Way to Go

According to Melissa Harris-Perry, some conservatives are so upset by the Supreme Court's decision on American health care that they are threatening to move to  Canada.

REPEALING OBAMACARE

Obamacare falls far short of what some of my friends prefer, and of course they are right. But to get really good health care, we would first have to repopulate the United States with voters who understand that the strength of our species is our ability to help one another. To those who scoff at Obamacare, I'd like to make this point: if Obamacare had come along ten years sooner, my younger sister would still be alive. Obamacare saves lives. In Sonoma County alone, it will cover about 50,000 uninsured people.


Getting rid of health insurance might be worth discussing, but first I would like  to see us ban automobile insurance, which I seldom find useful, and earthquake insurance--my house has never fallen down in a quake, not even once. Also the federal government insures our savings accounts in most banks, which takes away our freedom to fail in the free market and will somehow--I'm not sure how--lead to the United Nations sending Arabs to confiscate our Glocks. Or maybe not. 

Slow growth came to Healdsburg about ten years ago over the dead bodies of the Developers Oligarchy and the Republican City Council. Citizens did it.  But the Developers Lobby is immortal, of course, and will be with us as long as greed exists. That was one reason I worked to replace the Republican Council with a progressive Democratic Council. I suppose it is a small surprise that the current Democratic City Council has now put together a committee to help them amend the Growth Management Ordinance and open up things for the Development Oligarchy, our permanent government-in-charge. There is big money at stake. Will the citizens rise again?

 

 Growth Management Ordinance Committee Meeting

Date: 6/27/2012 6:00 PM

Location: Healdsburg City Council Chambers
401 Grove Street
Healdsburg, California 95448

City of Healdsburg
Office of the City Clerk
PUBLIC MEETING NOTICE

Notice is hereby given that he Growth Management Ordinance Committee of the City of Healdsburg will hold a Public Meeting on Wednesday June 27, 2012 on or after 6:00 PM in the Council Chambers of City Hall, 401 Grove Street, Healdsburg California to consider the following:

A.  Discussion of topics related to possibel amendment to the Growth Management Ordinance.
Interested personas are invited to attend the special maeeting.

Barbara Neslon, Planning and Building Director
6/22/2012

Names

According to a New Yorker article, Stanley Ann Obama, after divorcing Barack Obama, Sr., moved back to Hawaii in 1965 and married Soetoro Martodihardjo, whose friends called him Lolo. Stanley was named for her father, who was named after the newsman explorer who found Dr. Livingston.

Paying Taxes to Your Boss

Let's say that you drive a truck for the Colorado Looting Corporation. The state deducts income tax from your pay check twice a month, and some of that cash is then sent over to the Colorado Looting Corporation as a subsidy. You are paying taxes to your boss.

There are 22 such programs in place in 16 states.What we have here is a direct method of transferring wealth from working people to more deserving corporate oligarchs, and it has the added virtue of going unnoticed. There is nothing on the pay stub of the worker to indicate where the income tax cash is headed. The worker might believe that his taxes are spent on schools and road repairs. Instead the money goes for cocaine, call girls, and a corporate board dining at $400 a plate in a restaurant so exclusive it has no name and employs an English food boiler as its chef. That's life in these United States.

The Horror

 In Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS the dying Kurtz  "cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath—"The horror! The horror!" This line has been interpreted in numerous ways, the most popular being that it expresses Kurtz's final reaction to our inhumanity to one another. But perhaps it expresses something more fundamental.

One winter, many years ago, I was down with the flu but thought it might be good to get out of the house for a few minutes. I  slowly trudged through snow along a deserted part of Centerport harbor, and I saw, across the small bay, a five-year-old boy wander out onto the ice and fall through. He was alone. For a time he held himself up on the edge of the ice. Then he sank down and only his hands appeared above water, held up, I assume by air trapped in the his sleeves. No one could reach him in time. I recall, regularly, a dozen useless memories like that, and my memories must be mild compared to what the police dream of at night or to the visual horrors combat veterans bring home and refuse to discuss.

We live on a planet where life forms feed on one another. We try not to think about it. We invent rationalizations. Descartes famously argued that dogs can not feel pain. The Preacher tells us that horrors are God's mysterious will and we should worship Him. Meanwhile, we head toward a catastrophe of climate change, population growth and environmental destruction. We are intent on turning the Earth into a mess no human being has experienced before.  Of course we cannot predict exactly what is coming, but it seems likely that the ocean will become more acidic quickly, before fish can adapt. The insects that pollinate our crops may die out. This was once the stuff of science fiction, but now we are about to make it real.

The President has announced that the most important issue he will face in a second term will be climate change. The people of our nation and China and Africa and India will not agree to any big inconveniences, of course. We might build a six inch berm of sand to ward off tsunamis but only if it doesn't force us to raise taxes. Yes, life is hard. Let's try not to think about it.

Money in Politics

Thanks to our morally bankrupt Supreme Court, vast amounts of money have enriched the Republican party and its candidates. Scot Walker just won his recall challenge in Wisconsin by swamping the opposition with ads etc. Romney won the Republican nomination by swamping Santorum and others. But I think that there is a limit to what money can buy.

For example, Stacey Lawson outspent Norman Solomon by a margin of about 9 to 5, but ran behind him in our local congressional primary. What I think I see is this: for money to make a difference, outspending your opponent by 2 to 1 isn't good enough. You need a huge difference, something like 5 to 1 or maybe 10 to 1. An opponent with half your money has enough money to fight back. This augers well for Obama, who is predicted to raise about half the cash that the 1% gives to Romney and certain radical right front groups.  

Phillip Morris Calling

I seldom answer the phone unless I know who is calling, but Susan, my wife, answers it in between. Yesterday she took a phone call from someone opposed to California's proposition 29 (which raises the tax on cigarettes). "Who are you?" my wife asked, curious to find out what sort of organization would campaign for cheaper smokes and the spread of lung cancer.  "I represent Phillip Morris," the caller explained.

A truthful answer?  Susan was astonished, and I don't know what to make of this unexpected candor. I've had a day to consider the matter, and maybe I've found a solution. What if the caller actually represented a different major cigarette company? What if the real goal was to make Phillip Morris look bad? (I hope this is true.)

Trump on Obama's Real Mother

Donald Trump on Ann Dunham, supposed mother of Barack Obama:

 "Not only is Barack Obama's so-called birth certificate a forgery, but so is the birth certificate of his mother, Ann Dunham. It has to be--if Obama's mother was a citizen, then so is he. That's the law, as some interpret it, but they aren't as smart as I am. I've been told that Ann Dunham was the daughter of Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, but have I seen their birth certificates? Obama has kept them hidden. And if they had American birth certificates, which I don't believe, how do we know that the certificates weren't forged as part of the plot that made their black grandson President? Many opportunists have forged birth certificates for their grandparents in order to make themselves American citizens. It's commonplace. And how can we be certain that Ann Dunham even was Barack Obama's mother? He's on record as calling other women mother, including his comments in a letter written while in high school about someone who might be his real mother, Moma Cass, recently identified tentatively as a woman of Liu ethnicity in Nyamaza Province, Kenya. Wake up, ABC! Why be just another wing of the Democrat Party? Get the truth out while our country can still be saved."