Good News

The news, almost by definition, is news that will bum you out. Good news is seldom interesting enough to get mentioned on TV or the radio, but consider this minor non-Republican effort.

The Healthy San Francisco program, passed in 2006, offers care to uninsured adults not covered by Medi-Cal or Medicare. It now covers about 53,000 people.

San Francisco restaurant owners have appealed to the California Supreme Court to block having to pay for part of the costs of the program. The Obama administration's lawyers filed arguments last week urging the Supreme Court to reject this appeal.

---Gary Goss

We Are A Mighty Nation Containing Contradictions

1. As usual, a group of especially greedy trolls has mailed out a fake endorsement card to Democrats. The title of this deception is DEMOCRATIC ELECTION EDUCATION GUIDE.

2. China's economy is doing better than the economies of Europe and North America. China enforces regulations. If we want our economy to survive, we will regulate it.

3. Building a fence along our southern border and backing it with national guard troops will not keep out undocumented workers. Most undocumented workers enter our country legally with visas. When the visas expire, the workers stay here. The USA does not keep track of such matters--catching useful and inexpensive workers might cut into corporate profits. (Also note that studies now show that undocumented workers pay more in taxes than they take from the system.)

Gary Goss

New Law in Arizona

From Bill Maher (I think). New law in Arizona: beans may be fried only once.

RAND PAUL, fool

We should note Stephen Gale's discussion of Rand Paul's teabagger defense of private property's right to discriminate against people of color. All in the name of freedom, of course. But Paul thinks it is okay for the government to control public property. Gale notes that in Paul's view, a uterus must be public property. (By the way, when did we start naming people after think tanks?)

Weird Stats

In an NPR interview (Robert Seigel and Roberton Williams), Williams discussed who pays federal income taxes. About 47% pay no federal income tax: the poor, people with many children and the elderly. The rich pay aout 24% of the total income tax. Those making more than $100,000 a year pay 56% of the income tax total. By some oversight, we still have a moderately progressive federal income tax.

HARPER'S reports another poll that shows 59% of Americans support allowing homosexuals to serve in the military, while 70% support allowing gay men and lesbians to serve. Let's see--if you subtract 59 from 70 you get 11%, the figure for those without brain stems participating in a typical poll

----Gary Goss

Below is an informal roundup of endorsements for the primary election, which has begun.

For judge the county central committee has endorsed Thislethwaite and Broderick.

Proposition 13 (seismic retrofits) has been endorsed by the Democrats and AFSCME but opposed by the Nurses Association. I know nothing more.

Proposition 15 (fair elections) has been endorsed by nearly all liberal groups.

Proposition 16 (PG&E ripoff) has been condemned by everyone decent and also by the Press Corporate-Democrat (!)

Proposition 17 (Mercury Insurance Rate Hikes) has been condemned across the board.

That leaves proposition 14, which would change the state primary system so that the top two vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, would face each other in the general election. Both the major political parties oppose this measure; it would make it more difficult for party regulars to control primary results. It would tend to blur ideological conflicts and produce more centrist candidates. At least that is what I would expect. Moderate Republicans might profit (as things stand, they can't win Republican primaries). In the primaries you would get crossover voting (Republicans voting for Democratic candidates and vice versa).

I don't know what to say. You might get two parties that would be less sharply divided by ideology or you might get a mushy situation manipulated by Big Money. Or both.

-----------------------Gary Goss

Betty White and Arizona

Betty White

Betty White first popped up on television in 1952, when I was in high school and TV was three channels in Los Angeles. I don't remember the programs, but she might have been on A HIT OR A MISS?

TV was simpler in those days, just a couple of people sitting in wooden chairs and spinning new Bing Crosby records, after which a panel would discuss the new song and vote on whether it would be, yes, a hit or a miss.

Betty White was local and young and lively and an instant hit with my whole family. We were surprised but pleased when, as an older woman, she became a regular on the Mary Tyler Moore's national show and so on. Last night she appeared, age 88.5, on Saturday Night Live. In other words, her career stretches from the start of commercial TV to the present. Now she's old and lively. She's amazing.

ARIZONA

Arizona needs a new start. It might begin by giving up racism--Arizona was the last state to adopt Martin Luther King Day, which they did only after a nationwide boycott. Next Arizona could fine and jail anyone who employs an undocumented worker. That would bring an end to the Arizona economy, and the place could begin life again as an attractive but empty desert.

--Gary Goss

THE DUTCH MIRACLE

When automation came along in the 1960s, I recall the authorities telling us that while automation would displace a few workers, it would also create many fine new jobs. A few individuals might not make the transition smoothly, but most of us would benefit. If you were working class, that turned out to be incorrect, and today, thanks to automation, outsourcing and population growth, there aren't enough good jobs in the world to go around.

When you watch science fiction movies, do you wonder at times what kinds of jobs people work at? The main characters usually have military jobs, but what do the other billions of people do?

***

In 1982 Dutch business and labor leaders, according to MOTHER JONES, struck a deal that cut the work week to four days. That drove unemployment down from 10% to 5%. This event is known as "the Dutch miracle." And there is no chance at all that American leaders, hobbled by ludicrous ideologies, could consider this solution.

Saggio Hills Plagiarism

Several years back, when the Healdsburg City Council was negotiating with developers to build a resort for the idle rich in the Saggio Hills, it occurred to me to look at the environmental impact report on Saggio Hills and to compare it with the much older EIR on nearby Parkland Farms. As I expected, I found whole paragraphs in the new report that had been copied word for word from the older report on a different site. Copying saves a lot of time and increases the profit margin. It's apparently a common practice.

At the time I wrote a letter to the editor of our town paper, who published the letter. Local deciders, their brains temporarily stunted by lizardlike greed, ignored me. They hurried by.

Today, at the request of a county judge, a new EIR for Saggio has been ordered up, not because the first one was plagiarized (apparently no one can deal with that) but because the first one forgot to check out water demand and so forth. The new study is supposed to take six months if it isn't copied from the Parkland Farms EIR. My guess is that it will take several days.

----Gary Goss