s guess, but it seems pretty certain as of this writing that a public option or an earlier Medicare buy-in at age 55 will not be in it. For some on the left this is a deal killer as has been trumpeted by Howard Dean, Keith Olbermann, insurance CEO whistleblower Wendell Potter, popular blogger Markos and other notables with bully bullhorns. Scrap the damn thing and start all over they say. I disagree, though I surely share their outrage and condemnation of Republican obstructionists, insurance company Senate vassals who eviscerated the House bill and the two Democratic Senate weasels who’ve held the bill’s passage hostage, Nelson and Lieberman. I’ll explain my position momentarily.

A cursory review

Obama ran on a health care reform platform that he insisted had to accomplish three fundamental provisions: insuring most or all of the 45 million now uninsured; reducing the ever-increasing runaway costs of health care; and doing away with private insurance companies being able to refuse coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and arbitrary policy cancellations when people get sick. Much to the dismay of progressives he did not advocate a single payer system or a universal health care system as such provided by all the other industrial and advanced nations of the world. But in order to get progressive backing in the House a plan for single payer was concocted, clumsily titled a public option that would compete with private insurance companies and ostensibly lower premium costs. And now that that third pillar of the Obama reform construct has been dismantled what is there to control rising costs? The answer is, nothing. Obama says insurance must be mandatory so a big chunk of the projected $900 billion cost of the reforms bill will be government subsidies to those unable to pay for the cost of private insurance. What a holy mess!

A primer for botching a bill

The attempt to reform the health care system, so desperately needed in this country now for decades, has been so botched, mishandled and ineptly contrived by the Democrats, and yes, by the President, it’s a wonder the thing is still breathing. It was obvious at the outset that Republicans were going to fight it every step of the way no matter how it was designed, what it contained or didn’t, so any thoughts of bipartisan cooperation were a fantasy. Charging Congress to write the thing was stupefying in extremis. Then relinquishing the progressive drive for a popularly supported single payer system before the bargaining and negotiating even began was a bone-headed decision of astounding proportion, even if it had amounted to no more than a chip in the bartering. Can these Obama chosen political operatives really be the sharpest blades in the pack? Any school kid knows you don’t back off before the fight’s even begun. Head-smacking astounding!

And why were deadlines set to get this or that done according to some schedule? That timetable got shot down in the fall. Health care reform has been discussed and debated for 60 years. Why all of a sudden does some plan have to be signed and sealed by the New Year? Where is that written? Why not make Congress wrestle with it until it’s to the President’s satisfaction? Why put arbitrary time frames on oneself? And if the writing was on the wall that he couldn’t get the 60 votes without giving away the store then screw that and use reconciliation as a club or at least the threat of it. Is the Democratic leadership that stupid or weak-kneed not to know how to or have the guts to play the game?

The deal goes down

In answer to that I have a hunch and it goes like this. Shortly after Obama rode into town on his reforming-health-care horse he met with the insurance honchos. This actually happened, remember? Sort of like Cheney’s secret pow-wow with the energy barons except the Dickster was in league with them, working for and with them in screwing America petro-style. But Obama was playing the good sheriff – gonna clean up the town and show them insurance varmints what fer.

So Marshall Barack meets with the bad guys, let’s them know he’s serious about reforming some of their most egregious shenanigans – denying care and dropping coverage – and the townsfolk, AKA the American public are with him. Even the insurance mafia knows most everyone hates their guts. Obama lets them know that he knows that in their unbridled drive for greater profits and fatter CEO rewards they’re breaking the bank, sending millions into bankruptcy, and effectively condemning 40-50 thousand Americans who can’t afford insurance to death every year. And one way or another he’s going to put a stop to it.

Obama know that what these miscreants fear most is competition; not for profit, government operated competition. He doesn’t even have to say single payer or a Medicare-like system; it’s understood. So they cut a deal and it goes like this: Insurance dudes clean up their act – cover everyone, keep it portable, make it somewhat affordable and discontinue its drop-dead policy – and in return, Obama won’t shove a real competitive system down their greedy gullets. Remember, Obama never drew a line in the sand over the public option. He just paid it a little rhetorical lip service, something he thought was a good idea or some such pablum, but not a mandate.

In addition, Obama promised insurance greed-heads gobs of new customers bankrolled by government bucks, so in the long run they stood to gain by playing ball with him. And in return they wouldn’t put up too much of a fight, i.e., bury him with TV commercials as they did the Clintons.

So they agreed because the reform writing was on the wall anyway as they’d fucked over the American public for so long revolt was in the air. And so the deal went down.

Of course the insurance geeks knew they had enough bought and paid for shills in Congress, most importantly their spineless sock-puppets in the Senate, to carry water for them when it came to squawking opposition in the public forum, so they wouldn’t even have to dirty their hands or reach far into their pockets to put up a fight. They had their elected lackeys and the more moronic fringe in the public to do that. And besides and most important of all to remember is even if a reform bill got passed it would have no real competition agency in it.

The real and the ideal

So back to what I said at the outset of this diatribe: that I disagree with Dean, Olbermann et al., who say drop the current bill and start over. I take this position for two reasons: Starting all over again won’t lead to any new outcome because the deal went down a long time ago, and the bill, whatever its final iteration won’t have what progressives and most of us want – real competition. The second reason is this: The Senate bill will extend coverage to more than 30 million now hanging in health care limbo, of which 45,000 die every year. That’s a lot of grief and suffering for too many of our fellow countrymen/women. In addition the bill will have addressed the most abusive practices of the insurance industry, and as pointed out in a recent article by Ruth Marcus for Truthdig.org, it will prevent insurers from refusing to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions, or to charge them more because of poorer health, or cancel their policies once they get sick. “People who lose their jobs, or their insurance, would have a place to turn for coverage through the new insurance exchanges. For the first time, childless adults living in poverty would be guaranteed health care through Medicaid.”

So that’s the deal. Is it a win-win? Hardly, but it’s not a total loss either. Obama is a realist – read his Nobel acceptance speech for proof positive. American politics is the real world; it may stink, but that’s the way it is. If you don’t like it then work to change the system. And that doesn’t mean voting in more Democrats or Republicans at election time. They ARE the system and they’re not about to change it. It means working to change a system run by and for large corporate interests and the military complex that feeds off war and American imperial motivation. It means changing a system where health care is not considered a human right and is managed by companies for profit. It means changing an election system that’s not based on financing from special interests. It means a whole host of things as we claw our way toward a more intelligent evolution.

But for now, see the reality of things as they are, and hope that a health care reform bill gets passed that will at the least right some of the present wrongs.

Editors note: Yesterday, Saturday December 19, Senate majority leader Harry Reid announced he had the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate health care bill, and that the final vote would take place in the coming week. If the Senate bill gets passed it will move back to the House for further negotiations.

An Open Letter to Barack Obama

2009-10-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President,

These are hard times for many maybe even most of our fellow countrymen/women. I know that you’re aware of it and I believe that you care about them, but we all need reminders, especially when we’re inundated with other serious, vital concerns.

Any reasonable person knows that you, and by extension the rest of us, inherited a helluva mess comparable in scope and difficulty only to a few other times in our nation’s history: our bloody birth as a country, our Civil War and the fight of our lives, WWII. The presidents who presided at those times also faced unprecedented perils, entrenched political obstacles, and challenges so great they came to define us as the country we are today; good and bad.

You inherited, by choice of course, a deluge of Herculean problems no person, well almost no one, would want to take on: two on-going wars and a Middle East in turmoil; two very dangerous nuclear hot-spots that must be addressed; an economy so destroyed and disabled it harkened to the Great Depression of the 30s; a global climate change crisis that will affect millions, probably billions of lives, and perhaps the life of the planet itself to sustain many of its species, and those are just a few of the top choices from column A. As said it’s a mystery as to why anyone would walk willingly into this fire, but for better or worse you were of the small number that volunteered.

This letter is not to serve as a report card or to praise or condemn how you’ve handled things. I have my opinions on those matters, but it’s not the thrust of what I want to say here.

What I want to bring your attention back to is that your, our, country is hurting. Think a Katrina-like situation that has struck practically every state in the union. This country is drowning in a sea of unemployment, lost homes, healthcare cost bankruptcies, credit interest bankruptcies and legal usury that has so stunned the once burgeoning middle class as to threaten its very existence. What was once the pride of our economic machine is and has been dwindling since the supply-side, free market, deregulation banner waving gurus came on the scene. And because of the Wall Street and banking industry notorious misdeeds the threat to our middle class economic stability is exacerbated and could prove fatal.

This country is hurting, Mr. President, and it’s fearful, angry and confused. Yes it was of paramount importance to immediately address the deadly virus that threatened our and a good part of the world’s economies. It was questionable as to how to go about it, but decisions by your predecessor and you were made, and it seems at least for now that the fiscal patient is out of the ICU and in the recovery room, albeit on life support.

But it’s not enough to stabilize the banks and certain giant investment corporations, because as a result of their failures and immoral activities tens of millions of people are suffering or face imminent economic demise. People are fearful and angry and rightly so. This dire situation has to be addressed and it has to happen now.

Healthcare reform is very important and healthcare must be made affordable for everyone, but even passing a strong bill with a Medicare-like option is not going to put people back to work, and it’s not going to stop home foreclosures. Only jobs and programs that create huge numbers of jobs will alleviate the enormous suffering and get this country back on safe economic ground.

You were left to deal with two wars and you say that one of them is a necessity. Maybe yes, maybe no, but the reality is neither country, Iraq or Afghanistan or for that matter any country in the Middle East poses an imminent threat to this nation’s security. Every dollar spent fighting the war in Afghanistan or maintaining a large troop presence in Iraq is money not spent toward putting people to work. Every dollar spent pursuing so-called U.S. interests in the Middle East is money not going into education. Have you seen the conditions in our schools, Mr. President? Are you aware that district hospitals in rural areas are closing apace because of lack of funding? Are the hundreds of billions being spent on U.S. foreign interests more important than the educations of the nation’s children or the medical centers that serve tens of thousands throughout the country?

There are great, pressing problems before us Mr. President, but I maintain that, except for addressing the healthcare crisis, nothing is more important than turning our energies and resources toward getting vast numbers of people employed, and once that’s done government can start to address a minimum wage that reflects reality and whereby people will be able to afford healthcare, higher education for their kids and decent housing.

The wars can wait. As far as I’m concerned they’re a monstrous waste of money and lives, but that’s only as the writer sees it. But the people without jobs, the people who can’t afford healthcare or to help their kids advance through good schools and higher education, these people can’t wait. First things first, sir.

Turn the economy around by getting people back to work. You don’t offer a hungry person rhetoric or rationales for a better healthcare system – as important as that is it’s not food. Food first. Your nation needs jobs first and help not losing their homes. Put the resources, i.e., money, there. Feed those needs first, Mr. Obama, and the rest will fall into place.

Will Shonbrun, Sonoma, CA

An American Health Care Plan

2009-09-19T09:21:00.000-07:00

We live in a community that cares for others as do so many across our nation. This is as it should be because we recognize that all people are deserving of compassion. At the same time we realize that when we live in communities, large or small, we have a shared responsibility to provide services to all – fire and police protection, public education, hospital ERs, public infrastructure and the like – as we all share in these collective benefits. Caring about one another is more than just simple common sense; it’s what binds us together and makes our communities stronger and safer. Without these social contracts we cannot assure the human dignity that is the right of all people.

We all know that insurance company bureaucracies ration health care, refuse health care and deny legitimate claims. Patient/doctor relationships are governed by insurance companies for profit and not care, and excessive costs are passed onto citizens in order to maximize corporate profits. Everyone knows that’s how it works. Private insurance companies have driven millions of Americans, an estimated 700,000 a year, into bankruptcy in order to pay for health care. This is the only advanced nation in the world where such a cruel and heartless system exists.

Health care systems throughout the world, not all wealthier, industrialized countries either, have recognized health care (e.g. preventing disease, promoting public health, relieving pain and suffering) as a basic human right assuring human dignity. It is no different than the right to vote, the right for justice in a court of law, and the rights afforded all citizens for the civil liberties we have declared. We are a society comprised of communities that have realized we share a common bond and interconnection with one another to safeguard and provide for the welfare of all because each of us is worthy of care. We need, we deserve and we must have an American health care plan that will provide basic services for all our people.

Random Notes on This & That

2009-09-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

Letter to Lynn Woolsey

Dear Congresswoman Woolsey,

I’m writing to you about the two recent public meetings, one in the Sonoma Plaza and the “rowdy” one (as the PD described it) in Petaluma. I attended the former, missed the latter.

As you know the first one went fine, you and the other speakers got your points made, Sonoma was exceedingly polite – probably the union and march/rally leaders’ presence didn’t hurt, and that was that. You vowed to hold the line for a “robust” public option – Medicare-like, and using that existing system to save years of time and money, etc. – and everyone heard that. However I’m a realist and a pessimist so I don’t think that’s going to hold true. I think there will be many more compromises about the public option and other aspects of health-care reform down the line, and as we know, the Republicans don’t compromise much. They’re ballsier that way. I hope I’ll be proved wrong.

The main point of this letter regards the Petaluma meeting where by all accounts things did not go swimmingly. We’re all familiar now with how organized, purposefully intimidating and uncaringly insulting these meetings have become, and you got a personal taste of that. It was bold and gutsy of you to take that on whatever the outcome, but more important is that there’s a lesson here for the Democratic Party and us in the liberal/progressive camp.

As I see it the lesson is this: These kinds of town hall meetings have to be conducted under the same rules governing representatives and members of the public meetings, i.e., city councils, board of supervisors or state committee hearings, now and in the future, regardless of the issue at hand. There’s a conduct of behavior that has to be followed; if not there’s chaos, anarchy – the biggest, loudest voice will win. If people are continually obstreperous or even personally insulting they are escorted and kept out of the proceedings. They’ve lost their right to speak because they’re preventing others from that right, or their behavior is beyond the pale and they have to leave. Period. I’ve been to countless local government meetings and that’s the way business is conducted. Why are these same time-honored methods of decorum not being followed in every town hall meeting in every state? The behavior, the actions of people at these meetings, whether orchestrated by the right or not, would not be tolerated by any city council or board of supervisors anywhere.

So my conclusion, and that of friends who were at the Petaluma meeting, is that the Democratic Party had better learn to deal with an organized right-wing mob that knows exactly what it is doing, and that has a self-righteous (I’d say deluded) rationale as to the why. I don’t think they’re going away. I think in this issue, health-care, and every one succeeding they’re going to be a presence. And you know as well as I that the media love this stuff. You’re not going to come out of it looking good.

Unless you get tough. The Democratic Party has to stand for something. You know this, you’re one of the stalwarts. But somehow you’ve got to let the Party know. They have to have clear goals and convictions, and the cahones to fight for them. I think that’s the lesson to be learned here. How you’re going to get that across to your compatriots in Congress I don’t know. But if not you, then who?

In closing a brief note. Three good friends of mine attended the Petaluma meeting. One is a long-time union organizer, one a cynical environmental activist and the other, a newer acquaintance who tells me she’s been to many political rallies. All three people reported that the hatred, venom and vicious insensibility they heard in the room that night was shocking, startling. Now these are not naïve or politically inexperienced people. If their report is accurate, and I believe it is, then progressives, the Democratic Party, and anyone who favors logic and reason and knowledge of the issues over blind, hate-filled emotions is in for a hell of a time.

It’s time we learned how to deal with this.

Respectfully,

Will Shonbrun, Sonoma

Random Notes on This and That

2009-09-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

I know what I know,
I’ll sing what I said,
We come and we go,
It’s a thing that I keep
In the back of my head
--Paul Simon

The kind of man that lived his own life.

We first met John Ross, Suzanne and I, when we bought our house in Sonoma in 1985, and John was one of a small group of contractors that worked on the place with us. It was an older house, probably a summer bungalow when it was built around 1945, so there was a lot of remodeling, basically a make-over, and over time everyone who worked on it got to know each other fairly well. It was at this time we were introduced to John’s sense of humor: quick, erudite, far ranging and hilarious. There were always laughs when I was with John, no matter how serious the conversation got. And they got pretty serious, about serious matters, as we are (or were) both very political and very opinionated.

Suzanne’s favorite John Ross story is when we were all working on the house one time and my friend, Coop, another contractor asked if we, John, Suzanne and I were going to watch the “big game” that night. I can’t remember if it was a football or baseball game. And John said without skipping a beat, “No, I think I’ll just drop acid and listen to it on the radio.” That was my official introduction to the mind of John Ross.

So we’ve known John for 24,25 years now, my family and I. He was a friend when my daughter was born and adopted, and when she graduated high school and went to college. We’ve been friends since our country started wars and started killing people in the Middle East, and locally we fought battles to keep developers from sticking resorts on our immediate hillsides. We’ve gossiped about people we know and what they’re up to and traded some pretty juicy stories. John was a great storyteller and a treasure trove of classified information, all heavily redacted.

There’s no way to sum up a man’s life, especially a man as complex and in-depth as John: a master gardener and grower of exquisite tasting vegetables in the patch adjacent to his house; an accomplished musician and music collector; an extraordinarily well read person and book collector; electrician; builder and community minded man. And as another friend recently pointed out – a gentle soul.

I knew John in times of adversity – a break-up with a long-time girlfriend, the death of his dog, Tommy, his aborted trip to Romania and a violent encounter and illness there, and the dark night of American politics after 9/11. I felt privileged to share his grief over these things and I did my fair bit of unloading on him when I came apart at the seams.

The happiest times with John were when he, Ken Brown and I got together at his place, ate the always excellent dinner he’d prepare, drink the wines we brought, smoked the best grass we’d gotten a hold of and talked and laughed into the night. I don’t know how I drove down Ghericke Road those nights, bagged and toasted to the gills, but completely in control of things. I knew what I was doing and what I’m capable of or not. Ask Ken. We did this maybe 3 or 4 times a year for a bunch of years. I’ll miss those times until the day I die.

Even though I didn’t see or hang out with John all that often he was one of those handful of friends I could count on in a pinch, as I had to do once. Some years back I had an operation and afterward it didn’t go so well, and because Suzanne was out of town I needed to call on a few friends over a few nights to stay the night in case I started bleeding and needed to get to the ER. Turned out I didn’t, but John was one of the people I could count on. That meant more to me than I can ever say. I hope I told him that. I think I did.

It’s funny how we rarely get to really say good-bye to people when they’re alive; we wind up doing it after they’ve died. Death should have taught us that every time we’re with people we like, and especially people we love; we might hold the thought that we might never see that person. I thought I’d learned that lesson, but I haven’t. I usually end my conversations with, “See ya” and take that for granted. But it ain’t so. Every moment with someone who really means something to you one should hold the thought, somewhere, this might be the last time I’ll ‘see ya.’ It needn’t be said, and then maybe these last good-byes wouldn’t be necessary. It would have been conveyed in life.

So I’ll say good-bye to my friend John Ross, who honored me with his friendship. If there’s a life after this one, I’ll see ya pal.

You Gotta Wonder or WTF

2009-07-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

I’m no bloody genius, I’m not even particularly smart, but when I hear or read what some of these people in Congress say I can’t believe how stupid they are in comparison with most of the people I know. Take the so-called Republican leadership – Boehner, McConnell, Sessions, Kyle and Cantor – please. These are either some of the dumbest people in America, or they’ve become addled by their years in politics, or their motives for acting moronic and irrational serve some arcane, hidden purpose unbeknown to the rest of us.

Before the new President took over, these stalwarts went along with just about every utterance out of the Bush Administration. Bush and Cheney and the rest of that hapless crew were so wrong about so many things – I’ll leave out the litany – and yet the putative Republican leadership, almost all the Republicans in Congress and a good many Democrats went along with all of it, and ballyhooed it in the process. And now this same Republican crew can’t offer any viable solutions to the myriad problems they and Bush Co. created and are directly responsible for. Yeah, there are fewer Democrats in their sing-a-long chorus now because of a change in election fortune, but there are still plenty of them – the aptly named Blue Dogs – who stand with the current moronic minority. As Olbermann says, “WTF!”

Stephen Colbert has a running segment on his show called, “Get to know a Congressman/woman,” that easily proves the case that these people are no smarter than your average amoeba. They say things that are just so dumb, so uninformed, so jaw-dropping moronic that you’ve got to wonder how they got anyone besides their immediate family (probably using bribery) to vote for them. It’s world-class idiocy. How can anyone beyond a fifth-grade education give an ounce of credence to one word that comes out of their collective mouths? How did these people get to sit in the halls of Congress?

Now I know I’m supposed to back up all these allegations with examples of what I’m talking about, but that would take volumes and far too much time to compile. And yes, I’m not talking about all those in Congress, House and Senate, in which there are some fine and learned minds, and strong and independent spirits. But that doesn’t negate the fact that there are many, far too many, dolts in both houses that do not display the ordinary, basic intelligence needed in almost any line of work. In this august grouping I include 95% of Republicans, who are now 90% hard-rock, far-right leaning conservatives, and a whole slew of Democrats who don’t seem to have the basic brain package handed out at birth. If there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind about this behold the last eight years of Republican leadership and Democratic pathetic acquiescence.

It just leaves one going around muttering WTF almost all the time. For instance: Americans accrue far too much debt in proportion to what they earn or will probably even be able to pay back. They do this with the eager encouragement and ceaseless proselytizing of banks and other lenders because conning and usury are more popular and widespread than they’ve ever been. But still Americans fall for it big time, just like naïve adolescents and screw themselves royally. And what has our genius government done about it? We know the answer – virtually nothing. Pass a couple of weak-kneed bills that don’t even address the heart of the problem, spout a little high-sounding lip service about controlling the debtor industry, and move on to the next toothless, worthless solution.

Healthcare? A vast majority of Americans want some kind of a single-payer plan because that’s what every advanced industrial society on the planet has, and because the healthcare insurance industry has cheated and robbed and bankrupted tens of millions of us. The greedy, immoral pharmaceutical industry is right up there with the insurance mobsters, and everyone, all of us, know this to be true. What has or will our government done about this? The answer is as plain as graffiti on a wall – bold and ugly – nothing. What will be done about this after Congress gets through talking and picking the issue to death? Take a guess.

All the evidence shows, and has shown for years now, that insurance-run healthcare is bankrupting the nation. This is so plainly evident by any conceivable measurement as to defy credible argument. So what does Congress do to avert this fiscal and human-suffering disaster? It refuses to even consider, consider, a single-payer solution. Doctors, nurses, healthcare experts go to Congress to talk about what single-payer is and why it’s the best viable answer, in great detail, and they’re told to get lost. They’re not allowed a seat at the table or a voice in the debates. WTF!

The eminent genius of the Congressional Committee holding hearings about supposed healthcare reform is its Chair, Max Baucus of Montana. It was good ‘ol Maxie that stuck his fingers in his ears and made loud guttural noises so as not to hear anything these professional healthcare people had to say. “We need more police,” (to get these people out of here) was Max’s response to a proven system of healthcare effective in nineteen nations.

This is more than stupidity. This is more than being too dumb to see the floor beneath your feet. This is so blatantly foolish as to be suspect. And what do we find looking into where the healthcare insurance companies and their drug industry counterparts drop its seed money to gain a little clout? Why right in the campaign pockets of Senators Baucus, Dodd, Rockefeller, Harkin, Coburn, Kyle, Hatch, Gregg et al. But Baucus is the big winner in the insurance sweepstakes when it comes to greasing the skids.

Now I’m not saying that Max the Chair was unduly influenced by insurance company gifting – after all, can we impinge on some of the richest companies of the world’s rights to free speech – but you gotta wonder.

The examples of utter head-slapping, mind-twisting, breath-taking idiotic doings in Congress are legion. Senseless wars, elimination of civil rights and habeas corpus, legally trying to justify torture, tax cuts for the wealthiest during periods of crisis, economic near-bankruptcy due to canning regulations and lax oversight, “defense” spending that gobbles 1/3 to ½ of every tax dollar (depending on how it’s calculated), and on and on. Our national infrastructure is falling apart before our eyes, our public education system has been so starved of funding – purposely – that underpaid teachers have to buy classroom materials out of pocket, and every month hundreds of thousands of people are losing jobs.

And what is Congress doing? Finding more and more ways to screw you. At that they’re most proficient. Do we deserve the government we get, as it’s been often suggested? Maybe. We’re certainly at least partly at fault for putting up with a political/electoral system that’s controlled by money – vast sums of it. And who has the larder that feeds the piggies that run the farm? If you don’t know the answer to this you should not have the right to procreate.

If the fault is in the system of politics, and it is, and we (the people) don’t act to fundamentally change that system – public financing of elections; NO private or corporate funding; IRV (instant run-off voting); national and state candidate debates open to all who provably qualify; electronic voting machines that produce paper records and whose programming can be monitored, and equally and limited doled out time on the PUBLIC’S airwaves to candidates to pimp their platforms, then we are getting what we deserve. If we don’t take the vast sums of money out of the election equation – and please no crap about money equaling free speech – then nothing changes. We just continue to go around muttering and sputtering about how the system sucks, unable to figure out why we wound up with the lowest caliber of politicians from the gene pool, and wondering why things never really change. Is anything in this pathetic scenario likely to change? I got $500 here that says “no.” Any takers?

California legislature: tyranny of the minority

2009-06-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

By Will Shonbrun

The only way to fix California’s economic/fiscal mess is to change the structure of the legislature that requires a two-thirds vote in both houses to both pass a budget and to raise taxes. Whether this is feasible is an open question, but I don’t think there can be any doubt that this inequitable requirement is the stumbling block that has ground government to a halt. It has obstructed and deadlocked California government and in the view of some is grossly undemocratic.

While there are some other states that require more than a simple majority to raise taxes in certain circumstances, such as spending exceeding a cap or funding one-time projects, California’s legislative restriction puts it in the rarified company of only two other states, Rhode Island and Arkansas, in requiring more than a simple majority to pass budget or appropriation bills. This bizarre state of affairs has enabled a small minority of Republicans to hold the legislature, and by extension millions of Californians, hostage to their whims. This is the elephant in the room – hell, it’s the room itself, and it begs the question: Can anything be done about it?

Proposition 13 rode in on good intentions, in part, but established an uneven and virtually insurmountable hurdle for the legislature to govern an economy larger than most of the world’s nations. People can argue about what’s good or bad or maybe both about Prop. 13, but few can disagree that it fundamentally changed the shape of California government and its social structures. Depending on one’s point of view it has been the greatest thing since tax rebates or a disaster that has seriously under funded public education, critically impacted health care services and tied government in Gordian Knots. Some see it as a mixed bag that’s been of benefit for many, but has perhaps inadvertently harmed many others. However it’s viewed its greatest effect has been to render state government subject to the demands of a small minority – a blatantly undemocratic dictum that all but changes the meaning of democratic majority rule.

While it’s true that there are different types of majorities governing elections or how legislative choices are made, the question remains has the two-thirds rule in the California legislature served the many or the few? Because a minority-rule legislature and an uncooperative governor will not permit alternative revenue sources to even be considered, the only recourse to avoid bankruptcy is to drastically cut funding for public education, and health care services and a social safety net for those most in need. While this may fit a conservative philosophy that would just as soon see government devoid of all such programs is this the kind of state in which we want to live? The legislature commandeers tax monies from the counties and cities thereby effectively devastating their schools, health services and programs that serve local communities. Are these the kind of communities in which we want to live?

This is so short sighted as to be astoundingly irrational. A more educated populace, especially at the higher educational levels, will result in higher paying jobs in valued industries, and a more vigorous entrepreneurial impetus that creates more jobs and greater revenue for the state. Reducing or eliminating health care for tens of millions of Californians results in much higher medical costs for ER services at already fiscally overburdened hospitals.

The answer is not to cut the vitally needed social programs that make a state human. The answer is to create more revenue. Here is a (very) short list of revenue ideas compiled by the Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee, the Progressive Democrats Sonoma County et al.*

· Restore the vehicle license fee rates that we had under Republican Governors
· Increase taxes on alcoholic beverages
· Increase taxes on tobacco
· Increase taxes on gasoline
· Impose an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil producing state
· Close the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of new property they purchase
· Prohibit corporations from using tax credits to offset more than fifty percent of the taxes they owe

And most important, because everything hinges on it, get rid of the 2/3 vote to approve the budget. This must be done by a ballot initiative in 2010, spearheaded by the Democratic leadership and supported and promoted by a vast grassroots groundswell. Will we pull ourselves up and out of this legislative morass or will we sink into annual bankruptcy orchestrated by a selfish, uncaring minority that does not believe that a key function of government is “to promote the general welfare” of its people? The answer is up to us – we, the people who wield the ballot.

* Editor’s note: For a more complete list of revenue suggestions email: willshonbrun@vom.com

There is no justification for torture

2009-05-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

By Will Shonbrun

The President leaned forward on the podium and stared into the TV camera’s eye, then deliberately and emphatically said to the country and the rest of the world, “The United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values. I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it.” He stated unequivocally, “We do not torture.” This was in 2005. It was an out and out lie then as it is now.

It’s possible that the former President lied so convincingly because he’d tasked his Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and attorneys in the Office of Legal Council including John Yoo, Jay Bybee and David Addington, among others, to change the legal definition of torture and to set “legal” parameters of so-called “enhanced methods” regarding the treatment and interrogation of suspected terrorist detainees labeled broadly as “enemy combatants.” At the same time these attorneys were charged with creating a legal framework for the Bush Administration to bypass the legal restrictions pertaining to the treatment of prisoners-of-war as defined by Geneva III articles (Geneva Conventions of 1949), the U.S. signed Convention Against Torture and other laws defining and prohibiting torture. So when Bush looked into the eyes of his fellow countrymen and the other nations of the world he might have convinced himself at that and later such televised appearances that he was telling the truth. Of course what Bush overlooked was the fact that the enhanced interrogation program was put into operation as early as 2002, before there was even the attempt to make it justifiably legal. It’s not possible to know what was true or not in this man’s mind, but in any event it’s totally irrelevant. Actions of despicable cruelty, sadistic brutality and torture, some instances resulting in the death of detainees, were conducted because the President, the Vice-President and some of the other higher-ups in his administration ordered it and set it in motion.

In researching this issue I’ve read dozens of accounts, news stories, opinion pieces and sections of the infamous released government memos including multi-page, minutely detailed timelines exhaustively cataloguing how we got to here from there – meaning to a government that condoned torture. The news and information about this issue is added to daily with new revelations constantly cropping up. In short we are a long way from the end of this sad and sickening chapter in our nation’s history, with no final destination or denouement in sight.

The picturse flashing on the screen, the newspaper accounts, the interviews with political principles and lesser players, and the roiling sea of verbiage from a punditocracy of all stripes is our daily fare; a steady diet of the government initiated, justified and systematically implemented program of torture.

As for the use of the term ‘torture’ I think it is absolutely necessary to call this aberration, this twisted perversion, by its real name. The (then) government agencies that crafted these dehumanizing policies – Bush and his cabinet, the Justice Department and the Office of Legal Council, and the CIA and some fellow miscreants in the military – devised euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation methods,” or the “softening up” (of detainees) or the like to mask the reality, the truth about what they were doing. But it was torture, plain and simple, whatever one wants to call it: physical, psychological and emotional anguish visited upon human beings for a variety of reasons. So let us call it by its rightful name – torture – and say that our government, under its leadership and highest judicial branch took this country to where it had never been before: It implemented and sanctioned torture.

The arguments

The use of torture is justified by former Vice President Cheney and those who agree with him because, they claim, it worked. They maintain that water-boarding – suffocation by drowning – and other extreme methods were necessary in order to get information from certain high-profile detainees deemed to be al-Qaida terrorists. They have claimed that the information ascertained by the use of these methods saved lives by foiling terrorist plots. In addition they state that there was no other way to elicit this kind of information in short order.

These claims have been resoundingly characterized as false and misleading by myriad highly credible individuals in government, security agencies, including current and former CIA operatives and interrogation experts, the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, and even National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair. In one by now famously quoted instance Blair stated “high-value information came from interrogation in which these methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaida organization that was attacking the country.” On the heels of this seeming endorsement Blair followed with this statement: “The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means [emphasis added]. Blair added, “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweigh whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to out national security.”

In fact the preponderance of opinions as to the ineffectiveness, unreliability and counter-productiveness (hardened resistance and false or worthless information) of harsh methods of interrogation far outweigh claims to the otherwise. The few examples cited by Cheney as proof of plots thwarted or vital information extracted to protect national security have been roundly refuted and dispelled. The so-called evidentiary proof to substantiate Cheney’s claims about torture’s effectiveness in the as yet unreleased memos remains unverifiable. By the same token claims could be made about these memos that counter Cheney’s arguments and show them to be totally false. Anyone can claim anything until the facts show otherwise.

One of the most damning allegations recently leveled against Cheney’s proffered rationale for using torture to gain vital, life-saving information comes from Colonel Laurence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff. Wilkerson accuses Cheney of ordering torture methods on certain detainees in 2002 – before the establishing of any contrived legal justifications – not to uncover possible terrorist attacks on the U.S., but to reveal (supposed) links between Iraq and al-Qaida in the lead up to war in 2003. Claims of such links, along with claims about WMDs and an Iraqi nuclear weapons program constituted the basis on which the Bush/Cheney government took us to war, and even to this day when these claims have been proven patently false, Cheney still maintains that al-Qaida/Iraq links did exist. Why any credence is given to Mr. Cheney’s utterances about anything defies reason.

But…

But to argue that the use of torture and interrogation methods that induce severe physical pain or psychological torment and humiliation is acceptable because it works, i.e., the ends justify the means, is legally untenable. The methods used and admitted to are legal violations of U.S. law, Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions. For a summary of these laws prohibiting torture and explicating the accepted treatment of detainees see: Human Rights Watch:
Summary of International and U.S. Law Prohibiting Torture and Other Ill-Treatment of Persons in Custody.

Besides being prosecutable war crimes and crimes against humanity the use of torture on detainees violates basically accepted norms or morality. Whatever degree of moral standing the U.S. had among the world’s nations prior to its actions from 2002 until approximately 2006 has now been undermined; shown to be devoid of any such pretenses. As cogently stated by author Deepak Chopra, “A country that resorts to torture has lost the battle to begin with.” In the eyes of many we are the nation that tortures prisoners or kidnaps and outsources for the purpose of torture those we suspect intend to harm us. We have also become the nation that holds suspects for indefinite detentions without charges.

The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report investigating the agency’s use of torture against “high-value” detainees concluded that the program violated some of the provisions of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The report revealed that there were (at least) three detainee deaths in American-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and eight criminal cases of alleged homicide. These are just cases of which we are aware. It’s little wonder that Cheney did everything in his power to squelch Inspector General Helgerson’s report.

We don’t know and probably never will what these detainees’ alleged crimes were, just as we don’t know the alleged crimes of some of the prisoners in Guantanamo. Because the aforementioned principals in the Bush government ordered and embarked on a program of “enhanced interrogation” techniques that violated all known laws, domestic and otherwise, some of these detainees may not be able to be brought to trial; at least not under our current judicial system. An unintended consequence of the program? Perhaps.

There are so many twists and turns to this dark tale and they are changing and expanding every day. It’s impossible to encompass all the evidence and the events to date starting in 2001-2 and say conclusively –this is what happened, and these were the primary players responsible for its results. There are two books currently receiving a lot of acclaim for the depth and breadth of investigation and analysis of the events and players who changed the rules about handling people in detention: Philippe Sands’ “Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values,” and Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.” In light of disclosure, I’ve not read either book, but have heard the authors interviewed on radio a number of times, and have read excerpts of Mayer’s book in the New Yorker magazine.

No Justification for Torture

There is no justification for torture, as its legal definition has stood for decades, be it for the purposes of national security or some kind of misguided patriotism. Every dictator or authoritarian government has used the it’s-got-to-be-done-for-the-good-of-the-country excuse as a rationale for torture. Most of the nations of the world came together after WWII and decided and declared that there are things we cannot do for any reason, compelling or not, because it’s immoral, degrading to the mores of civilized behavior, diminishing to the souls of the perpetrators as well as the victims and, finally because it constitutes crimes against humanity.

When these precepts are violated it must be brought to light, not in the pursuit of revenge or for the purpose of moralizing, but because it’s important, I’d say vital, that we, the people of this country know what was done in our name. The reasons and justifications for taking the country in a dark direction are now being laid before us with an insistence on need and necessity, but it is up to the people to decide what kind of a country they want.

If we say we abhor what was done, but don’t want to revisit or wallow in it and would rather get on with more pressing things, then we turn our backs on what are supposed to be our standards of behavior; our legal system. Pulitzer Prize journalist Eugene Robinson reminds us that, “The rule of law is one of this nation’s founding principles. It’s not optional.” These laws were meant, ostensibly, to serve justice. Is justice served by being ignored or dismissed because the violations were so unpleasant? This kind of rationale does not apply to any judicial system to which this country ascribes.

There is no justification for torture. Attempts are being made by the former Vice-President to justify the course that was taken because it was necessary to safeguard the nation in a time of peril, and that using torture saved American lives. Every single claim that Cheney has made in this regard has been refuted by highly credible sources. But in a sense it’s almost beside the point. Effectiveness is not a legal argument. If it were, consider this: Where can a line be drawn as to what you can’t do to someone in trying to get information out of them? If ‘effectiveness”, i.e., it works, is the criterion then any means of torture is permissible to achieve that end. Is this the country we want?

The country has survived two world wars that claimed millions of lives, and the latter threatened our survival as a nation. This country survived a 30-year cold war with an enemy capable of annihilating us and the rest of the world without resorting to using torture. Mr. Cheney and some in Congress and other branches of government would have us believe we must use torture to assure our continued survival. This flies in the face of history, disgusts our sensibilities and challenges the system of Constitutional laws by which we abide. He would have us throw that aside, cower in fear and resort to tactics that reduce us to the base actions of our terrorist adversaries. He would reduce us to the level of people who have lost their humanity and any sense of morality.

It should not be up to the current President or Cheney to decide the right course of action regarding the past use of torture. This is a legal matter. Either laws were broken or they were not. Either a crime or crimes were committed or they were not. It is up to our government’s legal offices to initiate independent and unbiased investigations about what took place and who were those involved. It must be conducted as would any criminal investigation to get to the truth of the matter and confer guilt or innocence as is dictated by law. If we are a nation of laws to which ALL must adhere or face the consequences then we must let that course be taken. If we don’t then we violate and undermine our own system and we live hypocrisy, not a democracy. We also set a precedent for all that has happened to happen again at some time down the line. This is not the kind of country I want, nor do I believe it’s what most of us want.

There is no justification for using torture or any tactics that could be construed as such. Let the disinfecting light of the sun into this darkness and let the legal chips fall where they may. We will be the stronger for it.
…

Sources:
Nick Mottern, truthout.org., On Prosecuting War Crimes
Human Rights Watch: Summary of International and U.S. Law Prohibiting Torture and Other Ill-treatment of Persons in Custody
Matt Apuzzo, Unresolved debate in DOJ memo: Does torture work? Associated Press
Jason Leopold, Panetta’s Defense of CIA Interrogators Undercut by New DoJ Disclosures, The Public Record
Jennifer Loven, Obama Open to Prosecution, Probe of Interrogations, Associated Press
Eugene Robinson, Torture Is a Crime, and Crimes Demand Prosecution, Washington Post Writers Group
Andrew Lalloch, General Taguba: Accountability for Torture Does Not Stop at White House Door, Harvard Law Review
Jason Leopold, The Bush Administration’s Stunning Geneva Hypocrisy, The Public Record
Steve Weissman, How Torture Worked to Sell the Iraq War,
Truthout.org
Scott Horton, Investigating Bush’s Crimes, The Nation, March 2009
Mark Seibel and Warren P. Strobel, CIA Official: No Proof Harsh Techniques Stopped Terror Attacks, McClatchy Newspapers]
Glenn Greenwald, author, Glenn Greenwald.com
Deepak Chopra, The Toxic Residue of Torture, San Francisco Chronicle
Elizabeth de la Vega, Prosecuting Torture: Is Time Really Running Out?, TruthOut.org
Mark Danner, US Torture: Voices From the Black Sites, The New York Review of Books
Spencer Ackerman, FBI Agent’s Account of Interrogations Conflicts with Report, The Washington Independent

The Hopefulness of Change

2008-12-29T10:23:00.000-08:00

Is there a pundit, paid or unemployed, a political blogger, credible or ludicrous, or any American or America-watcher that hasn’t weighed in on what Obama will do once in office, i.e., what are the changes he will put into effect? I don’t think so. I think we can safely assume that just about anyone able to read a newspaper, gape at a TV, or stare dully into space while a radio personality bloviates, has an opinion on this matter, pro, con or off the wall.

So, attempting to side-step this skyscraper-size pile of pundit droppings, this exercise in speculative commentary will instead ruminate on a change I’d like to see, which could be seen as philosophical though I view it as quite pragmatic. The focus of this change is attitudinal more so than political, economic, environmental, foreign policy oriented, educational or health care-wise, though it encompasses all of these. The change I would like to see is a focus on and a redefining of – happiness. Yes, that’s right, happiness.

Let me say first off, I’m not talking about some kind of feel good, warm and fuzzy, mirth and laughter definition of happiness that’s sold on greeting cards and mind-numbing TV commercials. Secondly, I’m not talking about fulfilling some personal desire, attaining some object, living out some experience, enjoying some good fortune, attracting some sought after other, or even having some wish come true. This is not the happiness I’m talking about.

Happiness, as I am talking about it, is more akin to that adopted by the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, which has developed a governmental policy they term Gross National Happiness or GNH. Happiness or GNH, like the U.S.’s GDP, is a collective measurement, albeit not in the goods and services produced. It is a quotient in “human well-being,” measured in terms of four key areas: “sustainable economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the environment and good governance.”* Happiness in these terms is a very serious look at how to create the conditions for diverse human societies to live rich, satisfactory and moral lives. The focus here is not on individual economic well being, but more in terms of “human development” or “pluralistic growth.”

There is one important area or condition that is missing from these key ingredients in the happiness quotient, though it might be implied by “good governance,” and what needs to be added is a reaffirmation and a retrieval of human rights that have been so easily dismantled and discarded by the Bush Administration. Without returning to a national acclamation of individual human rights, so elegantly defined and expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights written into the United Nations Charter after WWII, then the society as a whole, any society, cannot fulfill the essential standards necessary for establishing the conditions for happiness; individually or collectively.

Among the articles in the Universal Declaration are:
• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
• Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
• No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

It’s not possible to reproduce here all of the articles, but it would serve the reader well to look them up. It is a human rights constitution based on moral, ethical and lawful principles that should apply to every nation on earth.

The Bush/Cheney Administration has violated bedrock principles of human rights to a degree not seen before, and if an Obama Administration hopes to change what has been despoiled, then it will have to start here. As important as addressing the economy, Iraq and Afghanistan, health care and global warming, is assuring the safeguards that protect individual well-being.

Inextricably tied into the guarantees of human rights are the precepts of sustainability. Social commentator Steve Bhaerman, AKA Swami Beyondananda, writes: “We are burdened by a “natural debt”… We have deforested the rain forests, spoiled key habitats, scarred the landscape with strip mines, ruined our soil with chemical farming, and now peek oil seems to be peeking over the horizon. In addition to a financial system that no longer works, and a system that rewards creating money more than creating value [emphasis added], we face the additional problem of creating not just prosperity, but sustainability.”

I think it bears repeating – “creating money more than creating value.” Is this not at the core of our current economic system? Unbridled capitalism driven by greed, not need, is the infection that invaded our economy and laid it low. In a speech long ago at Riverside Church in New York, Martin Luther King said, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.” Call to mind what recently happened at a Wal-Mart store sale when people in their blind rush to acquire, to consume, trampled to death a store employee who got in their way. These are not the actions of a person-oriented society.

As far as weighing in on Obama’s selection for his administration and cabinet, all I can say is that from this progressive’s view they’re very disappointing, cause for a lot of concern, and, while change from the current regime, are nothing more than a throwback to the Clinton neo-liberal years. Perhaps a President Obama can really set a new course and bring about the significant changes so desperately needed to the nation’s economic, health care, foreign policy, and alternative green energy systems. If the choices so far of “his team,” for the most part, are any indication, future directions look very questionable.

Do I think it’s likely there will be a shift in focus as to what comprises a happy or satisfactory existence both individually and collectively with the advent of a new political administration? I do not, but there is at least a possibility of a change in thinking and direction along these lines through an emphasis on sustainable economics and energy sources, conservation and protection of the environment, and a redefining of the importance of human rights and the value of individual service to the community at large. Anyway that’s my hope for the years ahead.

*The San Francisco Chronicle: “Economists Appraise Bhutan’s Happiness Model” by Don Duncan, 12/04/08

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On the Passing of Jerry Parker

2008-11-24T09:19:00.000-08:00

Sonoma journalist Jerry Parker died recently. This is in memory and honor of a man I knew and admired.

I knew Jerry Parker, I liked him, I admired his writing style and I’ll mourn his passing.

Jerry was writing a weekly column for this paper when I first came to town in the mid-80s, and I wrote in to the paper that it was the best thing about it. This did not endear me to the paper’s former editor. C’est la vie.

In those days Jerry’s column ranged from the intricacy and inherent beauty of the natural world, reminiscent of Thoreau, to critiques or commentaries on the political, social or environmental issues of the day, local and otherwise. His writing was incisive, succinct and direct to the matter at hand, but never hyperbolic or ranting. He was an iconoclast and a fierce critic of the cultural excesses and vanities he considered extraneous distractions. He was a serious man, and an astute observer of and witness to the failings of what he considered an overindulgent and superficial culture caught up in the pursuit of wealth and self-aggrandizement.

He was never petty or personally insulting, but he spoke his truth plainly and, in my estimation, poignantly. He had a great writing style, careful and precise, honed over many years in journalism, and inspired by a voluminous and well-read library of the literary masters. Just as well he could artfully explore the beauty of the natural world that he felt more attached to and aligned with than the human one. He could also take the reader on walks with him and his beloved dog Chester through the Sonoma hills, which gave one entry to his heart and soul and truly moral nature.

I got to know Jerry personally when I did some work around his very modest cabins off Warm Springs Road when he’d reached an age where he needed help with roofing or other small building projects. Around that time I started publishing a newsletter that focused on Sonoma City and Valley issues, featuring commentary pieces by local writers. After work we’d get into long political, sometimes philosophical discussions about all sorts of things, finding common ground in our critical and sometimes jaundiced view on the passing parade, and directions in which our country had been going. Or we’d talk about New York City where I hale from and where he lived and worked in the 40s, or about the dignity and nobility of dogs and how much we enjoyed their company, or about some of the writers, none contemporary, that he loved and I pleasured in learning more about.

He could certainly be irascible and extremely opinionated, but I always found him to be a gentle, self-effacing and non-egoic man. He had regrets and failings that he talked about, and probably loved books, and nature, and dogs as well as if not more so than most humans. He did speak glowingly about his wife and family, always remarking that he did not feel worthy of their love and devotion. Whatever his failings, real or perceived, he was a man of great character and deep substance, and Sonoma and the world beyond is the lesser for his passing.

If there’s a world beyond this one I hope it looks like the Sonoma hills and valley, and I’ll catch up with Jerry Parker and we’ll walk our dogs through the valleys of eternity. Maybe we’ll stop for a cold beer at day’s end.

See ya, Jerry.

Will Shonbrun

The Real Culprit

2008-11-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

It’s all the fault of the free-market deregulators. No, no, it’s all the fault of the greedy, sub-prime mortgage lenders. Un unh, it’s those rapacious speculators who played the market like slick Enron gamers. Wrong again, it was the sickeningly usurious banks and Wall Street geeks who shuffled around bundles of crappy mortgage-backed securities from one institutional dupe to another. Think again, John and Jane Public, it’s all because China got too filthy rich, and dumped a gazillion dollars into U.S. markets, thereby inflating, and devaluing, and doing whatever it is that they did to bring financial ruin to the world. Let’s see, has anyone been left out? Oh yes! It’s the credit industry, the credit mentality, the buy it now, pay for it…whenever, virus that’s infected Americans for the last half-century. It’s the entitlement mongers. It’s you, and me, and the rest of the 95% of us who don’t make $3 million bucks a year, and don’t care if we’re in debt up to our nostrils. Of course, it was all OUR FAULT!

Oh, it’s so simple. How could we have not known it was all our doing – this whole financial meltdown? It was us! We wanted houses, and cars, and colleges for our kids, and medical care, and wage increases, and vacations, and, you know, all those outrageous extravagances, like food and shelter and clothes, and so forth. Greedy, bad, welfare-grubbing, no-account Americans who want government to coddle them and buy them lunch. Now we know who got us, 95% of us anyway, into this mess. It’s our own something-for-nothing, screw-you-I’ve-got-mine, nothing-counts-but-me, you know, human nature. How could we not have seen that?

So, okay, what are we going to do about it? Everyone knows you can’t change human nature. Well, everyone except evangelicals and psychoanalysts. Left to our own devices, we humans are a brutal, aggressive, club-wielding lot only out for our own survival. If you don’t believe me go to any playground. It’s horrifying. They don’t call it a jungle gym for nothing. All right, all right, we know it was us and our unbridled, ego-driven human natures who are responsible for THE CRASH. Does that mean it’s all hopeless and we’ll be living out the Mad Max scenario for the next millennia?

Of course not fellow (by nature) miscreants. Like the (nausea inducing) song says, “ We will survive.” Sure there’ll be a few rough years - cardboard box housing, bread and ketchup dinners, dumpster-diving employment, - but we’re Americans! We’ll bounce back! We always do. We may have to forego some of the luxuries for a while – jobs, housing, food, that kind of stuff, - but we’ll be back stronger than ever. We rebounded bigger and better from other crashes, and this one’s no different. The Dow will rise again, new funding will ride in from somewhere, we’ll be able to borrow our brains out once again, and, and…we’ll probably repeat the whole circus again sometime down the line. It’s human nature.

Is the War in Iraq a Local Issue?

2008-11-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

If you could choose how to spend the tax dollars that provide federal government funding for our nation’s needs would you have that money go toward a universal health care system, affordable housing units, elementary school teachers, public safety, transportation and infrastructure needs, or to the continuation of war and occupation in Iraq?

*According to a study issued by MoveOn.org, using estimates based on congressional budget allocations and supplemental funding bills the cost of the war/occupation was $456 billion in 2007. According to Internal Revenue Service records used to compute the costs at a local level, war spending included $1.33 billion of taxes collected in the 6th and 1st Congressional Districts, which comprises most of Sonoma County.

In Sonoma County we’ve seen funding diminished for our schools, hospitals, libraries, environmental protections, transportation needs and affordable workforce housing. Three of our county hospitals are in dire financial straits and face closing their doors. Tuition for Sonoma high school graduates applying to UC and UCS colleges is skyrocketing, ranging from $17,000-$24,000 a year, and loans for higher education are financially crippling many families and students. Despite the downturn in Sonoma housing prices, entry level housing for essential Sonoma workforce services – education, public safety, health care, etc. – is still prohibitive, forcing longer out-of-town commute hours, and increasing highway deterioration, air pollution and greenhouse gasses. Who in Sonoma County has not felt the financial and social impacts related to the cost of this war?

And then there are the unquantifiable and devastating impacts on Sonoma families and their communities when Sonoma’s sons or daughters are killed or grievously wounded in Iraq. Such losses are inestimable and lived with for a lifetime.

The war machine has deployed California’s National Guard to Iraq, as it has the other states, of which Sonoma County has 200 members or so. By so doing Sonoma county and other regions are left vulnerable to emergencies and natural disasters. Thus the prosecution and elongation of this war/occupation puts all Sonomans in greater jeopardy.

President Eisenhower famously said in his Cross of Iron speech:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”

Schools, homes, roads and hospitals. How do you get more local than that?

The “war on terrorism” with Iraq as ground zero has given rise to illegal warrantless secret government surveillance on American’s phone calls and mail. Government domestic spying has not just been relegated to international calls as we were led to believe, but to collecting phone call data from tens of thousands of citizens as reported in the N.Y. Times and other media. We in Sonoma are not immune to these abuses of Constitutional rights of privacy, just as we are subject to certain provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act’s incursion into library and bookstore records.

The Iraq war has resulted in the use and contracting of torture and clandestine renditions for that nefarious purpose, and the elimination of judicial due process. Unprecedented and incredible! Besides putting our military in extraordinary danger (if captured), this reprehensible violation of the Geneva Conventions disgraces the model of American democracy in the eyes of the world, as we are all, Sonomans included, tarred with that despicable brush.

The theme of this edition of the Peace Press is sustainability. One of the meanings of the word sustain is: to bear up under; suffer or undergo. This begs the question: how much longer can this occupation of a foreign land be sustained – by our fellow countrymen or we in Sonoma?

The late, great Molly Ivins said in her last published column, “We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war.”

*Sources: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 8/17/07, and National Priorities Project, 2007.

Why I Don’t Support the Troops

2008-07-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

“Support the Troops” – the signs are ubiquitous, from bumper stickers to store windows to demonstrations both for and against the war. So much lip service is paid to the phrase you’d think America would have run out of Chap Stick by now. Anti-war groups and the politicians that agree with them tried to usurp the sentiment by insisting, “We support the troops” and then tagging on “Bring them home.” I’ve taken the same position in my anti-war activism, and held the signs proclaiming that support meant getting them out of harm’s way as quickly as possible, but I’ve always felt twinges of hypocrisy in doing so.

It became clear to me why the anti-war proclamation of support for the military was an untenable and in my estimation contradictory position after hearing something Utah Phillips said. Phillips, long-time peace activist and workers’ rights advocate through his songs and stories performed over the decades across the country, died recently, and the radio program I heard was a recounting of his life as an activist and performer. He lived his life in the tradition of a Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, or Pete Seeger, using music and the power of performance to impart the true history – a people’s history – of the great social movements for justice and civil rights. They exposed the myths and told the truth about how governments create wars and then lie and manipulate the populace to support and go along with it. They showed us through song and story how this has been going on almost from the inception of our nation to present time, and down through the ages in other lands across the globe. It’s an old story, maybe the oldest in the tales of men and war.

What does “support” mean?
What Utah spoke about and pointed out in that replaying of his words was this: If we who oppose the war, in this case the war in Iraq, say that we “support the troops” (regardless of the tag line) then we’re also taking on responsibility for their actions. If we support the troops then we support the sending of armies to invade other countries that have not attacked us because that’s what these troops have been sent to do. If we make claim to supporting the troops then we are giving our tacit approval and acceptance for the killing of other people in a foreign nation. If we support the troops, we are agreeing with the principle that it’s all right to invade, kill, maim, and imprison other people and destroy their country’s infrastructure, economy and culture because some head of state or government administration has told us that it’s necessary. By pledging our support I believe we inadvertently legitimize the war.

Atrocities during wars are not abnormal, aberrational or occasional acts – they’re part and parcel of the whole bloody enterprise. If we support the troops are we willing to see that we have a responsibility when it comes to what they’ve done? It’s exceedingly difficult for those of us who have been opposed to the war from the start, and have marched, demonstrated and spoken out against it to see that we have any connection to what’s been done. After all we who opposed it, from the weeks of the devastation from the air force bombing to missiles from navy ships to the invasion and its aftermath, decried the indiscriminate murder and mayhem perpetrated by our military forces. Are the military personnel from the various branches of the armed forces, be they air force, navy or ground units not also included as the “troops”? Whether flying planes or launching missiles or engaging in combat on the ground these members of the U.S. military are our troops. Whether our military forces are dropping bombs from 50,000 feet, launching missiles from many miles away or shooting people on the ground the result is the same; people, often innocent ones, are being killed.

About the troops
As everyone knows our military is a volunteer force. Some argue it’s really a poor person’s draft providing wages, job training, education and opportunities to individuals from lower income families who have fewer choices after high school. However there are credible published data that refute that assumption. Were they lied to and duped by the Bush Administration into believing the war in Iraq was necessary, just as was the Congress and millions of Americans? Surely. Even if some of them saw through the lies and deception, as soldiers they had no choice but to go and fight or face imprisonment or self imposed exile. A soldier can always choose conscientious objection and face the very difficult consequences if he or she does not believe in the righteousness of the cause. For a soldier it’s no small matter to choose non-compliance, and pay the penalties such an option will extract. Very few choose that hard path, but the only alternative is to agree to harm others for a cause that’s not just. These are the conditions that have been placed on some in our armed forces that have come to understand the illegality, non-necessity and fundamental immorality of the war and occupation in Iraq.

But this is not the case for many if not most of the soldiers in our volunteer forces in Iraq. Many have gone without questioning the justification of the war, see it as their duty, legally, morally and patriotically, and to obey orders and do what they are told. Soldiers have only one purpose when they go to war, and that’s to kill the “enemy.” Occupying captured territory is a different matter, but invading armies don’t go in to win hearts and minds – they go in to blow people away. Killing the enemy is their job; it’s what they’re trained and paid to do. To see it differently is delusional. Occupying armies keep the lid on volatile situations and a highly agitated and disgruntled populace, by any means necessary, as they deem it. We know all too well what this has meant in the last five years.

We know that to date over four thousand U.S. servicemen and women have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tens of thousands have been grievously wounded, and estimates of Iraqi civilians killed range from hundreds of thousands to over a million. Whatever the exact figures are regarding innocent civilians killed or maimed there’s no question that the Bush Administration, many members of Congress, and the U.S. military are responsible, directly and indirectly, for death on a massive scale in Iraq, a country that did not attack us.

I do not oppose all wars. There are times when war is necessary. But it is abundantly clear that the war in Iraq was no such case. And it is our military personnel that have carried out this war, albeit fomented by the President and his administration. I certainly want the troops in all the military branches in Iraq out of harm’s way and brought safely home as quickly and at the same time as responsibly – for the safeguarding of the Iraqi people – as possible. But I can no longer say I support the troops any more than I can say I support the war or those who are responsible for it.

Where is the Outrage?

2008-07-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat "covered" the Congressional impeachment hearing of July 25 with a short and snotty Associated Press reprint on page 8 of its paper the following day. Featured articles about trans fat, achieving one's dreams, erectile supplements, Schwarzenegger greeting Olympic athletes, and the endless rehash of Obama in Europe took precedence.

I wrote to the paper's publisher, Bruce Kyse, and the editorial director, Paul Gullixson, asking them if they consider this to be responsible reporting? I asked, "Do you or your parent company feel any responsibility for the mess we're in today - the illegal, unnecessary and immoral war/occupation in Iraq responsible for the deaths of over four thousand U.S. service men and women, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, along with a price tag that may amount to a trillion dollars or more, the acceptance of torture, the dissolution of the Fourth Amendment and admitted illegal spying on Americans, the disastrous state of the economy, and on and on? Is there any sense on your part that you have participated in this miserable state of affairs by your dereliction of duty in covering and reporting the news?" I concluded with, "You have no business writing editorials that take others to task for their actions or lack of principles when you bury real news stories about significant issues and print a lot of crap in its place."

There's no question in my mind that this kind of "reporting" by the NY Times and other mainstream media is directly attributable to the ignorance, apathy, and sheep-like mentality that defines our culture. It's no wonder people like Bush & Cheney and their ilk have been able to desecrate our Constitution, murder (yes, murder) hundreds of thousands, and to a large extent destroy the nation's economy in their wake, and GET AWAY WITH IT.

Where the hell is the outrage?

Pacifica Radio's KPFA covered the hearings from gavel to gavel, as usual. I didn't hear the whole of the coverage, but some of what I heard was absolutely brilliant testimony. KPFA archived their full coverage of the hearing, which can be streamed on KPFA's Web site.

Please see reprint of The Nation's John Nichols article on the hearing below.
.....

Impeachment Hearings Are the Appropriate and Necessary Next Step
Friday 25 July 2008

by: John Nichols, The Nation

As the House Judiciary Committee took up the question of how best to address what its chairman described as "the Imperial Presidency of George W. Bush," it was the ranking Republican in the room, Iowa Congressman Steve King, who observed that, "We are here having impeachment hearings before the Judiciary Committee.

"These are impeachment hearings before the United States Congress," King continued. "I never imagined I would ever be sitting on this side when something like this happened."

King was not happy about the circumstance.

A resolute defender of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the congressman was objecting to the very mention of the "I" word.

As it happened, impeachment was mentioned dozens of times during the hearing, often in significant detail and frequently as a necessary response to lawless actions of the president and vice president.

King's statement addressed the uncertain character of Friday morning's attempt by the relevant committee of the chamber empowered by the founders to impose accountability on presidents and vice presidents to tackle what Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, D-Michigan, referred to as "numerous credible allegations of serious misconduct by officials in the Bush Administration."

Conyers explained that "to the regret of many, this is not an impeachment hearing." For that to happen, Conyers argued, the committee would need clearer authorization from the full House.

But members of the committee, the Democrats and the Republicans, as well as a bipartisan panel of House members and another panel of former House members, and academics and activists, repeatedly put the impeachment on the table of a chamber where the speaker had once denied it a place.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey, D-New York, told the committee that President Bush and Vice President Cheney had committed acts that make theirs "the most impeachable administration in the history of our country."

Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson-Lee, held up a copy of the Constitution and announced, "There is a real question of whether this Constitution is being protected."

Republican members of the committee griped. Indiana Congressman Mike Pence complained that the entire session - with its discussion not just of impeachment but of legislative initiatives to address executive secrecy and overreach - caused him to worry about "the criminalization of American politics."

Addressing his remarks to Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich, the author of articles of impeachment against President Bush and Vice President Cheney that provoked Friday's hearing, Pence said, "I just believe the gentleman from Ohio is wrong."

Kucinich, who is not a member of the Judiciary Committee, stood his ground, arguing when he addressed the committee that a failure to impeach would not merely let Bush off the hook but signal to future presidents that they, too, may reject the rule of law and refuse to cooperate with Congress.

Several members of the committee were, if anything, more passionate in their remarks than Kucinich.

Georgia Democrat Hank Johnson told his colleagues that if they failed to act and President Bush authorized an illegal attack on Iran, they might look back on their dismissal on the neglect of their duty to check and balance an errant executive as a deadly mistake.

It was that sense of urgency that motivated committee member Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, to say explain that, "What this Congress does, or chooses not to do in furthering the investigation of the serious allegations against this administration - and if just cause is found, to hold them accountable - will impact the conduct of future presidents, perhaps for generations."

"Mr. Chairman," Baldwin continued, "there are those who would say that holding this hearing - examining whether or not the president and vice president broke the law - is frivolous. I not only reject this, I believe there is no task more important for this Congress than to seriously consider whether our nation's leaders have violated their oath of office. The American public expects no less. It is, after all, their Constitution. No president or congress has the authority to override that document, whereby ëWe the People' conferred upon the branches of government limited and defined power, and provided for meaningful checks and balances."

There can be no question at this late date in the Bush presidency that the issue of whether the American system will be characterized by "meaningful checks and balances" is at stake - and that goes to the heart of the matter of why Friday's hearing ought not be the end of a process but a beginning.

Even after George Bush and Dick Cheney have left the White House, the definition of the presidency that they have crafted will remain.

"On January 20, 2009, the next president and vice president of the United States will stand before the American people and take an oath of office, swearing to ëÖ preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' This commitment and obligation is so fundamental to our democracy that our nation's founders prescribed that oath in our Constitution. They also provided for the removal of the president and vice president for, among other things, ëhigh crimes and misdemeanors,'" Baldwin explained to the committee. "Presidents and vice presidents do not take that oath in a vacuum. They are informed by the actions or inactions of past presidents and congresses, who establish precedents for the future."

It is in the power of the Congress to begin setting the precedent to which Baldwin addressed herself. That power was defined by the framers of the Constitution, as were the practices and procedures to be used in executing it.

With that in mind, Baldwin correctly outlined the next steps for a committee and a Congress that has begun to place not just the matter of impeachment but the broader question of the imperial presidency on the table but that certainly has not completed the process"

(The) American people have been forced to sit by while credible allegations of abuse of power mount:

We have seen this Administration fabricate the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and allege, despite all evidence to the contrary, a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. These lies dragged our country into a preemptive and unjustified war that has taken the lives of more than 4,000 U.S. troops, injured 30,000 more, and will cost our nation more than a trillion dollars.

We watched as this Administration again undermined national security by manipulating and exaggerating evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities and openly threatened aggression against Iran, despite no evidence that Iran has the intention or capability of attacking the U.S.

We have looked on in horror as the Administration suspended habeas corpus by claiming the power to declare any person an "enemy combatant" - ignoring the Geneva Convention protections that the U.S. helped create.

We have seen torture and rendition of prisoners in violation of international law and stated American policy and values, and destruction of the videotaped evidence of such torture, under the tenure of this Administration.

We have seen this Administration spy on Americans without a court order or oversight in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

We watched as U.S. Attorneys pursued politically-motivated prosecutions in violation of the law and perhaps at the direction of this White House.

We watched as Administration officials outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent of the CIA and then intentionally obstructed justice by disseminating false information through the White House press office.

As we know, the framers of our Constitution called for impeachment only in the case of high crimes and misdemeanors. The standard is purposely set high because we should not impeach for personal or political gain - only to uphold and safeguard our democracy. Sadly, in my judgment, at least two high-ranking administration officials have met that standard. Although the call to impeach is one I take neither easily nor lightly, I now firmly believe that impeachment hearings are the appropriate and necessary next step.

Can the Damage Be Undone?

2008-07-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

Under the Bush administration and under the guise of national security, American’s 4th Amendment Constitutional right not to be spied upon without probable cause and the issuing of a judicial warrant for that purpose has been eroded, and in some cases effectively discarded.

Beginning with the jingoistically named USA Patriot Act in October of 2001, American’s library records, book and periodical purchases, and medical records were deemed subject to secret scrutiny by the government. With a Kafkaesque or Orwellian twist, depending on your brand of totalitarian state paranoia, the subject of investigation was not to be informed by those agencies whose records were to be explored by pain of fine and/or incarceration. A nice touch in coercion by the same band of “patriots” that lobbied for closed, extra-legal military tribunals for prisoners in Guantanamo, and who also conducted kidnappings for torture AKA extraordinary renditions. Fortunately the Supreme Court did not bend to the Chief Executive’s Spanish Inquisitional type of legal justice, though for all we know the abductions for torture may still be going on.

Next came the shocking revelation and years-late admission that American’s phone calls and emails had been illegally tapped and spied on in violation of FISA, which requires government agencies to get judicial warrants for such surveillance activities. In collecting this illicit data the Bush administration was aided and abetted by some of the major telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon being among them. To what extent this has been done – the number of Americans spied on, and the type and amount of data procured – is still not known, and probably never will be what with the recent passage of a revised FISA bill that lets the telecoms, and by extension Bush & Company off the legal hook.

And let us not forget that medieval master stroke to do away with habeas corpus for those seized as suspected terrorists, which has been the moral cornerstone of our judicial system, and a bedrock safeguard for the rights of mankind for a thousand years – the right to be charged with an offense in a court of law in an expedient manner. Once again the Supreme Court narrowly voted against this unprecedented legal dismemberment, passing it off to Congress to deal with in the final analysis.

“The U.S. doesn’t torture,” lied Mr. bush having all the while constructed a “legal” framework for the systematic torturing and horrendous abuse of subjects in prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo for the erstwhile purpose of gathering critical information. Apparently some high-ranking officials in the Pentagon, and former Secretary of State Powell thought this (again) unprecedented and dangerously libel-to-backfire dismantling of the Geneva Conventions on the handling of prisoners a terrible idea. If it’s okay for America to torture and abuse prisoners of war then what’s to stop American prisoners from the same fate in the hands of an enemy, huh Mr. Bush?

So the question is: Can these egregious Constitutional breakdowns, the underpinnings of our legal system, along with a dissolution of moral and ethical bounds in devising systems of torture be changed back, reformed or undone? Can we go back as a nation, and as the individuals that comprise that nation, to what used to be; before those that have perpetrated this marked veering off course? Can we undo what’s been done?

I’d answer, yes and no.

Laws can be reinstated, or new ones written to correct a course. If there is the political will to do so. This remains to be seen when a new administration comes to power. My guess –perhaps hope- is that a Democratic president will encourage changes of the provisions of the Patriot Act that all but do away with the Fourth Amendment. I also think that this same Democratic Chief Executive will encourage a revising of the compromised FISA to temper some of its overreach and better safeguard civil liberties. However I don’t think the newly granted immunity can be overturned, and more’s the pity.

I think any program to justify the use of torture, and the twisted legal logic that underwrote it, will be done away with and denounced. The people must make it clear to their leaders what they will accept and what they will not. If we as a nation haven’t lost all our moral footing, and are still a people of conscience with a strong sense of justice, which I believe we are, then we will make sure our leaders correct the disastrous course the Bush administration has taken.

But there’s a nagging doubt that because the pendulum of cultural shifts has swung so far to the right, the center is no longer where we once were, and our cultural consciousness has shifted with it. For example: The concept of a pre-emptive war being justifiable. Have we as a nation become more acceptant of that idea? And what about the question of torture: Is it ever acceptable and under what circumstances? How much spying can or should we do on our citizens in the name of national security?

The fact that we’re even entertaining some of these ideas indicates to me that the center has shifted from where it was. The center of our sense of what is right or wrong, just or moral, has been, I think, brought to a different place; a less tolerant, more suspicious and more fearful place. Because we have moved so far afield from what we once held to be the norm of behavior, and because the actions of our leaders have degraded us in the eyes of many other nations, we can’t just erase these deeds by the stroke of a pen and go on as if all is well again. It’s too late for that.

Of course we must get our legal footing back to where it was before being usurped by a small band of ideological miscreants. But can we get our moral sense back? It’s a very disturbing question, but I think it’s one we (all) need to wrestle with, and then come up with a way of restoring our moral compass. I think there are ways of doing that – first and foremost being Congressional hearings examining criminal or illicit acts. In addition we could embark on national projects that benefit our society as a whole, beginning with an affordable universal health care system. Government sponsored public works projects could go a long way toward providing jobs for people, repairing the nation’s infrastructure and at the same time shoring up the failing economy. We need to reinstate and enforce regulations that oversee commerce and trade, and that protect the public’s interest, not just wall street and investors. These are just some of the things that can restore our civic sense of responsibility and participation in a democracy sullied and perverted by the current ruling claque.

Perhaps some version of a truth and reconciliation process will be needed to regain our moral footing. It is important that we know the degree to which we’ve been lied to and misled. It’s essential that we become aware of what’s been done in our name to those we’ve imprisoned and stripped of all legal rights. It’s imperative that we be told the extent of the clandestine warrantless surveillance that has been ongoing for the last seven years, and not let it be sweep under the rug by enacting a “new” FISA and saying the job is done.

If we do not proceed with Congressional hearings and investigations to discover the extent of the damage done, and hold legally accountable those who transgressed and are responsible for these actions then the body politic cannot heal and will remain infected. If we try to dismiss or ignore the illicit actions of those in government responsible for taking the nation on an illegal and immoral direction, for whatever reasons, political or otherwise, then the damage to our legal system, and the degradation of our moral code of behavior and standards of decency will not be undone. There are some small signs of hope on the horizon, but we are still far from shore.

He Just Doesn't Get It

2008-05-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

If all that is required of Sonoma City Council members is that they deal with matters that are confined, literally and figuratively, to 2 x 2.5 square miles then what need is there for such persons?

Most of the decisions made by our council regard land use and property zoning, or budgetary priorities. Many of the growth and development decisions, as well as aesthetic configurations (building size, architecture, business signs, etc.) are made by the Planning Commission anyway. Yes, the Planning Commission members are chosen by the City Council, and occasionally the council settles some planning disputes, but the former function is an opening for bias, and the latter is arbitrary. We could as easily elect a Planning Commission. Establishing a budget for the city has little to do with creating revenue, this is more or less dependent on outside forces and the vicissitudes of economic markets, and the expenditure of funds could be managed by any competent accountant. The Chamber of Commerce concentrates on promoting Sonoma businesses, and the Sonoma Visitors Bureau promotes our town as an attractive destination for the all important tourist trade.

There are two water use agencies, the City of Sonoma Water Department and the Valley of the Moon Water District that monitor and regulate water and waste-water, and many of those regulations are dictated by the county, state agencies or regional boards.

The everyday functioning of the city is done by professionals in their fields – city management, Planning Direction, building and maintenance operatives – that are far more experienced and knowledgeable than most of our citizen politicians. As to providing for public safety we have a Police Department and a Fire Department. And there’s a school board and a hospital board that concerns itself with those matters.

So this begs the question: What are the real need, the necessity for and the functioning of a Sonoma City Council? What makes a group of amateurs more equipped to deal with and make decisions about the aforementioned matters?

Councilman Sebastiani says it’s not the council’s business to consider or engage in anything other than those areas I’ve enumerated. Possibly I’ve left out some vital function only a council member might be more qualified to handle than a paid, experienced professional. Perhaps Mr. Sebastiani will enlighten us in this regard.

Given the narrow parameters, physically and politically as regards the functions of a city council as defined by Mr. Sebastiani, I fail to see what earthly purpose a city council member serves when there are much more qualified professionals to do the job. Is he equipped to make better business decisions for the city? He’s 27 years old, and his only experience is working in a family owned business. Has he started and run his own business successfully?

Perhaps he has some expertise about housing – construction, costs, renovation, green building, or the housing market, etc. Perhaps he knows about road maintenance. But then we already have competent and experienced city departments that deal with these matters. And if public safety, health care and education are handled by other agencies, and are not within the city’s jurisdiction or even sphere of interest by Mr. Sebastiani’s reckoning – Sonoma Police are ultimately answerable to the County Sheriff’s Department – then exactly what is it he’s needed for? Help me out here, August; give me your raison d’etre.

My point here, granted proffered in a facetious way, is this. We elect a city council to take leadership roles when it comes to making decisions about matters of concern that will have effects on and implications for most if not all of our residents. Again, city managers and their professional staff are equipped to handle most of the city’s business and legal matters. Can this be corrupted and self-serving? You bet, and a function of city councils is to be a watchdog and see that doesn’t happen. That requires knowing a good deal about city management. Is this Mr. Sebastiani’s area of expertise? What prior experience has given him this education? He didn’t serve on any city commissions or boards, ad hoc committees or even service organizations, before jumping on to the city council.

The only area of leadership, if one could call it that, which Mr. Sebastiani has leapt into was challenging our nation’s Constitutional First Amendment by attempting to breach the wall of separation between church and state in having religious symbols and displays on the public square. That’s the only instance of “leadership” that I’ve seen him display as he exhorted his followers to push on deeper into the waters of constitutional law. Was this a vital matter of concern for most Sonoma residents? Hardly. Mr. Sebastiani says he’s a councilman, not a “lobbyist” for certain concerns or interests, but he lobbied his little brains out for this issue – and lost to boot. Mr. Sebastiani is rather selective when it comes to seeing some issues as within or outside his so-called jurisdiction.

City councils, others, and ours take on all kinds of issues – national, state, regional or local, when it’s determined that the criteria being judged will effect or impact its citizenry. This is where leadership comes in. It is incumbent upon council members to study and to know the ramifications of these matters so that they can try to make informed and intelligent decisions. Abstaining on these kinds of issues is a chicken way out. One needs to vote yea or nay and state the reasons why. That’s leadership. Closing oneself off from such hard decisions, stamping your foot and saying “No, I’ll never go there!” is what an adolescent does when confronted with tough choices. This isn’t a stance – it’s a head-in-the-sand retreat.

I had hoped that Mr. Sebastiani would take his too easily gained position on the council to learn and grow into the position of a leader, but I’ve seen no indication of that. Quite the contrary. But cockeyed optimist that I am, I will hold that as a future possibility. Until such time I will play Jimminy Cricket to his Pinocchio, and hope that some leviathan-like happenstance will come his way, and he’ll see the light within the confined darkness of his own making.

Aerial Spraying: Not Safe, Not Effective, Not Necessary

2008-05-01T08:07:00.000-07:00

Does being repeatedly sprayed with a toxic pesticide over the course of the next 5-10 years appeal to you? Consider that this pesticide has not been tested for its short or long-term effects on human health or its impacts on the environment. Then note that aerial spraying already began in late ’07 in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties resulting in over 600 health complaints, as well as reports of environmental damage.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) claims that it must conduct a blanket and long-term program of aerial pesticide spraying to eradicate an infestation of the light brown apple moth (LBAM) because it may pose a threat to various crops, plants and trees. It has declared a state of emergency in order to do this without environmental review or public health testing.

However the fact of the matter is that the LBAM has been in California for at least 30 years with no devastation of any crops or plant life, by CDFA’s own admission. The LBAM originated from New Zealand and Australia, has been there for 100 years or more, and there too no crop or plant life devastation on record. In fact those countries don’t use aerial spraying, and have opted for the least toxic and most natural methods of pest control that do not put human or environmental health at risk. So what is the “emergency”?

At least 10 Bay Area counties including Richmond, San Francisco and Marin have been targeted for blanket aerial spraying to begin in August of this year. Aerial and other blanket pesticide applications have repeatedly been shown in the past to upset natural ecosystem balance in unpredictable and often catastrophic ways, having serious human health effects as well. CDFA is relying on pesticides that contain ingredients that are highly toxic to aquatic life.

Incredibly the State began aerial spraying, initially in Santa Cruz and Monterey, before a mandatory environmental impact report (EIR) was conducted; skirting this environmental protection by declaring a state of emergency. Equally disturbing are the facts that aerial spraying of chemicals are expensive and inefficient, and biologists have testified that spraying is extremely unlikely to eradicate the LBAM.

A recent scientific study indicates that pesticide spray particles can penetrate deeply into the lungs posing a significant health risk. Most at risk are vulnerable populations: infants, children, the elderly, field workers and those with compromised immune systems. And most alarmingly the LBAM spraying program has not been tested for toxic health effects when used in areas of concentrated population. The State has relied almost entirely on its own scientists to address public concerns about the spray program, and has not employed independent outside experts to evaluate and support the program or address issues in a direct and impartial manner.

To date 19 cities and counties, representing over 850,000 people, have passed resolutions urging the Department of Food and Agriculture to impose a moratorium on any aerial spraying that is a part of the LBAM eradication campaign until the Department can demonstrate that the pesticide it has used or ones it may use is both safe to humans and animals. In addition bills in the state Senate and Assembly have called for protection of citizens constitutional rights of informed consent, and completion of an EIR before aerial application resumes.

Until independent and impartial testing is done one can only assume that blanket and prolonged aerial spraying is not safe, is not effective, and is not necessary.

Eye on the Town

2008-03-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

As just about everyone knows this week marks the fifth anniversary – strange concept in this case – of the war in Iraq. About 140 people gathered on the Plaza to acknowledge this devastating, stupid, illegal, immoral and totally unnecessary blunder. Most of us know by now whom the murderous miscreants were who are responsible for this disaster, and the real reasons why we’re in this mess today. Astoundingly there are some who still support this mad adventure that has proved so profitable for the war-mongering industries and the oil companies. One of them is even running for president. Don’t look now Alice, but we’re about to drop into hundred-year-deep hole if this Mad-hatter gets his hands on the wheel of state.

Back on the Plaza home front the vigil proved a successful gathering – protest signs a-waving, car horns beeping in approval, and a general congeniality and solidarity among the throng. There was even a bit of street theater provided by longtime activist and anti-war stalwart Mike Smith. Mike decided to call attention to the war and occupation that has cost so many lives and so much treasure – estimates range in the trillions – and from which repercussions will be felt for decades. Bush and Cheney and the other principals responsible for this deadly insanity have burdened our children, grandchildren and generations to come with a debt load that may never be repaid. It is only now with the nation’s economy going into a recession that may last for years that the results of this war are coming home to roost.

So Mike decided to make a statement and deliberately get himself arrested in a minor act of civil disobedience. Yes, this can be considered a token gesture and its efficacy can be questioned. But symbolic or not it’s not an easy thing to do and not without some risk. No one else joined in this symbolic action including this reporter. I did accompany Mike’s legal observer, Betty Ann Spencer, to the local police station that held Mike for about a half hour, cited him, and let him go. He rejoined the vigil. Anyone who thinks it’s easy to take a principled stand, get arrested and handcuffed by 4-5 burly policemen, and taken in a squad car to sit alone in police custody should try it sometime. Token or symbolic gesture, it takes guts.

Mike had prepared a statement as to why he was taking this action, which says in part: “I am committing civil disobedience and bearing moral witness in the tradition of Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., by breaking a law of our government [blocking the flow of traffic]. I am acting out of love and compassion for the members of our armed forces; my sorrow for the suffering of the people of Iraq; my respect for our Constitution, and love of my country.” *Editor’s note: Mike’s full statement can be seen at the end of this column.
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Town follies

There are certain personalities that exude a kind of arrogance not based on any particular accomplishment, achievement or outstanding personal characteristic This was the defining demeanor of a member of the public who mouthed a distasteful little sermon at last Wednesday’s council meeting. The perpetrator’s name is irrelevant as is the man himself – an individual of absolutely no standing or significance in this community who used his 3-minutes for public comments to attack City Councilman Ken Brown on purely personal, completely unsubstantial grounds. The man’s comments did not address any issue, large or small, that has come before the council or is a matter of interest to the public at large. Nothing, zero, zilch was uttered critical of the policies, procedures, programs or services of the City Council, or anything within the jurisdiction of that political agency. Just a personal attack about clothing style, personal “grooming”, and a perceived attitude of the councilman toward other than his constituents. And in cowardly fashion the speaker left the room before hearing any response from the council.

And here is where it really gets interesting. Instead of nailing this guy, who didn’t even have the guts to state his full name, Mayor Joann Sanders let him rattle on, and said absolutely nothing. Not a word of admonition that this was a purely personal, ad hominen attack related to no council business whatsoever, or that protocol requires all public pronouncements to be directed to the sitting mayor, not to individual council members or city staff. No, the mayor sat dumb, inscrutably silent; never objecting to the personally insulting remarks or cautioning the speaker that he was way, way out of line.

In point of fact, Robert’s Rules of Order, which is the protocol employed by the council, states: “All remarks must be directed to the Chair [in this case the mayor]. Remarks must be courteous in language and deportment – avoid all personalities, never allude to others by name or to motives!”

Now it’s true that there is practically no matter within the realm of city business and affairs that members of the public cannot address, but no city council will entertain vicious, personal attacks of its members or other members of the public. In over 20 years of council watching I’ve never seen anything like this allowed or brooked. But Mayor Sanders sat mute, and in fact let the speaker go over the allotted 3-minutes, and at the conclusion thanked him for his remarks – yes, you heard that right – and without a word went on to the next speaker.

Amazing, and not in any grace-ful way.

Perhaps the mayor let this verbal mugging go on because the man was ostensibly coming to her defense because she’d received a lousy grade in environmental conservation and public accessibility by Sonoma County Conservation Action (SCCA), which has been grading all the city councils, and the board of supervisors in Sonoma County for many years on these criteria. It’s not possible to divine Ms. Sander’s thinking or reasoning as to why she let her pathetic paladin get away with dumping on Brown, and all his constituents to boot, but it speaks volumes as to her fitness and capabilities as a city council person. You see, the speaker had couched his assault on Brown by “grading” his strictly personal characteristics.

Just as she irresponsibly, irrationally and unilaterally launched into an annexation of the Springs, Sanders showed the same lack of deliberate thought, careful consideration and measured judgment in dealing with an outlandish situation. This and other such actions on her part calls into question her ability to function in a political system that at minimum requires the capacity to see beyond one’s ego and personal ambitions.

When it came time for council comments three members, not including Brown, voiced their displeasure about the public speaker’s comments, but Mayor Sanders had no words of redress or admonishment to offer. Brown, in a show of remarkable restraint, did not dignify the personal attack with a reply.

In light of full disclosure: I’m a friend of Ken Brown’s and have been for 20+ years, but I’d write the same about any council member who was attacked in this craven manner, like him/her or not. I think that those who know me, friend or (political) foe, would back that up. A sizeable majority has elected Ken Brown for three terms. I believe that anyone who knows him will agree that he’s one of the most accessible politicians Sonoma has ever had – to any and all, liberal or conservative – often to the dismay of some of the more hard-nosed liberals like me.
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*WHY CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE - MIKE SMITH

“LAST WEEKEND AT THE "WINTER SOLDIER" GATHERING IN MARYLAND VETERANS OF THE IRAQ OCCUPATION TESTIFIED OVER THREE DAYS ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCES IN THE MILITARY AND SERVING IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN.

IN 1971 VIET NAM VETERANS TESTIFIED IN THE FIRST "WINTER SOLDIER" CONVENTION ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCES IN VIET NAM. IN THE SUBSEQUENT CONGRESSIONAL HEARING VIET NAM VETERAN JOHN KERRY ASKED HIS ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES..."WHO WILL BE THE LAST TO DIE FOR A MISTAKE?". THE VIET NAM WAR WENT ON FOR ANOTHER FOUR YEARS!

FIVE YEARS AGO, MANY OF US STOOD ON THIS PLAZA PROTESTING THE START OF THE IRAG INVASION. I JOINED 18 OTHER SONOMANS IN A SYMBOLIC ACT OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AGAINST THE BEGINNING OF OUR GOVERNMENT’S ILLEGAL, IMMORAL, AND UNJUST WAR.

FIVE YEARS LATER ALMOST 4,000 MEN AND WOMEN OF OUR ARMED SERVICES HAVE GIVEN THEIR LIVES, THOUSAND MORE HAVE BEEN MAIMED AND CRIPPLED AND OVER ONE MILLION CITIZENS OF IRAQ HAVE DIED. OUR ECONOMY IS IN RUINS. OUR PEOPLE LACK JOBS, HOUSING, HEALTH CARE, AFFORDABLE EDUCATION, AND A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT. GEORGE BUSH AND DICK CHENEY HAVE NOT BEEN IMPEACHED FOR THEIR LIES, ILLEGAL ACTS, AND ASSAULTS ON OUR CONSTITUTION.
I AM COMMITTING CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND BEARING MORAL WITNESS IN THE TRADITION OF THOREAU, GHANDI, AND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., BY BREAKING A LAW OF OUR GOVERNMENT. I AM ACTING OUT OF LOVE AND COMPASSION FOR THE MEMBERS OF OUR ARMED FORCES; MY SORROW FOR THE SUFFERING OF THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ; MY RESPECT FOR OUR CONSTITUTION; AND LOVE OF MY COUNTRY.

I AM ALSO CALLING FOR THE THREE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES AND OUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES TO IMMEDIATELY CALL FOR A CONGRESSIONAL "WINTER SOLDIERS" HEARING TO TAKE DIRECT TESTIMONY FROM THE BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED THE TRUTH OF THE IRAQ WAR.”

On Writing

2008-03-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

Lately I’ve been asked by friends or acquaintances what I’m doing – what I’m up to. It’s a standard greeting, not meant to pry, and usually draws a brief run-down of my exceedingly mundane exploits.

“Oh, not that much,” I say. “Working around my place, helping Zoe with college applications, doing a little writing.” At this point my voice usually trails off. Sometimes I’m asked what I’m writing about. My general response is, “Different things. You know, the usual political stuff. I’m even playing around with fiction.” Occasionally there’s some interest around the ‘fiction’ part, but if pressed further I usually dodge the answer.

I do this avoidance dance for two reasons: One, because I really believe that talking about one’s writing when it’s ongoing takes the energy away from it, as well as the impetus to continue with it. I know it works that way with me. The second reason is that often I don’t know what I’m going to write until I start to do it. Often I don’t go into it with a game plan. I’ll just go with the thoughts that arise and see where it goes.

If I were to answer the “doing” question truthfully though, I’d say, “Mostly I’m spending my time writing. There are other things I’m attending to, but mostly I’m writing.” I haven’t had the courage to say this because it seems too lazy, arrogant, cerebral, self-important, effete, indulgent, and half the other descriptors in the dictionary. So I’m stuck mouthing a phony answer, and avoiding talking about what it is I’m really doing. Here’s what I would say to the question if I could manage to do it in just a couple of sentences.

I’m writing. I’m a writer. That’s what I do a good deal of the time. It doesn’t mean anything in saying this other than stating the activity I’m most engaged in. It doesn’t suggest that I’m any good at it, or that the writing is good, bad or indifferent. That’s for others to judge. It’s just something I do the way other people garden, or play golf, or go fishing or paint pictures. As for the reasons I do this, that’s another part of the story.

Dialogue with myself

One reason I write is that it’s fully absorbing. Paradoxically it both takes me out of myself, and at the same time puts me into myself more deeply. When I’m writing I am totally focused on the thoughts that come up, and then the ensuing challenge to express these thoughts as accurately and succinctly as possible. That’s the game, and I’ve been captivated by it from early on. The writer gets caught up in the thinking-writing process, and for brief periods the egoic “I” or “me” is on hold, or out of the office so to speak. Breaking free of the watchful, almost always present “me” is liberating. It frees me from the presence of that hovering critical observer.

At the same time, because writing stimulates the thinking process, it gives the writer the chance to find out shat he/se really thinks about something. For instance I’ve found out that I don’t know what I truly think about something until I’ve given it a lot of thought. We all voice our opinions about things – politics, relationships, cultural conditions, entertainment, what-have-you – often and freely. But I wonder if most of what we have to say on these matters is really what we think, or merely what we’ve adopted from what others think; people whose opinions bombard us from TV, radio and print. Are we just parroting the thoughts of others we respect or admire and passing it off as our own? How much of what we mouth as our opinions, our thoughts on some matter, is the result of finely attuning to our own thoughts – finding out through close examination what it is we really think about some matter? My guess is, very little.

So for me an important function of writing is finding out what it is I truly think about something by taking the time to think about the arguments and merits of the matter and working it out on paper. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the outcome is some brilliant conclusion – often that’s not the case. Too often it leads to further indecision and the realization I don’t know enough to form a conclusive opinion.

And that’s the seemingly contradictory nature of writing, for me: A way to lose myself and a way to find myself.

The critic

Another reason I write is to give voice to the critic: To voice my dissent, dissatisfaction, dismay and disgust with so much I see going on all around. I write because I feel compelled to comment on the scene. I’d say it in the poetry of songs if I could, but I can’t. I don’t have that talent.

I write to voice my disapproval about how things are and why I think it should be different. Anger and frustration are the usual motivators, and I’m egotistical enough to think I have something of value to say. About ten years ago I began writing a newsletter commenting on the local scene in Sonoma, and mouthing off about the local issues of the day. A small number of friends (5-6) joined me in this endeavor.

Writing and publishing the newsletter brought me in contact with some of the local policy makers and others of some influence in our little town, and I got a closer look at some of the behind the scene goings on. It provided a crash course education in the workings of the local power structure. Not that it will come as news, but what became markedly clear was how much sway the local paper had in generating and manipulating public opinion.

Like almost all communities ours has power brokers, generally based on the strength of their wallets, and how entrenched they are on the basis of longevity in these here parts. This filters down in turn to those who feed off these individuals’ dealings in the usual parasitic relationships that commonly abound. Other players of note are elected politicians who affect matters by forming policy and the regulations to back it all up. Occasionally even bureaucratic hired hands such as city managers have managed to cut a formidable swath, but they come and go more frequently whereas city councils and rich families seem to last interminably.

The newsletter publication provided me a platform for regularly shooting my mouth off about the local scene, its kabuki culture, and what was not being reported in the local paper. It also gave me a pulpit, albeit self-ordained, to voice my comments on the issues, events and human follies being played out far beyond the borders of Sonoma. This is where I began to try and hone the craft of commentary and essay writing. I’m still at that pursuit.

I don’t really know what it is that so drives me to respond to what I read, hear or see going on around me, but it is absolutely compelling. I don’t think I could not do it for very long. I think it’s an addiction that starts innocently enough with an occasional letter to the editor of some paper, but gradually and insidiously gets you hooked to the point where you have to comment in writing about something every day. Fortunately this addiction doesn’t cost very much, so my family is not going without food or clothing as a result. Well, maybe not all the clothes that would satisfy an 18 year-old daughter.

Finally, though not completely, my compulsory writing is equivalent to a dog marking its territory. It says, “I am here, of this time and place. This smell/thought is me. If you come into my territory you’ll have to deal with me. I am here; woof, woof.”

Writing is my way of marking my stay and passage on Earth. I’ve no delusions that I’m anything but a most ordinary person of no outstanding qualities or characteristics whatsoever. But even though I don’t consider myself special in any way, I’m still inexplicably driven to express as truthfully as I can how I interpret and therefore experience this journey of a lifetime.

I’ve little doubt that what I have to say in this regard is of much interest to other than a relative few, and that’s an optimistic assessment. Nonetheless there is this urge to put the thoughts and feelings down in some form – words in my case – for others to see.

Billions of us humans infest this planet, and from a certain aerial distance we seem nothing more than ants. Yet because we are each endowed with the faculty of self- awareness and self-reflection we experience our lives in a personal way. How we interpret and understand the world and our experiences in it is subjective, based on the sum of these experiences and those things – people, ideas, circumstances, etc. – that we’ve come into contact with and been influenced by.

We may be nothing more than swarms of ants, but each and every one of us is a package of experiences and stories uniquely our own. It’s this I want to convey. Maybe all of us ants want to tell our stories: This is what happened to me; this is how I see it; this is what it feels like to me. I expect that’s true, and I think we do it in ways other than writing it down. But that’s how this one does it. In answer to your question.

Notes From the Edge

2008-02-23T12:57:00.000-08:00

Earth moves elliptically in its invisible track around the sun and completes another passage. All of science and provable evidence indicates that this process has been going on for billions of years, whereas our redoubtable species is a relative latecomer appearing somewhere in the last two million years. If all of time was a 24-hour clock we humans would have come upon the scene sometime in the last five minutes. Gives one pause; or should.

Of course this is all if you believe in science, empirical little bugger that it is. Some do, some don’t. Some folks insist the Earth is 6000 years old, despite history, geography, biology and all that’s irrefutably provable. Well, why should we believe our lying eyes and rational mind just because those instruments define and describe objective reality? Maybe everything is subjective, and only exists in the mind of the beholder. After all, why let facts get in the way when faith in what’s true or not is so much more … comfortable?

Mr. Lagacy

And speaking of faith-based thinking let us turn our thoughts to our if-his-lips-are-moving-he-must-be-lying President and his legacy. Our soon to be departed (from the White House, that is) walking disaster, he who lies practically with every breath, the dull dispenser of misery who’s brought incompetence to a world class level, is leaving the stage. Hopefully, if there is a God, or karma, or justice, never to be heard from again. He and his neo-loony crew have almost single-handedly, albeit with the able assistance of a compliant and easily bullied Congress brought our nation to new depths of degradation by practically any standards. To wit: Fabricating reasons for going to war and occupying that country; repealing civil liberties and Constitutional rights; illegally spying on the U.S. population’s phone calls and e-mails; breaking the code of conduct on the treatment of detainees set by the Geneva Conventions, and violating UN and U.S. laws prohibiting the use of torture; presiding over a failed economy while benefiting the wealthiest one percent with billions in tax cuts – and that’s just for openers.

No matter where you look the Bush crew has left greater suffering and more despair in its wake. More people without health insurance; more costly health care; a crumbling infrastructure, and a feeble education system drastically under funded because the national treasure goes to two wars and the occupation of Iraq; and the response to Katrina – need more be said? Add to these ignominious accomplishments a stagnant minimum wage guaranteed to keep people in working poverty, and greater pollution and fewer environmental protections – all in the service of industry and its profits. Incompetence, lying, unaccountability and secrecy of totalitarian proportions have been the landmarks of the Bush regime. These and other transgressions and failures comprise the Bush legacy. A recent political cartoon showed Bush being read a list of these abject failures, and him saying,” Well, I guess my work here is done.”

Oh please, Dear Lord, or whom or what rules the universe, hear this agnostic’s prayer, and grant that we may never hear from or gaze upon these radical Republican miscreants, these sycophants, enablers or benefactors alike until the end of time. And then some.
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From macro to micro

Hey, how about that City Council, folks, can they dazzle and delight or what?

The new mayor, and she seems to be relishing the role, never being one for half measures, unfurled a modest proposal – annexing the Springs – just to test the waters, one reckons, and the proverbial do-do hit the fan. Calling Ms. Sanders annexation idea half-baked is crediting her with having thought it out that much.

Turns out the Springs has a lot of long-and-hard-fought- for redevelopment money finally coming its way if it passes approval by the county Board of Supervisors. That vote comes up soon. Talk of annexing the Springs so it all becomes one big fat City of Sonoma would effectively queer that deal because the county is not about to grant the redevelopment funds (over $100 million), earmarked for Springs’ improvements, to the City of Sonoma to spend however it wishes.

This was brought to the mayor’s attention after she unloaded her little bomb at a recent State of the Valley speech fest. One wonders what thoughts went through District Supervisor Valerie Brown’s mind when Sanders unveiled her annexation brainstorm. Perhaps Sanders was unaware that the long-awaited Springs redevelopment money would be put in jeopardy by an annexation proposal at a critical time for Board of Supervisor support. Doesn’t seem likely, but it’s possible. She certainly knew after the fact in no uncertain terms when Springs’ leadership spokespersons made clear at a subsequent meeting with Sanders, and in an Op Ed in the Index-Tribune, that her timing couldn’t have been worse.

But despite knowing that the timing of her grandiose idea could cause the Springs to lose its desperately needed infrastructure and business development money, she put the item on the council agenda of 2/20.

And what a meeting it was. Lots of pro and con comments from lots of folks, city and county, concluding in a 5-0 council vote to table all talk of annexation at this juncture. The idea might be brought back in a future discussion, presumably after the Supes vote on the funding, but it’s highly unlikely given that three of the council members are adamantly opposed to the scheme.

As usual, August Sebastiani eagerly supported Sander’s initial proposal to go ahead with a discussion of the idea, as well as embark on a two-to-four year annexation process itself. He could barely contain his gleeful exuberance speculating on how much juicy revenue the (new) city would get from the Sonoma Mission Inn’s transient occupancy tax (TOT). To his credit he stopped short of rubbing his hands together and licking his lips. It was subsequently explained to him that the county would still be getting a lot of that revenue from the city anyway. It was also pointed out by the three opposing council members that the costs involved in going from a small city, approximately 2.5 square miles with a population under 10,000 to one that would increase four or five-fold in size with upward of 30,000 to 40,00 people, would be enormous in terms of providing services, and the staff required to run a municipality of that size. The injection of reality onto the mayor’s Springs fantasy seemed to bring her to her senses, at least for that moment, along with the fact that the writing was on the wall as to how the vote was going to go. In the end both she and Sebastiani voted with the other three to can the discussion, but not before the good mayor got in a few swipes at Supervisor Brown, while posturing like a B-western movie sheriff that she was willing to “call her bluff” regarding the redevelopment funding vote. Easy for Sanders to hang tough when she and the city had nothing at stake.

Whether the idea of annexation is good or bad is something that can be looked at further down the line. There are pros and cons. But the discussion should start in the Springs. It should be up to the Springs’ folks whether or not they’re interested in being annexed. That’s step one. And, as was pointed out by Springs Task Force representative Steve Cox, there are any number of ways the city and the Springs can affiliate, and work jointly for higher quality of living by joining forces and forging agreements beneficial to both entities.

Hopefully Ms. Sanders will calm down, take a few deep breaths, not make this a personal matter, and explore her idea in depth and with careful consideration of all its ramifications.

From Kucinich to Edwards in ‘08

2008-01-08T09:11:00.000-08:00

Philosophically, politically speaking, I’m most in league with the ideas and principles set out and espoused by Dennis Kucinich. But acknowledging that one cannot disregard the realpolitik that governs elections, I am going to support John Edwards in the Democratic primary. Of those running, and based on his policy papers, Edwards most approximates Kucinich’s progressive political platform.

The following points regarding Edwards’ positions on some of the major issues of the day outline my reasons for supporting him.

IRAQ:

Edwards supports the immediate withdrawal of 40-50,000 troops, and a complete withdrawal of all combat troops within 9-10 months. He would leave 3,500-5000 troops to protect the embassy, and to guard humanitarian workers. He vows to have no permanent bases in Iraq, but would keep “Quick Reaction Forces” in neighboring “friendly” countries to “prevent al-Qaida safe havens, a genocide or regional spillover of a civil war.” In addition he would “step up diplomatic efforts by engaging in direct talks with all the nations in the region, including Iran and Syria….”

HEALTH CARE:

Edwards has come up with a comprehensive and specific plan to provide health care coverage for all Americans. He has outlined how the plan works, how it will be financed and why it will be significantly cheaper for individuals, families and businesses. New York Times syndicated columnist Paul Krugman says about the Edwards’ plan: “It addresses both the problem of the uninsured and the waste and inefficiency of our fragmented insurance system. And every candidate should be pressed to come up with something comparable.”

GLOBAL WARMING:

Edwards’ plan to halt global warming is based on capping greenhouse gasses at levels that the latest climate science has determined to be necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. The plan aims to “reduce greenhouse pollution by 20 percent by 2020, and reduce it by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.” The plan is based on the cap-and-trade system established by the Clean Air Act of 1990 to limit pollution by acid rain.However the levels set by the Clean Air Act were regulated, and that has not been done regarding greenhouse gasses. This is a potential weakness in reducing the pollution.

The plan advocates a new global climate change treaty with the U.S. committed to leading the way in reducing CO2 emissions. It includes investing in renewable sources of electricity (wind, solar, etc.), with a goal of companies generating 25 percent of their energy from renewables by 2025. It will raise fuel economy standards to 40 mpg by 2016. It will bring developing economies into the mix by “share[ing] clean energy technologies in exchange for binding greenhouse reduction commitments.”

POVERTY

Edwards is committed to ending poverty by 2036. He will increase the minimum wage to (at least) $9.50 an hour by 2012 and indexing it to inflation. He proposes to create one million “stepping stone” jobs, strengthening labor laws and enforcing workplace protections.

CIVIL RIGHTS & CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS

Edwards pledges to protect the Constitution, and respect and restore civil rights and freedoms. In particular he vows that the U.S. will not engage in torture, will restore habeas corpus and shut down Guantanamo, will not engage in warrantless wiretapping, and will fix provisions of the Patriot Act restoring privacy safeguards. He maintains that he will end the practice of presidential “signing statements.”

ELECTIONS

He further pledges to reform election laws, require the use of paper ballots verified by voters, and end voter intimidation and suppression.

This is only a small sampling of Edwards’ comprehensive and very detailed policy papers that comprise his platform. If one wants to see in depth what Edwards is proposing and espousing, and why, it’s all laid out on his Web site: johnedwards.com.

A final and significant point. According to a series of polls – see the Web site for specifics – Edwards proves to be the most electable Democratic candidate when matched against the Republican frontrunners. This is a most important consideration to take into account when choosing a candidate to support.

So for the reasons outlined here based on a careful consideration of his policy papers and positions, and considering the other Democratic candidates in the race, I’ve decided to support John Edwards. Just as a personal aside, I’d like to see him run with Bill Richardson as VP, and then when in office consider Dennis Kucinich for a cabinet position.

Year End Review: Ah So-no-ma

2007-12-13T11:36:00.000-08:00

So, another year: older, grayer, slower and just as uncertain as ever. Everything gets more repetitious, but there are still surprises. You think at 60+ that you know yourself and others close to you pretty well, but you may be in for a shock; or if not a shock, a jolt. Things go along routinely and we fall into a groove with it, and then out of nowhere we get shoved off track, and wondering what the hell hit us. It could be a death in the family, getting fired from a long held job, an unexpected turn in a long-term relationship or anything that sets us off course.

We’re humans. We set courses and try to follow them. We try to make order out of things that don’t always want to stay orderly. When we’re young, routine sounds like the worst thing imaginable. No one says, “I want to have a lot of routine and sameness in my life,” when they’re young. Change, excitement, new adventures – that’s what sparks us.

And then we get older. And older. And there you are at 60+, in the flower of geezerhood, and you like routine; you like sameness and orderliness, and the last thing you want is some change in all that. And it’s inevitable; change, that is.
Change comes, and it comes to everyone no matter how hard they have tried to build their lives resistant to change and new circumstances.

Of course we like breaking away from routine once in awhile: trying new things, traveling, opening up to new experiences. That’s also part of the human package. But after a certain age in life, even when you’re off getting stoked on something new and different, there’s still that tremendous pull to come back to the familiar and the known, the routine and orderly everydayness of life as you’ve constructed it.

So with that paradox in mind let’s review some of the high and low lights as they flickered across Sonoma skies.

*****

A little song entitled: “I Got the Lowdown, Hometown, Downtown Hospital Blues”

Things were looking pretty bad for the Sonoma Hospital Show, it was losing points and its audience in the ratings due to chronic indecision, but it’s out of the ICU and stabilizing. The hospital honchos have made an incisive decision, and the In-Town site has been chosen for a replacement.

Now it is up to the hospital board and CEO to present a strong case to the voters why they have made the best decision, and why we the public must act intelligently and wisely (there’s a challenge), and spend the money and build a hospital. Let me offer this prescription. Impress upon the voters that ultimately it’s their own butts that are on the line. Something congenial like: “Hey folks, think heart attack; think blood pouring from a severed something or other; think stroke, where every second counts. Now think drag-assing to Santa Rosa or Napa at rush hour, reviewing your life as they say you do, while you slide into the big sleep.” Something encouraging and friendly like that. Fear is always a good motivator. Ask the Bush administration.

It’s almost beyond ironic that the final hospital plan – using some of the existing buildings, and buying the adjacent Caranalli property – is basically the same as the original one proposed by Marilyn Goode and Lou Benson two years ago, for which they gathered over 1000 signers on a petition to keep a new hospital in town. They and their supporters were ignored and denigrated by the then hospital board and CEO and their bevy of experts. Goode and Benson were bad-mouthed as know nothing, obstructionist, “little old ladies in tennis shoes.” And so it turns out they were right all along, and all the expert powers that were, with their grandiose plans of a 20+ acres medical complex, had their collective heads up their you-know-where.

*****

Crèche-mania and Other Tales of Woeful Countenance

Up there and vying with the hospital hi-jinks was Sonoma’s mini crusade…

THE RETURN OF THE CRECHE: The Second Coming
Just to recap, ">Episode One, introduced 17 years ago, ended with Joseph, Mary, Baby J, farm animals and wise men (must have gotten crowded in that barn) being driven from the Plaza by the godless hoards of the Secular Humanists. Now in…

Episode Two: CHRISTIAN MARTYRS STRIKE BACK

Temporarily set back in Episode One by turncoat clergy under the influence of liberal pagans, Defenders of the Crèche and their stalwart Knights of Columbus sought to restore the holy crèche to its rightful place in the Plaza del Sonoma.

STARRING

(Newcomer) August Sebastiani, whose outstanding performance has made its mark on Sonoma. And a cast of outstanding other characters who got to have their 3-minutes of say.
Alas, Episode II ends with a defeat for the forces of Everything Good and Holy. But all is not lost. Take heart, council-watchers, there will be an Episode III. The august August gave it away when he said, “You’ve not heard the last of this…” before someone cut off his mic.

*****

Exercising their most democratic and political right, one-third of those voting on a school bond measure judged it unwise to support our children’s educational needs, like library availability, because…that’s how connected these people are to their community. Basically for them it comes down to: “I’ve got mine, and I’m keeping mine, and you can go shove off.” Not too many of these folks will say that, but that’s how I read it, regardless of the fancy rationalizing you’ll hear to defend their penurious stance.

Granted maybe there are some folks who voted against supporting local education because they can’t afford the 28-cents a day it comes out to, – the bond measure asked for $91 a year – but I’ll bet that’s not the vast majority of naysayers. The majority of this one-third minority are people who do not feel connected to their community or its common welfare. They live in a place, but never become of it. They cannot see beyond their tightwadidness to appreciate the simple fact that educating our populace makes for a safer, saner and more aware and intelligent society. These miserly-addicted fail to see it’s in our own self-interest to support education.

Everyone knows that proper support for education in California has been drastically reduced as a consequence of Prop. 13. So it’s up to us, we the good ol’ people, to pony up the $91 /year the measure asked for. I confess I’ve not sent in my check as yet, but I hereby promise to.

*****

So there you have it, gentle blogaddicts, the year in Shonbrun time. Here’s to a good new year, and good riddance to the worst President and administration in U.S. history.
And so it goes…

Rohnert Park Vote Leaves Impeachment Activists Dumbfounded

2007-11-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

By Phil Burk, impeachbush.tv, and Donna Norton, Sonoma County PDA

An unusually large group of citizens showed up at the Rohnert Park City Council meeting on a rainy Tuesday night to ask the City Council to pass a resolution urging Congress to Impeach George Bush and Richard Cheney. At the end of the meeting, those who attended were left scratching their heads and wondering what had happened.

A banner containing signatures of 400 citizens supporting the petition was displayed before the council. Somewhere around 20 people spoke. Once the session got underway, many who had initially not planned to speak ended up filling out cards to participate because they felt compelled to stand up and say something.

Speakers included members of the business community, historians, attorneys, students, activists, and ordinary citizens all demonstrating a clear knowledge of the impeachment process. Testimony was given describing the impeachable offenses committed by Bush and Cheney. Several speakers pointed out that every elected official from Town Councils to the President takes an Oath of Office to protect and “defend the Constitution.” Abuse of powers as well as violations of laws and treaties as documented. Many explained how the crimes Bush and Cheney have committed are a local issue because the illegal war and occupation has negatively impacted the community.

At the end, a 20-year veteran said she had come just to listen but was moved by the other speakers. She said soldiers are not allowed to question their Commander in Chief, but she condemned Bush for what he had done—to the military and her fellow soldiers. She urged the council to vote for the resolution.
After the speakers were finished, the council members gave their response. IT WAS AS THOUGH THEY HAD HEARD NOTHING.

The first member explained he had studied the Constitution and could not vote for the resolution because the right to impeach was given to the House of Representatives, and not to city councils. The audience began to exchange puzzled looks at this point. The second member reiterated the opinion of the first and urged the crowd to become “more educated voters” because that was the best way to avoid situations such as this. The crowd gasped in amazement. “Do you think we voted for Bush?” one asked.

The remaining council members continued in the same vein. These are among the points they raised as to why they could not act on the resolution:

• Only Congress can initiate the impeachment process, a city council cannot •
• They can only act within the parameters of their office, and this falls outside of that scope •
• It is not their role or a function of their office to act on national issues * (And get this one, spoken by the Mayor herself) It is not in their oath of office to get involved in Constitutional matters. (Has she read the oath she took? “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States . . . against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . ..”) •
• It falls outside their “jurisdiction” and they must avoid this, as it could result in legal problems •
• If they act on this, they could be violating the Constitution because it was outside their jurisdiction •

At this point, the crowd was apoplectic. Phil Burk raised his hand, insisting on addressing the legal issue that had been raised. He was invited to the podium and allowed two minutes. He explained the resolution was not asking the council to directly impeach Bush and Cheney. The resolution was a petition urging Congress to impeach. He explained it’s a standard practice, and the notion that Rohnert Park has no right to petition the federal government is legally incorrect. They looked stunned and didn’t get it. Phil cited references and laid it all out. They looked stunned and STILL didn’t get it. They seemed not to grasp the meaning of “jurisdiction” and why it did not apply here. They were not being asked to pass a law. They were being asked to petition Congress.

They refused to entertain further objections. At this point, the Council unanimously rejected the resolution on the grounds that the Constitution did not grant them the power to impeach.

It was astounding to those present. The disbelieving crowd noisily gathered in the lobby and tried to assess what had happened. “Did they simply misunderstand the resolution?” one asked. Some felt the council was simply unaware of its own rights. Others suspected the council was merely trying to hide its real reasons for not supporting the resolution. It was even more frustrating to those of us who had fought to get impeachment on the council’s agenda because prior to the hearing we had provided each member with a small packet of carefully selected materials covering all the points they seemed to be so painfully unaware of.

A number of us gathered in a nearby restaurant to attempt to sort out the details and determine what should be done next. We decided the rejection had to be challenged because it was based on a number of faulty premises. Perhaps a visit to the offices of the city officials (city manager, city legal counsel, etc.) would be in order. The citizens deserve to be heard by a council that understands what’s being asked and the nature of the process available to them. If they’re going to reject the citizens’ proposal, then it needs to be because they feel the acts of Bush and Cheney do not constitute a threat to our system of government—not on the faulty premise that the Constitution does not grant the council the right to impeach and that petitioning Congress is outside the council’s “jurisdiction.”

Editor's note: The Rohnert Park City Council's refusal to hear its citizen representatives and the voices of 400 petitioners comes as no surprise to this editor. At a meeting of Sonoma County progressive city council members, so-called progressive councilmen from Rohnert Park, Jake McKenzie and Tim Smith took a similar head-in-the-sand position when asked to lend support for an Out of Iraq Resolution presented to the Sonoma City Council. Mckenzie's behavior was particularly rude and obnoxious, indicative of his disdain for addressing issues outside what he and others on the RP Council consider outside the purview of their little bailiwick. This in total disregard of the hundreds of cities, large and small, across the nation that had passed resolutions urging withdrawal from Iraq within a year's time. This was in 2006. The short-sighted and imbecilic stance adopted by these stalwarts of the people's business, using the dodge that it's not a local issue, flies in the face of reality and just plain common sense. Just recently the Press Democrat ran an article showing the tax burden felt by all citizens of Sonoma County in paying for the war and occupation. Sonoma County hospitals are in deep financial trouble as are its schools and infrastructure. This is a direct result here and elsewhere of taking local and state taxes and pouring them down the deadly hole that has become Iraq occupation.
It is incomprehensible that county city councils are unable or unwilling to see the connections between local effects and national issues when it comes to matters like Iraq or impeachment of executive branch criminal activities. Hopefully county voters, progressive or otherwise, will remember such cowardly and dismissive behavior by recalcitrant politicians who blatantly refuse to listen to local voices. Some of these local pols have made a comfy career ensconced on councils at the people's expense, and it's high time to limit their terms.
Will Shonbrun

Medical Marijuana Madness

2007-11-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

The villagers were out in force on a Wednesday evening on October 24 at a Riverside Drive commercial building complex just outside city limits, and though while not armed with pitchforks and torches were just about as riled up and fearful as the mobs in corny monster movies. The villagers in this case are the residents of the La Mancha housing complex, and they’re up at arms about a medical marijuana dispensary that may open its doors adjacent to their peaceful village to strictly qualified patients.

Many neighborhood opponents vehemently expressed their concerns to a panel of five proponents moderated, sometimes refereed, by Sonoma Index-Tribune editor David Bolling. As reported in that paper most of the neighbor’s questions and comments voiced legal, security and property value concerns. A consensus among the dispensary opponents seemed to be: We’re not against medical marijuana per se, but we don’t want it in proximity to our ‘hood. Right or wrong this is classic NIMBYism and no surprise.

The reality of this issue is this: Patients who need marijuana for medical purposes are not clustered in one town or area of the county, they’re all over the place. To suggest, as it was, having one Sonoma city or district as the designated medical marijuana dispensary area – Santa Rosa was the designated target – defies the logic of the situation. Would we place hospitals in only one area of the county?

The panel was able for the most part to answer factually and straightforwardly the questions and concerns directed their way. Myths and misunderstandings about dispensaries were fielded and answered by the panelists citing fact based data in response to opponents fears and concerns, which should have but often did not assuage the palpable negativity of many in the audience. It was clear after an hour and a half of offense and defense that many La Manchans came with minds made up, and they weren’t going to let facts and reason get in the way.

It was also abundantly clear to this observer that the medical marijuana dispensary folks weren’t going to win any hearts and minds among opponents, but is that necessary? Yes and no. If they adhere to the county’s stringent rules and regulations governing an enterprise of this nature then their business application should pass muster. But the kicker is that the Board of Supervisors gets to vote on this matter, and that hurdle is the wild card. The Sonoma Valley District Supervisor, Valerie Brown, commissioned this town hall meeting, and if I remember correctly asked Bolling to moderate, but oddly she did not attend. No doubt she got a report by staff, but still it begs the question - why was she absent in light of the public event being one she herself inculcated.

In light of full disclosure I fully support marijuana for medical purposes, and the establishment of dispensaries wherever they adhere to county regulations. I also fully support the use of marijuana in general and its being decriminalized and government regulated the same as the booze industry. Government has no business legislating the use of intoxicants other than regulating it regarding public safety concerns and legal business practices.

For factual information and data about medical marijuana and dispensaries here are some sources:
http://www.AmericansforSafeAccess.org / 510-251-1856
Organic Cannabis Foundation, Member Handbook – Rules & Regulations of the Dispensary, http://www.organicann.com / cannaorganic@yahoo.com
SAMM.net – Sonoma County Alliance for Medical marijuana
NORML.org
Common Sense for Drug Policy, 703-354-9050, info@csdp.org, http://www.csdp.org

Sonoma County Rally to End Occupation

2007-10-24T11:09:00.001-07:00

By Peter Phillips

Sonoma County stands up to end the Iraq occuppation and impeach the president

Hundreds of Santa Rosa activists rallied to end the Iraq occupation and demanded impeachment of the war criminals in the Whitehouse. The rally featured congresswomen Lynn Woolsey saying, “we need to bring our troops home now!” The rally was cheered on by radio hosts Evelina Molina, Miguel Molina and Dennis Bernstein from KPFA’s Flashpoints program.

Former Black Panther Elbert “Big Man” Howard called for ending the war and reminded the audience of the struggle of the Black Panther party in the 1960s. Norman Solomon spoke as a guest of the Progressive Democrats of America, documenting the corporate media’s continuing support for war.

Miles Everett with the Alliance for Democracy emphasized the importance of impeachment now to end the war and save lives in Iraq.

Davin Cardenas, outlined how US immigration policies are falsely linked to the war on terror and how torture is nothing new to the people of Latin America.

Elizabeth Stinson, encouraged people with relatives and friends thinking of joining the military or already in the service to visit the Peace and Justice Center for counseling on alternative programs to the military or how active duty personnel opposed to the war can leave with an honorable discharge.

Impeachment of Cheney and Bush was a common rally cry during the afternoon. The World Can’t Wait team built a mock jail and imprisoned George W. Bush. Progressive Democrats of Sonoma County circulated petitions for local city councils to pass impeachment resolutions and the Raging Grannies sang an impeachment song.

Music for the rally was provided by Gale Mead, Midnight Sun, Comanche High Power.

The event was sponsored by twenty-eight Sonoma county activists groups including, Progressive Democrats Sonoma County, Project Censored, Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County, Casa Calpulli, Committee for Immigrants Rights, Department of Peace Campaign, Graton Day Labor, Healdsburg Peace Project, Healdsburg Progressive Club, Instituto Sanchez Mendoza, Peace Club of SSU, Petaluma Copwatch, Raging Grannies, Resolution to Impeach Coalition, Santa Rosa Democratic Club, Sonoma County Democracy for America, Sonoma County Free Press, SSU Black Student Union, Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for Media Democracy, Unitarian Universalists Petaluma, Veterans For Peace, Vietnam Vets Against the War, Wearenotbuyingit.org, World Can’t Wait.

Who ARE We?

2007-10-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

By Will Shonbrun

This most fundamental question, inflected with utter frustration and plaintive inquiry by Michael Moore in his movie “Sicko,” hits like a blow to the solar plexus. It emerges from Moore in a brutal, desperate moment as he explores the pay-to-play condition of health care in the U.S. today. It begs a further question: Why does a nation, a culture that prides itself on family values and moral rectitude not care about one-sixth of its population without health insurance and therefore almost bereft of health care? Eight and a half million of those approximately 50 million without health insurance are children, presumably members of families. Add to that an estimated 50 million more that are underinsured and subject to bankruptcy if a costly medical condition arises, and that’s fully one-third of our population. Consider as well that there are hundreds of thousands more who are covered only insofar as their employment has picked it up, a tenuous condition to be sure, and it’s easy to understand why nobody likes this state of affairs except insurance companies and all those ancillary businesses that feed off them like so many parasites. And of course Congress isn’t really bothered by this because those folks have about the best health insurance coverage and benefits, as it’s possible to receive.

So when Moore encounters the desperate plights of his subjects in the film, at the mercy of an uncaring health care system, keeping in mind that these are representative of tens of millions of our countrymen/women, it’s little wonder that the question, the challenge, the wail that emerges is “who are we?” It stayed with me when I left the theater.

Critics of the film say that Moore has set up the scenes in order to make his points. Yes, well of course the sequences showing the viewer the hopeless frustration, anger and fear these chosen subjects experience trying to get medical help for themselves or loved ones are contrived, staged to a certain degree. It’s a film – it’s not shot in real time! But that doesn’t mean it’s not real, that their pain and suffering isn’t genuine. The people are real, their medical problems are real and their inability to get the health care they need because the strictly for profit system doesn’t really give a damn about them is all too real. Moore’s film chronicles these realities.

The other main avenue of criticism was that the film is way one-sided, and its targets weren’t given a chance to tell their side of the story. Please. To complain that health insurance companies and big pharma have been underrepresented in the public arena is foolish beyond words. Such misguided criticism dissolves when confronted by the relentless bombardment of advertising and PR done by the companies who are the system, and want to keep it that way. Their worst nightmare is a universal, single-payer, government administrated health care system, like those in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada et al. The voices of the health care industry are heard every day on TV, radio and in print. One peep from the other side through the voice of Mr. Moore and the industry screams “foul, unfair, unbalanced.” What a load of crap.

So the question “who are we?” and its unspoken implication, “what kind of people are we?” hangs in the air, unanswered. And it goes even further and deeper than our broken down, exclusive and dehumanized health care system.

Who we are: Conned by the neo-cons, or we did get fooled again
We’re a nation that waged a pre-emptive war of aggression against a country that did not attack us, and as the information has come to light had neither the means nor the inclination to do so. Our elected representatives in government, ostensibly chosen because they have leadership ability, let themselves be manipulated and fooled, lied to and propagandized by a president and his administration bent on this disastrous escapade. They did not explore and examine the truth of the claims that were made – they followed blindly like a spooked herd and displayed neither reason, skepticism or the use of considered judgment for which they were voted into office. They were fed outright lies and half-truths; they were conned by a slick coterie of propagandists who wanted to invade Iraq, and knew how to play upon the hysteria and politics of terrorism; they failed miserably to show a scintilla of sagacity and question the fantasy of a mad adventure. There were a few exceptions, but the Congress almost overwhelmingly bought the concocted story of mushroom clouds, an Iraqi connection to 9/11 and al Qaeda, and all the rest of the unmitigated crap dished up by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell, and cheer led by George W. Bush, a man of almost no sound judgment whatsoever. A man blind to actions and consequences, and somehow unaffected by the monumental misery and suffering he has wrought. A man so disconnected from reality he can barely ad lib an intelligent sentence.

The war and occupation was brought to us by neo-conservative politicians, cabinet and staff appointees, and pundits and media acolytes insisting on U.S. hegemony employing pre-emptive wars, and selling bogus scenarios as reasons for doing so. As if that alone wasn’t bad enough, when it came to carrying out their plans for world dominance – see “Project for a New American Century” – they fucked up so mightily and so completely in every possible way it makes one wonder why anything that comes out of their mouths should be believed for one second. Yet their pronouncements are still considered and even given some credence by the media and the public.

Governments lie. Let me repeat that, GOVERNMENTS LIE; they always have, and most probably always will. Governments are people, and people lie for an abundance of reasons. That doesn’t mean government is evil or unnecessary; it means government (our fellow countrymen/women) must be watched for truthfulness and consistency in words and actions. That’s the job of the citizen in a democracy, and if we don’t stay on top of it we’re going to be manipulated and screwed upside down and backward. Whether it’s human nature or not I don’t know, but it’s reality. Follow the self-interest and you’ll get to the motive. We should know this. The U.S. citizen’s political reality handbook should be part of every school curricula. But alas, the education system has no interest in this kind of learning; it’s more concerned with testing, and tenure and retiring young enough to enjoy it. Who can blame them? Self-interest drives us all. Reagan said, “Trust, but verify.” I say don’t trust anything or anyone until you’ve found out for yourself what the truth is. I thought we’d learned this lesson long ago, but I was wrong.

We will be fooled again
We have become easy prey; primed and pumped by biased media pundits and partisan newspapers, TV news shows, and radio loudmouths selling fear, hate and their own twisted ideologies. We have let the public airwaves become the private property of mega corporations because we did not stand up and say, “No, this communication highway is publicly owned, and you can only rent its use.” Broadcast contracts are hardly if ever rescinded; they have become like corporations – immortal. And now it’s too late to reclaim our public rights because those we put in charge to protect the public’s interest sold out to the media corporations, which employ armies of lawyers to protect their interests. News has fused with entertainment, and become propaganda espousing political points of view, not credible and balanced reporting.

Administrations lead us into wars, and there is no longer a viable Fourth Estate to probe, and question, and doubt, and work to find out what is true and what isn’t. The press and their TV counterparts have become the lackeys of the corporations, which in unity with government and the military dictate the politics and social structures almost all are subject to. We no longer have a free and independent press to act as a firewall between those who sell us some bill of goods. By and large we have become a nation of dupes, dramatically evident by a Congress that so easily succumbed to the lies and false information propagated by a war mongering president and his minions. If these elected representatives are supposed to be the best and the brightest among us, what does that say about us?

Because we have let ourselves, through disinterest, or distraction, or confusion or some other reason become dupes, marks, easily manipulated by those with self-serving agendas, and because we relinquished the charge to be ever vigilant if we were to maintain our democracy, we the people are no longer a force in controlling the overreaching and intrusion of government. ‘Overreaching’ in terms of foreign policy and insinuating U.S. interests into foreign affairs, and ‘intrusion’ into the private, personal activities of its citizens. What Ike once called the “military-industrial complex” is now more akin to a military-industrial-political-corporate complex that has embedded itself in just about every facet of public life. Even the Judiciary, one of the legs of the check-and-balance triad, has become hopelessly political and partisan, and therefore ideological rather than impartial.

“Nothing to fear, but fear itself” ain’t nothing
We have become so easily manipulated by fear that we have willingly sacrificed the very Constitutional rights and liberties revolutionary Americans gave their lives for. We have stood by while our government abandoned the centuries old foundational legal principle – habeas corpus – which protects all human beings accused of crimes to know the charge, and have access to courts and trials. We have succumbed to fear to such a degree that we accept the use of torture in interrogations. Torture! Anathema to almost every nation on earth. We have even accepted the kidnapping of suspects for the express purpose of torture in secret prisons in undisclosed foreign nations.

I say ‘we accepted’ because it is we who elect our governments, and these representatives in turn control the direction and interests of the country. Where have these elected representatives been while Constitutional rights have been systematically eroded? More so, aren’t most of those in that illustrious group called Congress the very ones who brought us to where we are as a country; a nation disdained by most of the world? Maybe we can say we didn’t know the truth about the lead-up to war, or what really goes on in Washington because our news and information sources aren’t reliable, or even straight with us. I don’t think it’s a valid excuse, but I can see some merit in the argument. But when the truth about some of these things we’ve been told comes to light, and our representatives in government are still not acting to enforce change, then we, the public, are responsible for the condition of things. And the question, “Who are we?” is even more valid.

So who are we?
It’s a cultural question so vast and so deep it will take (and there have been) myriad books and other publications, Net sites, films, TV and radio programs, and countless discussions and forums to fathom it all – in time. But we can look at some of the outward manifestations of our culture and reach certain conclusions. We can examine the tableaux of our own lives, and judge how we are spending our time on Earth. Most of the world doesn’t have that luxury; they’re just trying to stay alive, and avoid undue suffering. That’s true for some in our country, but not for many. We can look at the primary institutions in our country – government and electoral politics, the public education system, environmental protection agencies, business, labor and wages, and health care – and see if we think they’re working. Is the vast majority of our populace benefiting from these civic constructs, and are their prospects improving, or are significant changes within these systems required for that outcome? Are the systems we have devised to direct our lives toward the “pursuit of happiness” aiding and abetting that process, or not?
Seems to me that’s a question all who live in a democracy need to ask.

In wrestling with the question, “Who are we?” I was struck with the realization that the driving force motivating our young (and not so young) solders to go to war was the feeling of comradeship and brotherhood engendered under those extreme conditions. Time and again when interviewed these soldiers, even those who sustained wounds, expressed “love” and fealty toward their unit. Yes, patriotism and sense of duty were strong factors, but they were not the first things expressed when soldiers were asked why they were reenlisting. “I couldn’t leave my buddies behind,” they said in one way or another. Stronger than the fear of bodily injury or even death was the need for camaraderie, brotherhood and love for one’s fellow being.

So my question is: Does it take a war, a life or death situation, for us Americans to feel that way about one another? Are we capable of experiencing these strong feelings for one another only in the most extreme of circumstances? Are the feelings of comradeship, empathy and a shared deep appreciation of one another not attainable in other ways? I don’t believe that, and I know it is not true. But it seems that so many of our countrymen/women don’t, and it makes me wonder all the more – who are we?

BackStage w/ Mikey - 2007 Sonoma Vintage Festival

2007-10-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

By Michael J. Kelley

What’s good for your soul, and your spirit,
and your ability to build community,
well, there’s only Live Music:
T’ain’t Nothin’ Else Like It!

Even though this year’s Vintage Festival concluded its many merriments by Sunday night ...alright, truth be known ...there are known revelers who passed into Monday and October with their sustained enthusiasm for the 110th celebration of The Harvest and all that’s good about Sonoma; at least that’s how I tend to see it, and I should know: I was there for the whole thing!! Here it is, just two [short] days later, when I have regained my footing at home and equilibrium afoot, I will savor the activities of this weekend last for the whole of the interim year until we get to do it again [111th here we come!]!

Such splendid examples of celebration, fond remembrances, savory ...indeed, thoroughly tasty ...delicacies to delight the every sense could only be presented in such fine ...dare I say ...Sonoma fashion with the participation and support of hundreds, nigh, thousands, for each had a place and a part to play. Partyologists of this brand include organizers, artists, entrepreneurs, historians, hams, accountants, manufacturers, middlemen, ministers and minstrels, culinary magicians, vintners, volunteers [!], farmers, farmworkers and folks; and what a wide selection of folks there were too! From Boy Scouts to Boob Awareness, from Educators trying to augment their programs by selling snacks [...sigh ...I’ll have another cotton candy [burp!]], to Firemen ...and Firewomen ...tapping the brew for a few bucks to run their ever-challenging emergency protection services, and service organizations, and non-profits, and kids, old folks, big folks and small, even folks who weren’t folks at all: Horses, and animals and tractors and pageantry aidst sirens and music, music, music! The Sonoma High School Marching Band [Go Dragons!], the [dreaded ...alright ...always happy to see them [go]] Bagpipers Marching Band, the acapella flight of favorite son Diego Garcia with blessings for the grape in song and community in advance of the second-longest running parade in California [next to only the Rose Parade in Pasadena]. Grape Stomping contests, Wine Serving Obstacle Courses, rock walls to climb, potatoes to toss, art and poetry and thought, and information ...and sharing ...beautiful food [some dangerous food too ...alright ...who doesn’t like a corn dog every now and then!], bountiful blessings and every expression of gratitude and glee could be seen on the thousands of faces there in the home of the [now, 161 year old] Independent Republic of California. Some were relieved that the [grape] crush was on, or nearly over; while others were all too happy to be recipients of the very finest offerings of this here Green Earth!

The wine [!], and the song! Oh my God [in both cases; multiple cases of each [quite actually!]]!

Winemakers and their wineries, crooners and their bands; glasses, guitars, titillating tastes of vino and vocalists paired so well with the potpourri of musical pleasures that rang out from the two stages. I can’t say first-hand about the front stage, but I can only imagine the captivating sounds of local hero Rich Little ...among many others [including Latin favorites Bautista, David Correa and Cascada, Los Califas, and the Peones del Norte, Wayward Sway [I got a thing for the violin player [!], and the fabulous David Thom Band; see The Sonoma Valley Music Scene in the weekly Sun for details] ...self-accompanied with only his voice and the caress of his ethereal Chapman Stick blending perfectly with the day’s meanderings amidst the
warm glow of a sun turning to autumn.

On the back stage however, I can speak with unabashed authority for there wasn’t a moment of it that did not pass through my sensory awareness [the joy of being on the Stage Crew [especially when pouring Mr. Little’s very own ...and tasty! ...“Band Blend Red”!]; as Emcee [I love that spelling!], beyond joy was my opportunity to meet, and to get to know, and work with, band after world-class band, headliners [Tommy Castro [the Hardest-Workin’ Band in show business holds the record for playing 500- something consecutive gigs, in a row [that’s almost two years straight!], showed us all what really dynamic blues is all about, Roy Rogers [all I can say is Holy Cow [the Maestro of the modern slide guitar can be found with The Delta Rhythm Kings at roy-rogers.com]!], local heroes [The Hellhounds [truly and deeply in their element!], the favorite sons known as The Whiskey Theives [those boys DO know how to rock!], The P.O.T. [only Hall-of-Famer Tommy Thomson could pull together such an awesome Power Organ Trio [and have a follow-up gig that night over at Little Switzerland! [way to go Tom!]]!], The Smokin’ Jaze [with Front-men Joe Herrschaft and Danny T’Bone rattlin’ us to our roots!] even Jamie Clark and The Players stopped whining long enough to belt out a really cool set], virtuosos every one; some were just flat out rockers! Stunning singers, out of this universe guitar and harmonica riffs, unbelievably motivating drummers and rhythm sections, there was simply no way to be within earshot of the occasion without wanting to tap your toe: Dancing ran
rampant, thanks in very large toasts ...I believe he prefers Pinot ...to the VintageFest Boardsman, Music Coordinator, Stage Manager [x 2!], IT Hero, DJ, Columnist, Force Majeure and Rock-Star unto himself [last seen playing a charitable fund-raising party of course!], Mr. James Marshall Berry [aka Capt. Ide of
“The Bear Flag Revolt Re-enactment” and The Anchorman for the ...Bear Flag ...”Revolt” rock ‘n roll band!]. Dashing only begins to describe Mr. Berry’s presence throughout the whole of the weekend’s events, with the fruits of his many preparations simply drenching the audience who came and went, and came back and sat and sipped, then stood, had to dance, and otherwise found the stage behind Sonoma City Hall just the perfect scale for the scope and impact of the music performed there. Loaded with stars both known and not, two days and seven acts took us on a roller-coaster of a ride that appropriately wafted towards the Pioneer Cemetery northward from The Plaza; I believe our ancestors would approve! [Did I mention that all of this music was Free [and I’d have many kind feelings for the splendid Richard Olsen Orches-tra, save my inability to attend the Patron’s Nite Gala]?]

When JM and I assured ourselves that all was finito that Sunday night, astride my homeward-bound motor-cycle, I found BR Cohn standing in the street in front of The Swiss Hotel; I got to chide him for scheduling his big music bash over the same weekend, because of course, one can’t do both, and, up until now, Bruce has
braved the peril of the weather pretty well [though they got some wet butts out there last year, so we know why he upped the calendar]. Besides, there were a couple of thousand people at The Plaza anyway, all dancin’ and drinkin’ and eatin’ and paradin’, and havin’ a fine-old time! Maybe that’s enough; maybe that’s just perfect,
though ...somehow ...part of me would like to see everybody from every part of this valley show up at the same event, and if any event can do it, this one’s got the appeal, diversity, history, and growth potential to provide a fun, egalitarian forum found nowhere else: This year’s Festival certainly had something for everybody, as it
remembered a little more of itself, and where it’s come from; it tried some new things quite deliciously, and ultimately forwarded an inclusive, creative tone that now resonates outward from the Center of the Universe as the model for the 111th.

Michael Kelley can be contacted at: bydsine@vom.com

Sun's Coverage of Creche Issue Sloppy and Misleading

2007-09-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Sun newspaper's story purportedly covering the crèche issue was as imbalanced a report as its editorial was superficial.

The story devoted two paragraphs to Councilman Sebastiani’s arguments, and a full paragraph in agreement with it by a spokesperson for the Knights of Columbus. Exactly one sentence in opposition to the proposal from retired minister David McCracken was quoted, and acknowledgement of the “no” vote cast by Mayor Cohen.

At the council meeting about a dozen people spoke against Sebastiani’s proposal to bring back the crèche, and to open up the Plaza for religious displays. All religions that is – presumably on their major holidays as well. A broad range of objections were voiced at the meeting ranging from the First Amendment’s establishing of what later became known as the separation of church and state, to the unclear meaning and implementation of “content-neutral” used in the proposal, to the many policy implementation questions that were brought up. None of this showed up in the reporter’s story.

The nativity scene editorial praised the council for its “open-mindedness” in deliberating Sebastiani’s proposal, and admired a point brought up maintaining that the crèche is “public art,” and therefore is okay on government property. If a plastic mold representing the manger scene is “art,” then what is the Pieta?

Proponent of having religious displays (for 28 days), Councilman Ken Brown, gets to put his message in the editorial, but not one word of counter argument from the many who spoke in opposition. The editorial makes the claim that “… the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in order to protect religion from government not the other way around.” Is that so? No reference is cited to back this claim.

Even though the intent of the very first sentence of the Constitution regarding religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” has been debated down through the ages, given its historical context, and other writings of Madison and Jefferson, the principal framers of the document, it clearly indicates that there should be no endorsing of religion, or prohibition against any religion on the part of the government. In fact it was so important to establish this fundamental caveat that it was purposely given top billing. The founding fathers sought to create a government based on rational justification for its policies, not theocratic doctrines, biblical or otherwise. “Religion flourishes in greater purity, without, than with, the aid of government.” Those are the words of James Madison, author of the First Amendment.

Then there are administrative policy implementation questions that were never addressed by the council or staff. For example: What will be the nature of the display, i.e., statues or symbols only, or words too? If words are allowed, what words will be allowed or not, and why? Any limitation on size or lighting? If there’s vandalism who bears the cost? Will insurance be required and if so, what type and in what amount? How much will additional use impact Plaza grounds? And suppose a generally disdained radical religious group wants a spot on the Plaza. If such decisions have to be content-neutral, is that okay?

Mr. Sebastiani says that he wants to change the city policy in order to promote freedom of religious expression, and that the current policy stifles that. That’s hard to accept considering that religious speech occurs in myriad religious venues in our country practically every day of the year. Free religious speech is practiced in abundance on radio and TV, and in countless newspapers, books and magazines. There has never been any attempt in this or any other town to bridle or restrict free expression of religion. But it is a completely different matter than having an overtly religious display on city property in front of City Hall for 28 days. That strongly suggests endorsement of religion by government, and in my estimation puts us on the slipperiest of slopes.

The Creche War- Take Two

2007-09-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday the city council will take up again the question of whether to have a nativity scene in the Plaza at Christmas. For years this was a common occurrence until around 1990 when questions came up regarding the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution directing that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...", and a vigorous and at times vitriolic debate consumed many in the Sonoma community. The opinions and positions grew so divisive that leaders in the religious community advised having the creche or other iconography relegated to church grounds, and leave the Plaza - local government property - unadorned of any religious symbols. It's commonly agreed that Xmas trees, Santa Claus, plastic reindeer and the like do not solely promote a religious message, and are more in keeping with traditional holiday symbols. In fact a result of the bitter divide among our populace was an establishment of a Plaza Display Policies regulating Plaza use for religious and other purposes.

Councilman Sebastiani has decided he wants to revisit the Plaza Use Policies regarding the holiday display policy, and he'll present his thoughts on the matter at the upcoming city council meeting on the 19th at the Vet's. Building. Early in his nascent career in local politics, Mr. Sebastiani expressed a fervent wish to reinstate the nativity scene on the Plaza at Xmas time, drudging up past feelings that wracked the community 17 years ago, and will probably reoccur this go around. Oddly, Sebastiani, who has steadfastly refused to consider national issues such as the Iraq war or immigration reform despite their having substantial and demonstrable local effects and impacts, is all too willing to take on a Constitutional issue that has been debated practically since its inception. How he has managed in his mind to tease this 1st Amendment directive, which is clearly an overarching issue of national scope, is a puzzle that the councilman will have to unravel for our edification at the meeting.

Here's my thoughts on the matter. First let’s begin with a little history lesson.

The birth of this nation ushered in a fundamental shift as to the purpose and the structure of government. It saw the end of monarchy and the flowering of democracy – a profound and radical departure. Under governance by monarchy or totalitarian dictate the people served the government. In a democracy the people were the government – elected and interchangeable by popular vote. The government became that which served the public interest.

The people who crafted the Constitution that would establish this new and ground-breaking form of government were well aware of the pitfalls of policy set by decree at the whim or pleasure of a single individual – a king or potentate – or policy set by powerful institutions such as the military or predominant religious groups to serve their particular interests. Therefore they constructed a document of laws that focused on individual freedoms, individual human rights, a press free to go wherever it wanted, and no religious restrictions or adoption of any religious belief by the government. They knew this was a key element in forming a union between disparate factions with differing objectives. They knew that church and state must stay separate for the sake of building a coherent though diverse populace, which is what they were then, and what we are now. And it’s a good thing.

A nativity scene crèche honoring the birth of Jesus Christ is Christian iconography of the highest order. It celebrates one religion – one religious point of view among many others. If a particular religion can place its bedrock theological symbol on property owned by our government, and therefore owned in common by the public, it violates the Constitutional separation of church and state. In the words of James Madison, author of the First Amendment, "Religion flourishes in greater purity, without, than with, the aid of Government." From time to time religious groups have tried end-runs around the First Amendment's attempt to keep church and state separate by incorporating other religions symbols in conjunction with Christian ones on government property, in essence saying, "see, this isn't government holding one religion over any other, so it's not really unconstitutional." Nevertheless this is still an attempt to water down the very first directive of the Bill of Rights, wisely telling us to keep government and religion separate; for an intermingling of the two profound influences constructs the slipperiest of all slopes. As was said in one Supreme Court decision: "A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."

Contrary to the belief of some we are not a Christian nation. We are a nation comprised of a majority who believe in one form or another of Christianity, but we also have populations of people who think and believe differently, religiously and otherwise. If we impose the sanctity or value of one religion over another then we are in essence no different than Islamic fundamentalists who insist reality must be seen their way. There is no difference between a "Christian" nation or an "Islamic" state except except the divergent world views and ideologies. They are both religious governments based on religious ideals and exclusionary by their very nature. Is this what we envision for our country - to become religiously doctrinaire?

We are not a Christian nation. Our form of government is non-sectarian. Those chosen by the people to govern are of varying religious and even non- religious beliefs, as is our populace. In fact the form of our government borrowed heavily from Greek and Roman predecessors, not the bible. Welcome to the age of reason.

We must retain this basic, fundamental principle of democracy or we will lose that which set us apart at its inception from the other nations on Earth. We must maintain the separation of church and state so that all may choose to worship or not to worship a religious or non-sectarian belief or philosophy as they so wish – without sanction or interference by the government. I firmly believe that this is what the Constitutional framers had in mind, but interpretations have been debated for hundreds of years and obviously will continue. In his zeal to impose his views on the matter, Sebstiani has reopened this kettle of fish, so I expect this battle will rage on. And to what end really? There are plenty of churches in Sonoma and no dearth of creches, etc., adorn their properties. Or is this just more divisive behavior we've come to expect from the Republican religious right-wing who rejoice in driving ideological wedges between those who disagree with their aims? We'll see.

A Republican Scam to Win the '08 Presidential Election

2007-08-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

By Tom Martin

The Republicans under the banner of a committee misnamed "Californians for Equal Representation" are gathering signatures for an initiative for the June primary ballot that will do the following: Distribute California's electoral votes by the outcome in each Congressional District and statewide for the votes representing the U.S. Senators. This isn't a new idea, and it is present in Maine and Nebraska where the number of districts number nine (9) and the state uniformally votes one way in any event. However, in California if this were in place in 2000 and 2004 GW Bush would have gotten 20 additional electoral votes - equal to the total from the State of Ohio.

When in graduate school circa 1961-63 at UCSB in Gorden Baker's class, a colleague and friend of Gene Lee, we did a study of a variety of electoral "reform" ideas using data from the election of 1960. Nationwide, in the case of the division of electoral votes by CD and Senate seats, Nixon would have beaten Kennedy.

The same would have occurred if the electoral votes had been divided between candidates based on the percent of the popular vote received on a state by state basis.

In each case, however, Kennedy would still have received a larger popular vote than Nixon. These "reforms" carry over the bias of the Constitution towards small states in the E.C. The two senators from Montana represent a fraction of the population that a California, New York, Pennsylvania, or Texas senator does. However, their votes carry equal weight. Within states, the voice of the majority is often tempered by gerrymandering districts or natural pockets of contrary views. Simply look at the distribution of California's blue and red counties for proof.

The point is ... in the absence of a popular vote for President, the winner take all system in the electoral college more often reflects the popular will notwithstanding the theft of the Presidency in 2000 and two elections in the 19th Century. Democrats stand to lose in any reform other than a popular vote. Otherwise, why would the California State Republican Party be promoting Initiative No. 07-0032? The Law office of Bell, McAndrew, and Hiltachk - lawyers for the Cal. Rep. Party - is the address for "Californians for Equal Representation." Hiltachk is Schwarzenegger's personal lawyer for electoral matters and handled the recall election of the Governor!

Below is a copy of the New Yorker article.

----------

Votescam

By Hendrik Hertzberg
The New Yorker
At first glance, next year’s Presidential election looks like a blowout. But it might not be. Luckily for the incumbent party, neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney will be running; indeed, the election of 2008 will be the first since 1952 without a sitting President or Vice-President on the ballot. At the moment, survey research reflects a generic public preference for a Democratic victory next year. Still, despite everything, there are nearly as many polls showing particular Republicans beating particular Democrats as vice versa. So this election could be another close one. If it is, the winner may turn out to have been chosen not on November 4, 2008, but five months earlier, on June 3rd.

Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California’s electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes—votes that it wouldn’t get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union.

The Tuesday after the first Monday in June is California’s traditional Primary Day. But it’s not the one that everybody will be paying attention to. Five months ago, the legislature hastily moved the Presidential part up to February 5th, joining a stampede of states hoping to claim a piece of the early-state action previously reserved for Iowa and New Hampshire. June 3rd will be an altogether sleepier, low-turnout affair. There may be a few scattered contests for legislative nominations, but the only statewide items on the ballot will be initiatives. More than two dozen have been filed so far, ranging from a proposal to start a state-run Internet poker site to pay for filling potholes to a redundant slew of anti-gay-marriage measures. Few will make it to the ballot. Many are not even intended to; they’re a feint in some byzantine negotiation, or just a cheap attempt to get a little attention—for a two-hundred-dollar fee, anyone can file one. (Actually getting one on the ballot requires more than four hundred thousand signatures, and the outfits that collect them usually charge a dollar or two per signature.) Initiative No. 07-0032—the Presidential Election Reform Act—is different. It’s serious. Its backers have access to serious money. And it could pass.

Nominally, the sponsor of No. 07-0032 is Californians for Equal Representation. But that’s just a letterhead—there’s no such organization. Its address is the office suite of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, the law firm for the California Republican Party, and its covering letter is signed by Thomas W. Hiltachk, the firm’s managing partner and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s personal lawyer for election matters. Hiltachk and his firm have been involved in many well-financed ballot initiatives before, including the recall that put Arnold in Sacramento. They specialize in initiatives that are the opposite of what they sound like—the Fair Pay Workplace Flexibility Act of 2006, for example. It would have raised the state minimum wage slightly—by a lesser amount than it has since been raised—and, in the fine print, would have made it impossible ever to raise it again except by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the legislature, while, for good measure, eliminating overtime for millions of workers.

“Equal Representation” sounds good, too. And the winner-take-all rule, which is in force in all but two states, does seem unfair on the face of it. (The two are Maine and Nebraska, which use congressional-district allocation. But they are so small—only five districts between them—and so homogeneous that neither has ever split its electoral votes.) It would be obviously unjust for a state to give all its legislative seats to the party that gets the most votes statewide. So why should Party A get a hundred per cent of that state’s electoral votes if forty per cent of its voters support Party B? No wonder Democrats and Republicans alike initially react to this proposal in a strongly positive way. To most people, the electoral-college status quo feels intuitively wrong. So does war. But that doesn’t make unilateral disarmament a no-brainer.

If California does what No. 07-0032 calls for while everybody else is still going with winner take all by state, the real-world result will be to give Party B (in this case the Republicans) an unearned, Ohio-size gift of electoral votes. In a narrow sense, that’s good if you like Party B, but not so good if you like Party A (in this case the Democrats). Or if you think that in a democracy everybody ought to play by roughly the same rules. Nor, by the way, is Party B the only offender. Last week, the Democratic-controlled legislature of North Carolina, a state that has gone Republican in every Presidential election since 1976, enthusiastically took up a bill to do the same mischief as the California initiative. The grab would be smaller—it would appropriate perhaps three or four of North Carolina’s fifteen electoral votes for the Democrats—but the hands would be just as dirty.

The California initiative flunks even the categorical-imperative test. Imagine, as a thought experiment, that all the states were to adopt this “reform” at once. Electoral votes would still be winner take all, only by congressional district rather than by state. Instead of ten battleground states and forty spectator states, we’d have thirty-five battleground districts and four hundred spectator districts. The red-blue map would be more mottled, and in some states more people might get to see campaign commercials, because media markets usually take in more than one district. But congressional districts are as gerrymandered as human ingenuity and computer power can make them. The electoral-vote result in ninety per cent of the country would still be a foregone conclusion, no matter how close the race.

California Initiative No. 07-0032 is an audacious power play packaged as a step forward for democratic fairness. It’s the lotusland equivalent of Tom DeLay’s 2003 midterm redistricting in Texas, except with a sweeter smell, a better disguise, and larger stakes. And the only way Californians will reject it is if they have a chance to think about it first.

The Fair Immigration Resolution Redux

2007-07-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

In May of this year an editorial appeared in the Index-Tribune in regard to the council having passed a resolution (No. 45-2006), “…encourag[ing] Congress to endorse criteria for fair immigration reform laws.” The editorial cited the “immigration reform criteria” – eight somewhat broad, general principles of “fairness” proposed for adoption by Congress, – and asked the council if it was willing to take the next step in furthering discussion of the national issue of immigration. This question was posed despite there being a 3-member majority opposed to any discussion of national issues, as the editorial pointed out.

The editorial went on to ask if “…the council [was] willing to have a substantive discussion,” with certain guidelines, about the immigration bill that was then being debated by Congress, and look at the probable impacts provisions of that bill would have on our community. The editorial further asked if it wasn’t the council’s “…responsibility to try to understand and evaluate the local consequences of any such sweeping legislation.”

Now we all know the immigration reform bill is kaput, but that doesn’t mean the key provisions of that bill are issues that have gone away. To the contrary. They still hang over us and affect our lives. We are faced with increasing ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) raids, there is a climate of fear in the Latino community touching both legal and illegal immigrants, businesses are still in financial jeopardy regarding hiring processes and potential labor shortages, and those concerned most about border security are not satisfied with the status quo. So even though our electeds in Congress couldn’t deal with it, the many issues about immigration are alive and with us on a daily basis.

The I-T editorial also asked if the council was willing to apply the criteria for fairness as put forth in the resolution it had already passed to the key issues of immigration, through discussion, examination and debate. Does a merit system as opposed to the long-standing family based system meet the “fairness” criteria? What about questions of amnesty or paths to citizenship? What is the significance of sanctuary cities and counties and its effect on local residents?

So the question put to the council by the newspaper still remains. Will the council take the lead and address in some form the many relevant local issues as they apply to the fairness criteria of the resolution? Or does its passage of the resolution amount to nothing more than, in the words of the editorial, an “…insincere [and] empty gesture”?

It’s Not Easy Being Green

2007-06-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

The singularly superlative satirical song writer, Tom Lehrer, when asked why he stopped writing the comic songs with the brilliant lyrics he became famous for is said to have said: “When Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize it was the death of satire.”

Not of the same depth of depravity or height of head-scratching, jaw-dropping wonderment, but ironically bewildering nevertheless is Infineon Raceway awarded for being an outstanding green business. Think about that one, folks. Giving an award for environmental conservation, ecological awareness and climate warming consciousness to a business that dumps a sizeable shitload of pollution on the planet. I wonder what the Co2 amount comes to just over a NASCAR weekend?

Not to worry though, they do a bang-up job recycling their garbage we’re told and their local corporate management shtups the local charities with funding, all the while cultivating the town’s prominent set. To diss Infineon, formerly Sears Point Raceway, is tantamount to blasphemy, and usually brings clucking criticism from local corporate quarters in the form of letters to the newspapers telling critics how insensitive they are to Infineon’s good neighborliness and community involvement. And those claims are true. What’s also true is Infineon is the seat of a business unfriendly to the planet in its rather large use of resources and distribution of waste.

Whether one likes or dislikes auto racing is irrelevant. What is relevant is that giving Infineon Raceway an award for being green, while not Kissingerian, is like awarding a kid for good spelling in his graffiti. Maybe it’s a cost/benefit thing. Yes, they pollute the hell out of the planet, especially the Sonoma County corner of it, but look how much pleasure they bring to millions. And not to overlook the benefit to the county in tax dollars.

Simply put, it insults one’s intelligence to be told that an auto racing business is green because they do some good things. It’s good that they do good things, but they’re NOT green by any reasonable measure of the scales. That simply flies in the face of reality.

And that’s why this blog gives its flying, golden goddess of BS award to: the Sonoma Economic Development Partnership for bestowing a green award on the raceway.

On the other hand, the Benzigers won and they well deserve it. If you need an example of a bona fide green business use that as your template, Sonoma Economic Development Partnership.

Report From June 6 Council Meeting

2007-06-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

At the last council meeting two things happened that left me, quite frankly, amazed.

First was the poignant, passionate testimony by Deborah Stroski in regard to the strom trooper ICE raids in Boyes Springs, brutally and callously ripping parents away from their families while their children watched, shocked and devastated. These people were not guilty of some heinous, violent crime to have warranted such treatment. Some of these people have lived and worked in our community for 15-20 years – responsible, law abiding, tax paying people. These are friends, neighbors and co-workers.

As Ms. Stroski so aptly pointed out, these men and women are the working backbone of the economy of this city and this county. How does this council or anyone in this room think this community would continue to function if these people decide en masse to withhold their labor? These are the folks taking care of this community’s very young children and our older parents no longer able to care for themselves. These are the folks who make Sonoma’s service industry and wine industry function. Who the hell do we think are working the vineyards – Canadians?

Ms. Stroski brought the 6-year-old daughter of Adrian Corriera who has lived and worked here for 15 years, achieving managerial status. This child had to helplessly look on as her father was sadistically snatched away from her and her family. She pleaded, heart-broken and frantic for this council’s help.

The only one, I repeat – the only one – on this council to respond to this desperate child’s and Ms. Stroski’s impassioned pleas was Ken Brown. The rest of you blithely moved on to immediately discuss some minutia of city business that easily could have waited. My God, don’t we share the same reality? Where is your humanity? Are you unable or incapable of responding to a child’s plight when it’s happening before your eyes? Would you treat your own children with such callous indifference?

The second thing that blew my mind was the hour-long discussion about discussion of items on the agenda. Not liking the City Attorney’s instruction concerning The Brown Act – if an item is on the agenda it’s open for discussion by the public and the council. Period! What is it about that that’s so hard to fathom? Reasonable time limits can be set for comments, as has always been the case.

But not liking The Brown Act, established to insure public participation and transparency in politics, Ms. Sanders asked for guidance from a gentleman in the audience who counseled that a disgruntled majority on the council could “vote with their feet” – get up and walk out, thereby shutting discussion down, and probably effectively terminating the meeting as well. Wisely, the City Attorney cautioned the council not to act in such a manner. I’d add to Ms. Sanders that that kind of sword cuts both ways. Perhaps the honorable Mr. Brown wouldn’t employ such a disruptive and childish tactic, there may come a day when today’s majority is tomorrow’s minority, and Sanders and Sebastiani want public discussion on an item they think is important. Slip the shoe on the other foot and see if you think walking out of a meeting because you don’t like the issue is such a good idea.

Democracy Restored to City Council

2007-06-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

By Dave Henderson

After a bitterly criticized aberration from long traditional Council practice, and despite fierce opposition from two Council members during a wide-ranging debate that lasted over an hour, the Sonoma City Council, by a 3-2 vote on June 6, formally approved a norm that restored and formalized the right of any individual Council member to put on the meeting agenda for Council consideration any issue that member judges is deserving of Council attention.

Why is this such a big deal?

Because a 3-member majority, on Feb. 7, 2007, by a tricky maneuver never before seen on the Council, denied Council member Ken Brown, with the support of Steve Barbose, the opportunity to have a resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq discussed and voted upon by the Council. Brown was able to put it on the agenda, and some 46 supporters were able to address the Council on the issue, but Mayor Stanley Cohen had craftily set up a novel two-part procedure, whereby a majority vote was required, after public discussion (legally required by California’s Brown Act), to even admit the measure for Council consideration and action. In other words, the Council couldn’t even talk about the resolution, much less vote on it, if a majority voted against considering it. As Council members Joanne Sanders and August Sebastiani and Mayor Cohen duly voted, thus effectively muzzling two Council members, banning the issue that Brown and Barbose regarded as of important concern to many Sonoma voters, and hence disenfranchising those City of Sonoma voters who elected Barbose and Brown to represent them.

The reasons adduced by the three were various. August Sebastiani is vehemently against considering any so-called “national issue,” and Joanne Sanders likewise, and they have not nuanced their position to include national issues that might materially impact Sonoma, such as health care, immigration, Veterans care, No Child Left Behind Act, you name it. Council member Sanders, in addition, seems to regard anything but her own priorities for Sonoma as unimportant, no matter what another Council member might think: painted crosswalks trump everything, literally. Mayor Cohen took another tack. He had informally polled some 100 Sonoma residents over the months, and 80 said No, although he never really said publicly what he specifically asked them. Also, he alleged, “a statement from a small, rural city of Northern California, which is known as an area for its liberal views, will have no effect on those we have elected.”

Whatever one may think of these reasons, the main question, as many have reminded the Council members, is why then did you not simply admit the Iraq Resolution for consideration, call for a motion, and vote it down? That is a straightforward process which no one could take issue with.

The unprecedented procedure they resorted to not only insulated them from the necessity of personally and publicly voting on the Resolution, it had a very different, and more insidious meaning. Its clear message, admitted to in so many words by Sanders and Sebastiani in the Council discussion on June 6, was that no matter how important an issue was to one or two Council members, or to the Sonoma constituents who elected them, even if they’d run their campaign on such an issue – if three members decided to ban that issue from discussion, it was banned and censored.

But each Council member has been elected by the voters of the city at large, who have expressed faith in his or her position on current issues, in his or her character, sense of responsibility, and personal and political judgment. Every other Council member is bound to therefore accord that member the identical respect they owe themselves as representatives of the voters, even if – or especially if – each member represents different groups of those same City of Sonoma citizens. For three members to decide to reject consideration of an item proposed by another member amounts to denying official voice to that member, denying respect to that member, and, hence, denies a voice to the voters he is representing. If those who elected him are unhappy with the issues he is sponsoring, they will decide that at the next election – that is not for other Council members to decide. By not allowing a council member to directly place an item on the agenda for discussion and eventual action, three members of the Council have, in effect, frustrated the democratic system in Sonoma and literally disenfranchised the voters of this city. As Council member Brown said, “To think that I’m going to put an item on the agenda that doesn’t represent the issues and feelings and the beliefs of the people who voted for me not only discounts me, bit in a larger sense discounts the voters in our democracy.”

The issue is not the Iraq Resolution, although Council member Sanders insists that Ken Brown and Steve Barbose, and others who support their position, are pushing for procedural change because “you are still licking your wounds” over the defeat of the Resolution. The issue, rather, was the new rule pulled out of the hat on Feb. 7.

If that cooked up rule had been allowed to remain in effect – a clear violation of The Brown Act, which governs elected body’s protocol – any three or four members now or in the future, in reaction to issues seen as too liberal, or too conservative, or too outrageous – whether that issue is immigration or the Nativity scene in the Plaza or whatever – when three members can deprive another member of his or her opportunity to present a measure to the Council for consideration, that truly smacks of an anti-democratic cabal determined to keep certain members gagged and under their control.

Council members Sebastiani and Sanders desperately opposed a return to the traditional and legal norm. Sebastiani asked, “Where do you draw the line (in what could be brought up)? What if I as a Council member choose to agendize who’s going to start as second baseman for the SF Giants?” To say the least, this attitude showed a stunning disregard for the caliber and maturity of Council members elected by Sonomans. Ms Sanders stated, in various ways, that “it is not appropriate for this body to discuss any issue that 3 people don’t think should be discussed,” thus confusing, fatally, voting on an issue with simply considering an issue that a group of citizens may think of great importance, and with which she may disagree. That view is traditionally known as tyranny of the majority and suppressing of dissenting views. It was pointed out to both Council members that once an issue unpopular to them was admitted to Council discussion, it could be simply defeated by a motion and three votes. This was not acceptable to them.

After a motion by Ms Sanders to take no action was defeated, Mr. Barbose made a motion that each Council member should be able to bring to the agenda, and have considered by the Council, any item, and that such should be the written norm of the Council. Mayor Cohen, who had initiated the new procedure in the Feb. 7 meeting, and who in this June 6 meeting had initially sided with Sanders and Sebastiani, reversed his position and voted with Brown and Barbose, stating, “I’m going to switch my position, and take the challenge that Ken Brown gave me, in saying that he has all the belief in the world that each one of us is going to bring forth something that we believe needs to be considered, and if indeed it doesn’t work out I reserve the right to bring it back for discussion.”

Thus was democracy and respect restored to the Sonoma City Council, even though the last word in the proceedings was uttered by Ms. Sanders: “Crazy.”

A Letter About Community and Free Speech the I-T Didn’t Print

2007-06-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

By Bob Edwards

Editor:

Your recent editorial (Community vs. Conspiracy) chides local activists for publicly objecting to police photography of peaceful student demonstrators. You attribute your “passionate exception” to a belief that Sonoma has a “high level of community, a high level of we.” In short, the activists shouldn’t have made a public mountain out of what you consider a molehill.

Disturbing is the implication that in Sonoma “we” don’t make a fuss when “we” see civil rights being coerced. We are told, “What’s missing in all this an understanding of the nature of Sonoma.” In short, these activists are not really one of us but are some menacing band of outside agitators and troublemakers.

The misunderstanding—and it is an insulting, divisive and constitutionally dangerous one—is yours, not that of the students or the adults, both teachers and activists, involved in the incident. Sonoma has minimal tolerance for civil rights abuses. In that regard and contrary to your opinion, we are no different from Berkeley or San Francisco or that place called America. OK... maybe we are different from Texas.

Your own archives hold the evidence that the IT has not covered itself in glory in defending civil rights in Sonoma. Some will recall we are approaching the two-year anniversary of the shameful Fourth of July Parade Incident, when a passionate resident of our community charged into the parade to destroy the sign of antiwar protesters, also members of our community, who were peacefully protesting a government debacle that 75% of the country now recognizes as The Mother of All Blunders. No doubt the attacker felt that sign disturbed the community’s sense of “we,” or at least her vision of who “we” are.

The war wasn’t then widely accepted for the insanity it is, and today some do not see immigration as a happy subject for Happy Valley. Still, the parade incident occurred on the very day our community was celebrating a holiday with some significance for civil rights, and so it is a worthy example of how and why civil rights are considered important in Sonoma. The attacker’s behavior quickly became the butt of public ridicule, letters to the editor and front-page news in your paper. Charitably, the victims did not sue the daylights out of her or the City or the parade sponsors.

As in this latest incident, the IT waffled and equivocated. Recognizing the marchers’ right of free speech, it nonetheless lamented the fact that free speech had to spoil a nice hometown parade. One was left with the impression that the protesters were equally at fault with the sign-ripper for bad judgment. How un-American of them to think that the 4th of July meant something.

Back to the present: I don’t think for a minute that police policy or Chief Sackett OK’d the photographic surveillance of peaceful student protesters, or has a secret plan to do so. Our new Chief is not that kind of guy and no doubt he finds all this fuss a very unwanted distraction for his department. In a time of government-sponsored paranoia, the officer may have mistakenly thought he was doing his job. After all, if police are required to patrol public schools, those students must be a dangerous lot, right? But does that make the officer a Bush-variety thug?
No, but it doesn’t excuse what even your editorial acknowledges should not have been done: “Police surveillance of lawful citizen assembly is contrary to the spirit of democracy and violates the surveillance guidelines for law enforcement” developed by the state attorney general.

The point is that such government surveillance of peaceful citizens is precisely the kind of conduct that chills (in the phrasing of the Supreme Court) free speech and it deserves a very public and very vocal response whether it takes place in Berkeley or Sonoma or Crawford, Texas.

To privately and quietly address suspected public abuses by public officials, as you suggest, is precisely the sweep-it-under-the-rug cover-up that totalitarians everywhere love, because it perpetuates the myth that such abuses can’t and don’t happen or, if they do, they are nothing about which we should get passionately upset.
If you thought about it for more than a reflex, you would see that what you suggest is that the people surrender their constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government—i.e.. in public or in private. Which is exactly what they did when they confronted the officer on the day in question and later protested to city council. And while you have concluded that the officer’s action was not improper, others might disagree. In any event, it may come as a surprise to learn that the exercise of the right to petition the government is NOT pre-conditioned in the least on whether the petitioners are right or wrong in their claims of government wrongdoing. The Constitution contemplates that public discussion will air the facts so the people can decide the truth for themselves; truth which can never reliably come from behind closed government doors. If it turns out the accusations are false, the best place for that humiliation to occur is in public discussion.
Rather than upbraid their public conduct, you should have praised the activists for providing the students a living civics lesson that they do not get in school every day and, regrettably, do not get from the Index Tribune, whose understanding of the First Amendment is fundamentally corrupted by mindless boosterism. Would that someday the IT is as unequivocally passionate about civil rights as it is about its nostalgic, cotton-candy view of a community that exists only in its wildest dreams, and in our worst nightmares.

But the good news is that you may have another chance to get it right. I await your editorial response to the inevitable protests should the city decide to pursue a councilman’s vision of erecting on the Plaza a diorama celebrating his religious beliefs. Yes, another one of those community-dividing First Amendment Constitutional civil rights issues and, potentially, a very expensive legal experiment for the City, too. Adding to the newsworthy excitement will be council’s new agenda-setting policy: Discussing and deciding federal issues like the First Amendment, and that whole separation of church and state thing, may not qualify as “legitimate city business.” I note the Iraq War apparently was not a local concern, even though it spoiled our 4th of July parade and threatens to do it again this year. Bethlehem is in that same troubled neighborhood and, well, I’m told that if it exists at all heaven is supposedly even farther away and that if there is a God/god there or anywhere, He/She/It is probably way outside council’s jurisdiction.

Anyway, before pouring editorial concrete around those topics, I respectfully recommend a little more research, a bit more thought and a lot less “passionate exceptions. “ The Constitution would be a good place to start, as it may contain many shocking surprises.

FYI—If you would like a reference to the source of the I-T’s prior equivocation regarding free speech, it can be found in Mr. Lynch’s editorial of July 15, 2005 in your archives of that date, entitled “Don’t Ruin a Good Thing.”

Council Process Almost Short-circuited

2007-06-08T10:16:00.000-07:00

By Dave Henderson

Comments to City Council, June 6, 2007:

I am continuing to respond to this Council’s refusal, on February 7, to even consider and discuss, much less vote upon, a resolution about withdrawing US armed forces from Iraq.

On 5 previous occasions, I discussed reasons given on that occasion by councilmembers Cohen, Sebastiani, and Sanders. Tonight, related to Item 6B on the agenda, I want to address the reprehensible ploy engineered by Mayor Cohen, and agreed to by Mr. Sebastiani and Ms Sanders, which overturned the traditional practice for councilmembers placing items on the City Council agenda. I want to urge you to return to that former practice.

By not allowing a councilmember to directly place an item on the agenda for discussion and eventual action, you are, in effect, frustrating the democratic system in Sonoma and literally disenfranchising the voters of this city.

Each member here has been elected by the voters of the city at large, who have expressed faith in his or her position on current issues, and in his or her personal and political judgment. For three of you to decide to reject agendizing an item proposed by another member amounts to denying official voice to that member and, hence, denying a voice to the voters he is representing. If those who elected him are unhappy with the issues he is sponsoring, they will decide that at the next election. That is not for you to decide.

When any three or four members now or in the future, in reaction to issues that are either seen as too liberal, or too conservative, or too outrageous, whether that issue is immigration or the Nativity scene in the Plaza or whatever, when three members can deprive another member of his or her opportunity to present a measure to this Council for consideration, that truly smacks of an anti-democratic cabal determined to keep certain members gagged and under their control. I find that outrageous and I find it hard to believe that three members of this Council, in the City of Sonoma, in 2007, could perpetrate such a blatant injustice on the city.

Finally, I have to wonder at the reason behind such a maneuver.

I realize that at least two members will oppose any so-called national issues. But why would they not simply allow the issue to be presented, and then vote it down?

The only thing I can come up with is that by not admitting the issue to the agenda, in this case the Iraq Resolution, you insulated yourselves from having to stand up and actually cast a Yes or a No vote, and from thus experiencing, either presently or in the future, the consequences of that vote. I’m sorry if that seems harsh, but you have not given us any reason for that maneuver--that I am aware of, at least--, and I can conceive of no other valid reason. If you do have other reasons, then you have done yourselves a disservice by resorting to a measure that creates doubts about your justification.

I urge to you to formally take steps to ensure that such a procedure is never resorted to again on this Council.

Editor’s note: At the end of this meeting the council voted 3-2 to restore the long standing process by which a council member can bring any item to a council agenda thereby opening it up for discussion by the council and the public. Legally this process is required by the Brown Act, which governs publicly elected body’s proceedings. This legally binding process was vehemently opposed by council members Sanders and Sebastiani who labeled it a “tyranny of the minority.”
Their objective was to have a vote regarding an agendized item before any discussion took place by which a majority against the item would effectively kill it then and there. By so doing the public and the other council members would not be able to hear and discuss the item. In any event the law (Brown Act), fairness, respect for the public’s right to comment, and common sense prevailed.

Police Surveillance and Your Constitutional Rights

2007-05-24T14:23:00.000-07:00

Ever hear of The Lockyer Manual? Not to worry, almost nobody has. Not even many police departments, and it’s all about them and their interactions with public citizens during political demonstrations.

Basically the Lockyer Manual, created by former California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, sets down legal guidelines regarding police surveillance during public demonstrations, marches and the like by codifying under what explicit conditions police or sheriff’s departments can photograph and record participants without violating their state constitutional rights to privacy.

It all hinges on this: Absent an articulable criminal predicate for the gathering of information it will not be possible to justify it [surveillance] under the general heading of intelligence activity.

In other words, the criterion, the benchmark, the only reason for law enforcement doing surveillance is that there must be reasonable suspicion of a crime. By setting down this legal marker, California’s constitutional right to privacy provides greater protections than the federal Constitution. Legal precedent established by the California Supreme Court established that there must be some connection between the information gathered, e.g., photographs, and unlawful activity.

Which brings us to an editorial in The Sun on Thursday, May 24 titled, “Cops on Watch,” that’s so full of suppositional speculation it’s the kind of drivel that gives BS a bad name. I’ve been told that The Sun gang-edits by committee so there’s no way to address an individual for writing this crap, and it’s always left unsigned. Frankly I don’t believe this. What I believe is that Sun publisher Bill Hammett penned this misleading and incorrect legal assessment of citizens exercising their constitutional rights of speech, association and privacy.

Firstly, no one, not Dave Henderson, Mike Smith, any adult or student at the demonstration or I has complained about police presence during the event. The objection voiced to the City Council regarded the unlawful photography of the participants by a sheriff’s department officer absent a crime having been committed. The editorial states that the students “violated school policy by leaving campus” “violated municipal codes by obstructing traffic lanes” while marching up Broadway. Give me a break! High School principal Michaela Philpot and several teachers attended the march/demonstration from the school. If the students violated school policy in actively learning a valuable civic and constitutional principle then it’s the school’s business, not local law enforcement’s. If Mr. Hammett and whoever joined him in this cockamamie editorial is so upset about a short time of obstructing traffic early on a Monday morning then perhaps in the interest of good law enforcement and community protection he should press charges against the students, and while he’s at it the sheriff’s deputy who accompanied them, but saw no reason to bust them.

Secondly, the editorial “presumes” pictures were being taken “in order to be able later to identify those student in the march.” If Hammett or any of his reporters except Mr. Mejia from El Sol had actually covered the demonstration he would know that the principal and some teachers were present. I think it’s safe to assume they know who these students are. Then the editorial speculates that it was necessary to take photographs to have on record in case there was a disturbance. Read the laws regarding surveillance, Mr. Hammett, and what police can and cannot do during public gatherings. Lockyer’s guideline plainly states that it is a mistake of constitutional dimension to gather information for a criminal intelligence file where there is no reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or will be committed.

Bizarrely the editorial goes on “…to ponder what might have happened” if there was organized opposition to the march and if violence ensued. Okay, then there would have been grounds for photographing and police intervention and for whatever else would have been necessary to keep the peace. But what Hammett has done in arguing the case for surveillance is set up a straw man. Again, there was and is no opposition to a police presence during the march – there was and is opposition to photographic surveillance of a peaceful, orderly and school monitored constitutionally legal gathering of students and adults exercising their civil rights when there was no criminal predicate to justify it.

Another straw man argument posed by the editorial’s writer or writers, ostensibly assisted by their “legal folks,” posits that “there is no ‘expectation of privacy’” for people gathering in public, or cameras on school buses or mounted in police patrol cars. Stationary cameras now commonly used in public areas or private businesses or in school busses, set up for the public’s protection is a different scenario altogether than photographic surveillance during free speech activity for the purpose of gathering intelligence. And the fact of the matter is the Sheriff’s Department officer was photographing adults as well as students. If this was not for the purpose of gathering intelligence then the question is – what was it being done for? This is the question that should have been asked in the newspaper’s editorial. Furthermore when asked why he was photographing the demonstrators, the officer, J. Cobert answered that he was doing it on his own volition. He later fessed up that Sgt. Shubel of the Sonoma Police Department, ordered him to do so. What the truth of this is has yet to be determined.

But The Sun’s fatuous screed was too busy dissing those adults who stood in solidarity with the Latino student’s protest for fair immigration reform, and mouthing stupid platitudes about people who still live in the 60s. If living in the 60s means fighting for our dwindling civil rights, standing up against illegal police procedures, and supporting the human rights of our Latino brothers and sisters then I’m guilty as charged. My fellow travelers and I will oppose illegal and immoral wars, unjust social persecution, and government interference in our right to dissent. That’s what we learned in the 60s in the struggle for civil rights, women’s rights, and student’s right,s and in opposition to another immoral and unnecessary war for dominance. How quickly we forget, and how terrible a price we pay for our amnesia.

Lockyer wrote the manual in order to issue guidelines for local law enforcement agencies, and sent it out to every police chief and sheriff in the state in 2003 in the form of a book titled, “Criminal Intelligence Systems: A California Perspective.” The question is: Did they read it and do they care? A 2005 survey taken by the ACLU indicates a resounding “no.” In its report titled, “The State of Surveillance: Government Monitoring of Political Activity in Northern and Central California,” it’s stated: “The survey revealed a profound lack of regulation and a disappointing level of familiarity with the Lockyer Manual.” It further states: “The vast majority of law enforcement agencies did not have policies regulating the circumstances under which officers may monitor or gather information on individuals engaged in political activity.”

Hopefully the Sonoma Police Department will adopt and implement local law enforcement regulations that will preserve constitutionally protected civil liberties, and that will highlight the need for increasingly threatened privacy protections. I can see no reason why the community and the law enforcement agency cannot create these guidelines in a timely and mutually respectful manner.

Police Surveillance of Immigration Reform Demonstration

2007-05-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
-T.S. Elliot

We set out for the day thinking we know where we’re going, but in truth we have no idea. What we have is intention – I’m going to do this and I’m going to go there, – but the reality is anything can happen between your intention and its fulfillment.

For instance, I started out last Friday morning from the east side of town to the Sonoma Market and while passing by the Plaza encountered a rather large gathering of mostly young Latino High School students along with a few graying Anglos demonstrating for fair and just immigration reform. I honked the car horn in solidarity and approval as I passed, but seeing some friends, the usual activist contingent, decided on the spur of the moment to join in their march around the perimeter of the Plaza.

I hotfooted across the park to catch up with longtime fellow political traveler, Mike Smith, brandishing his oversized American flag, and joined in the kids chanting “si se puede!” I’ve always been in favor of that positive exclamation coined by the extraordinary fighter for worker and human rights, Cesar Chavez. And around the Plaza we marched.

The kids were great – spirited, strongly vocal, disciplined and well behaved. As our long line of 100+ marchers moved around the Plaza, Mike noticed a police officer in the familiar tan uniform of the Sonoma Sheriff’s Department taking photographs of the demonstrators with a camera. I looked to see and sure enough the officer was snapping away, his camera pointed directly at us. Mike was upset by these actions, said he was going to speak with the officer when we got back to the front of the Plaza, and asked if I’d accompany him. “Sure”, I replied, and off we went to speak with officer cameraman.

“Why are you taking pictures of us,” asked Mike, “this is a peaceful and orderly demonstration. Who authorized you to take photographs of the marchers?”

“Nobody” answered Officer J. Cobert, at least that’s my recall of his name, he refused to give us his card. We did ascertain that he is the High School Safety Officer.

“C’mon,” says Mike, “who told you to do this?”

“No one,” insisted Officer Cobert, reminding me for some reason of Officer Obie from Alice’s Restaurant, “I’m doing it for myself.”

Well things sort of spiraled down from there, Mike insisting he must be doing it on orders from the Police Department or some other authority, and Obie/Cobert demurring. Mike wasn’t buying it. He told the officer that the march was a peaceful, orderly and non-violent legal demonstration, and that his taking photos of the participants was intimidating and intrusive as there was nothing untoward going on. He relayed to the cop that in all the years of protests in Sonoma the police had never taken this kind of action, and that relations between police and demonstrators had always been cordial and respectful. As one who’s participated in any number of political or social protest demonstrations I can attest to this.

But Cobert, with a frozen smile and the hard-eyed look that comes from training or is maybe just inherent in his case, was implacable. He stuck to his story about doing it on his own, and the conversation pretty much ended in a stand off.

Shortly thereafter, Dave Henderson of the Sonoma Valley Peace & Justice group, who had been among the demonstrators went over to Cobert and repeated the query as to why he was photographing the marchers. This time, Cobert told Henderson that he was doing it under orders from Police Sgt. Shubel of the Sonoma Police Department. Why Cobert decided to fess up this time around is anybody’s guess, if in fact he was telling the truth to Henderson.

Now we fast forward to the city council meeting of May 16, during which both Henderson and Smith relayed the incident to the council in no uncertain terms, demanding an investigation into who ordered the photographic surveillance, for what purpose/s, and what was being done with the photographs of the marchers.

Henderson [see his remarks in full below] emphasized that the demonstration for immigration reform participants were “exercising their Constitutionally-protected right to free speech,” that the march was “well-controlled, well-monitored, law-abiding, and non-threatening in every way,” and that there “should be no reason for photography other than to facilitate traffic control, crowd management or other safety measures, which was manifestly not necessary at this gathering.” He added that in his estimation one could easily presume that the reason for photographing would be “to create files and dossiers on us.”

Councilman Ken Brown promised to look into the matter; the only council member to respond to Henderson’s importuning.

So still there are major questions that need to be answered, and perhaps as importantly, what is going to be the relationship between the Sonoma Police Department and future political or social issue demonstrators engaging in their Constitutionally guaranteed rights?

We may think we know where we are going when we set out for the day, but really we have no idea where we’re going to wind up. Life’s a crapshoot and like all games of chance the odds are with the house. And the house is reality.
………………………………………………………………………………………………

*Dave Henderson’s remarks to Council:

City of Sonoma Council Meeting, May 16, 2007
Presentation
Re: POLICE SURVEILLANCE OF HIGH SCHOOL DEMONSTRATON IN
PLAZA, MAY 15, 2007,

My name is Dave Henderson. I reside at 765Michael Drive.
I would like to inform this Council of something extremely unsettling that happened to me and to other Sonoma residents yesterday, May 15, in the Plaza.
100 or so students from Sonoma Valley High School had marched from the high school north on Broadway and gathered in the Plaza, joined by many others, included myself, to call for reform of our national immigration policies.
While we were gathered there with our signs, we noticed that a sheriff’s deputy was photographing all of us. Upon our challenging him for the justification for this action, he stated that he had been assigned to do so by Sgt. Shubel, but he refused to divulge any more information.
I ask--no, demand-- that this Council investigate why the police of this city are photographing innocent citizens who are exercising their Constitutionally-protected right to free speech, and therefore presumably using those photographs to create files and dossiers on us.
There should be no reason for photography other than to facilitate traffic control, crowd management or other safety measures, which was manifestly not necessary at this gathering, which was well-controlled, well-monitored, law-abiding, and non-threatening in every way.

I urge the Council to ascertain:
1. Who ordered this photographic surveillance;
2. What written, official policies of the police department, and/or of City of Sonoma,
authorize such surveillance; and,
3. If such written policies are lacking, what specific reasons did lead to the surveillance
order.

I hope this issue is of as grave concern to this Council as it is to me. Such police surveillance of law-abiding citizens exercising their free speech has no place in the United States that is under the rule of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Our police are obviously not sensitive to those rights and need urgent instruction in how to behave in a law-abiding fashion.

I hereby submit for your urgent study a report prepared by The American Civil Liberties Union in July 2006, entitled “The State of Surveillance: Government Monitoring of Political Activity in Northern and Central California.” You will find some very pertinent sections here, such as: “Government Surveillance and Privacy Right: A Brief History,” “Surveillance Abuses by Local Agencies in Northern and Central California,” “Best Practices Guidelines for First Amendment Activities.”

I hope that this Council will speedily adopt measures suggested in this report and adopted, in fact, by other cities. I hope that we have seen the last of un-Constitutional police surveillance in this city.

Sonoma Locals Stand for ImpeachmentBy Dave Henderson

2007-05-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

We were some 12 witnesses for Impeachment. Two large signs "book-ended" the impeachment “banner” – spelling signs: "AMERICA SAYS:" and "TELL CONGRESS.”

In between were the letters signs I-M-P-E-A-C-H-!, each letter in a different individual style, with special mention going to Pat Spicer's impressive initial "I" to Will Shonbrun's exquisitely American "C".

Other valiant brandishers included Audrey von Hawley, George Holmes, Shirley Clark, Greg Montgomery, Jim McFadden, Mattie Rudinow, Dave Henderson, Jim Syfer, Bob Hauser, and Sue Benson. We were very pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic reception: fully *300* honks, V-signs, waves, and shouts in the1-hour period! Amazing. And very few contrary, ah, gestures. America, folks, is ready for Impeachment -- and, mind you, many of these were tourists, at 10-11am on Highway 12, not the notoriously left- leaning, knee-jerk liberal Sonoma locals.

So what we found out is that America is READY FOR IMPEACHMENT!
………………………………………………………………………………..

Blogger's note: April 28 was I-M-P-E-A-C-H day across the nation. Newspapers and the WEB report the day a success as many cities and towns turned out to demonstrate for impeachment. Interestingly neither local Sonoma newspapers published one word about the Plaza Impeach demonstration. Once again our local press failed to cover a news event of significant interest – not even a photograph. Is this censorship or laziness?

Representative and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich introduced House Resolution 333 to impeach Vice President Cheney on April 24. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a House Democratic leader raised the possibility of impeaching Bush on Sunday’s Meet the Press and in an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, where he said that impeachment is “on the table.”

Here’s what you can do to further this cause – the remedy specified in the U.S. Constitution for the “high crimes and misdemeanors” perpetrated by the Bush administration.

Sign petitions to your representatives at: http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/73 and to every Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, which must be persuaded to hold hearings

Honk to Impeach Every week, get a group of activists to gather with signs reading: "Honk to Impeach / Bush and Cheney" "Call Rep. X / 123-457-7890"
Choose a busy intersection, preferably in front of your Congress Member's local office, or in front of a your local TV, radio, or newspaper office. We recommend Wednesdays from 4-6 p.m. during rush hour, but your group should decide what works best. You'll be amazed by the positive response you get!
Also bring copies of our petition: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/petition
You can collect signatures from pedestrians, drivers after they park, shoppers and workers entering businesses, or drivers at long red lights in safe intersections.

Comments & Caveats

2007-05-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

As the former publisher/editor of the Sonoma Valley Voice newsletter, 1997-2004, and Commentary Editor for the short-lived North Bay Progressive newspaper, ’02-’06, I’ve rarely been at a loss for words. I even took a turn at online publication with the Sonoma Valley Voice.com website for a few years, so I’ve been bloviating and opining almost to my heart’s content these last 10 years or so. In between these endeavors I’m an inveterate letter to the editor writer to our local papers. Obviously I’m not reticent about shooting my mouth off, and I’m most definitely a political news junkie and culture critic.

I certainly make no claim as to being right all the time, although I think I am most of the time, and am willing to debate my point of view, decidedly progressive/liberal, in print. Blogging is a new gig for me, but I’m up for taking a shot at it. Anyone wanting to comment on what I’m putting out there is welcome to do so, but I’ve decided to screen comments first before publishing them. As the editor of this blog I will use my discretion in publishing what I determine to be comments of substance.

The areas of interest and concern to me are politics, social justice and civil rights issues, and the protection and conservation of our environment. These issues have always been closest to my heart and will continue to be the main focus here.

Another focus of this blog will be local issues that I think are important and need to be looked at from a different point of view. I can’t make any pledges as to form or content except to say I’ll try to keep it interesting. I’m aware that my writing style and perspective are at times obnoxious to some and a turn off. So be it. All I can say to those who are offended is don’t read it. I am not writing this blog to be polite, accepted, or even to change anyone’s thinking. This is personal commentary, and the thoughts expressed here are what I would say, and how I would say it, if we were sitting across from one another.

A note of appreciation: this blog site was designed and implemented by my friends Tom Whitworth and Jeri Lynn Chandler. I think they did a fabulous (as Tom would say) job, and I’ll try to keep the content equal to the presentation.

So, in the spirit of rebellious free thought, my guiding principle, here goes…

WS

18 Missing Inches in New OrleansBy Greg Palast

2007-05-01T10:24:00.001-07:00

From the new updated and expanded paperback edition of the bestseller Armed Madhouse in stores now.

Since the initial release of Armed Madhouse in June 2006, much has changed in America.

The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, finally brought charges against... Greg Palast.

As America crawled toward the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attack, Homeland Security charged me and my US producer Matt Pascarella with violating the anti-terror laws.

Don't you feel safer?

And I confess: we're guilty.

On August 22, 2006, we were videotaping Katrina evacuees still held behind barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It had been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW's (Prisoners of Dubya) were still in mobile home Gulags. I arranged a surreptitious visit with Pamela Lewis, one of the unwilling guests of George Bush's Guantanamo on wheels. She told me, "It's a prison set-up" - except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes.

You can't film there. FEMA is part of Homeland Security and its camps are off limits to cameras. We don't want Osama to know he can get a cramped Airstream by posing as a displaced Black person.

To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of Kamp Katrina, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is close by Exxon Petroleum's Baton Rouge refinery. The neighborhood goes by the quaint sobriquet, "Cancer Alley."

So we filmed it. Uh, oh. The refinery, is a CAVIP, "Critical Asset and Vulnerable Infrastructure Point." Apparently, you can't film a CAVIP.

As to the bust: The positive side for me as a reporter was that I got to see Bush's terror-trackers in action. I should note that it took the Maxwell Smarts at Homeland Security a full two weeks to hunt us down. And we're on television.

Frankly, Matt and I were a bit scared that, given the charges, we wouldn't be allowed on a plane into New York for the September 11 commemoration. But what scared us more is that we were allowed on the plane.

Once I was traced, I had a bit of an other-worldly conversation with my would-be captors. Detective Frank Penantano of Homeland Security told me, "This is a 'Critical Infrastructure' … and they get nervous about unauthorized filming of their property."

Well, me too, Detective. In fact, I'm very nervous that extremely detailed satellite photos of this potential chemical blast-site can be downloaded from maps.google.com.

Detective Penantano, in justifying our impending arrest, said, "If you remember, a lot of people were killed on 9/11."

Yes, I remember "a lot" of people were killed. So I have this suggestion, Detective - and you can pass it on to Mr. Bush: Go find the people who killed them.

18 Missing Inches

Before the Big Bust, we learned a little more about how New Orleans drowned. Given my line of work, I'm not shocked at much. Yet, this one got to me.

"By midnight on Monday the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."

The charges were so devastating - the White House's withholding from the state police the information that the city was about to flood - that from almost any source, I simply would have dismissed it. But this was not just any source. The whistleblower was Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy chief of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Studies Center, and the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.

That Monday night, August 29, 2005, the sleepless crew at the state Emergency Operations Center, directing the response to Hurricane Katrina, were high-fiving it, relieved that Katrina had swung east of New Orleans, sparing the city from drowning.

They were wrong. The Army Corps, FEMA and White House knew for critical hours that the levees had begun to crack, but withheld the information for a day and night. The delay was deadly.

Van Heerden explained that levees don't collapse in a single bang. First, there's a small crack or two, a few feet wide, which take hours to burst open into visible floodways.

Had the state known New Orleans' bulwark was failing, they would have shifted resources to get out those left in the danger zone.

Van Heerden: FEMA knew on 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2pm they flew over the 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech.

Question: So the White House wouldn't tell you that the levees had breeched?

Van Heerden: They didn't tell anybody.

Question: And you're at the Emergency Center?

Van Heerden: I mean nobody knew. Well, the Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew.

The prevarications continued all week.

Van Heerden said, "I went to the Governor's on Tuesday night and I said this, 'There's a lot more breeches than one.' They said, "Whatever you need, go find out.' I got in an airplane, I flew. I counted 28 breeches."

The White House had good reason, or at least political and financial reasons, to keep mum. A hurricane is an act of God, but catastrophic levee failure is an act of the Administration. Once the federal levees go, evacuation, rescue and those frightening words - responsibility and compensation - become Washington's. Van Heerden knew that "not an act of God, but catastrophic failure of the levee system" would mean that, at least, "these people must be compensated."

Not every flood victim in America gets the Katrina treatment. In 1992, storms wiped out 190 houses on the beach at West Hampton Dunes, home to film stars and celebrity speculators. The federal government paid to completely rebuild the houses, which, hauled in four million cubic feet of sand to restore the tony beaches, and guaranteed the home's safety into the coming decades - after which the "victim's" homes rose in value to an average $2 million each.

But in New Orleans, instead of compensation, 73,000 have been sentenced to life in FEMA's trailer-parks in Louisiana. Even more are displaced to other states. I asked van Heeerden about the consequences of the White House's failures, the information about the levee being just one of a list.

"Well, fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line."

But why did the levees fail at all if the hurricane missed the city? The professor showed me a computer model indicating the levees were a foot and a half too short - the result of a technical error in the Army Corp of Engineer's calculation of sea level when the levees were built beginning in the 1930s.

And the Bush crew knew it. Long before Katrina struck, the White House staff had sought van Heerden's advice on coastal safety. So when the professor learned of the 18-inch error, he informed the White House directly. But this was advice they didn't want to hear. The President had already sent the levee repair crew, the Army Corp of Engineers, to Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Greg Palast is author of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild, released this week by Penguin. Get it here.

For more information on the Armed Madhouse tour and for a podcast of 18 Missing Inches read by 'On With Leon's' Dr. Wilmer Leon go to www.GregPalast.com

You can also read "Who Drowned the Big Easy?," a new article by Greg Palast, in the next issue of YES! magazine.

Cirrus 86'd:One Down, Two to Go

2007-04-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

Notwithstanding the ever-smiling Chris Elm’s unctuous urgings to never let an untoward word be said in protestation, I will steel myself to avoid this trap of vapidity and call ‘em like I see ‘em.

The Cirrus Corp. of somewhere in Texas has vaporized like the cloud it’s named for, but it’s prudent to keep in mind that Cirrus’ motivation was not to bail out Sonoma from its hospital crisis, or serve our community’s greater need – it was, all-to-ge-ther- now – to make lots of money, to turn big fat profits. Nothing wrong or illegal with that. It’s the Amurrican way.

But it’s good to keep in mind that when someone is offering you something for nothing there’s usually a hidden cost somewhere, and it can be steep.

Cirrus didn’t ride into town to save Sonoma and make us happy. Like any good corporation, profit is its concern, and we fitted into the schemed only insofar as it served their need. “Bidness is bidness,” said the great Molly I.

It was of no concern to Cirrus that situating a new hospital far outside Sonoma’s UGB would have effectively broken this community’s hard fought for bulwark against sprawl and overdevelopment. They’re in the business to medically serve the very wealthy in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed. Had Cirrus been successful in its gambit – providing a hospital was only a bargaining chip – it would have been a favorable outcome only for those who stood to gain something by it. Gee, I wonder what businesses those might be?

There were some locals pimping the project, trying to put a down-home, friendly face on it, but as everybody knows it’s the money that makes the monkey dance, even if the monkey’s wearing expensive threads. Bidness is bidness, y’all.

Now I’m sure the Cirrus folks would put a different spin on it, pointing out that we’d get a “free” hospital out of the deal, but just how that was supposed to work in reality never did get unveiled. The dudes from Texas folded their hand before the open cards were flopped and quit the table. Adios, amigos.

That leaves us with two viable plans to duke it out.

One of these plans entails creating a 15-acre medical complex off Broadway and Leveroni, with one small part of the land required outside but contiguous to the UGB. The large acreage is needed, say its proponents, to accommodate future growth. Just what this future population expansion means in real numbers is anybody’s guess, but given the high cost of housing around these here parts and growth control measures in place, it’s doubtful the City and the Valley will face a significant increase in numbers. What our population will increase in is more older people, proportionally, and fewer families with young kids. That’s an economic reality and it’s not likely to change. All the more reason a hospital is a must.

So one of the things we need to ask ourselves is: How much land does a new hospital really need? Another thing to look at is who stands to gain in developing a hospital complex that approximates in overall size and scope what we currently have, but on a piece of land almost four times its current acreage (approximately 4-acres)? Once again the voice of Texas’ legendary iconoclast comes drifting from the ether: “Follow the money, darlins.”

A look at the driving forces behind what’s been dubbed “Son of C,” and who its chief supporters are will tell a lot. It’ll be interesting to see which businesses and which Sonoma honchos line up behind Son of C.

There’ll be more to say on this as the big game of healthcare hold ‘em gets to the last two flops.

The Nine Norms

2007-04-26T16:03:00.000-07:00

In a dazzling display of creating teamwork guidelines, Sonoma's city council conjured up nine norms for working and playing nice together. This was presaged by the obligatory team-building workshop, where the five stalwarts encounter grouped each other. Must have been a million laughs. Inveterate council watchers well know the raucous and rambunctious reputation these party-animal civil servants so well deserve. They may be there to do the people's business, but the Council 5 know how to get it on - workshop-wise.

"I'd rather have spikes driven through my head," one councilmember was overheard to mumble, "than be confined in one space with these twits when it isn't mandatory...."

But cloister themselves from the detritus of city affairs they did, and like the ancient Hebrews, delivered the almost Ten Commandments of being good boys and girl.

High on the list of the Sacred Nine are no name calling, no putting down of city staff, no criticizing one another or staff for any boneheaded uttering or decision, no teasing or shoving on line, and only referring to the City Manager as "blessed leader City Manager." I made up that last one. The City Manager is a self-assuming man of modest pretensions, and not without good reason.

Norm number one reads: "Thou shall not criticize thy fellow councilmember no matter if he/she is a blithering know-nothing, and makes decisions based on coin tossing."

Numero two-o says: "At all times effusively praise the city staff because it is they who do the actual work, and without them to tell you what to think, you'll have to find out what to do, and think, and that can be very time consuming.

Numero three-o, arguably the most important norm and the foundation on which rests the other eight, declares that: "Only the mayor may decide where councilmembers will sit at the council dais, And where they will sit, or stand if the mayor so wishes, at the next team-building workshop."

The other norms are boring and inconsequential, having something to do with council agendas, and meetings, and all that political stuff.

I, for one, know that Sonomans will sleep better, feel safer, and rest more assured now that the council has brought forth The Nine Norms. Yes, it's not exactly the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, but it's good enough for our little town. God bless the City Council, and the City Manager, and all the city staff and their relatives and their pets, and so on.