North Sonoma County Democratic Club: News

A really big oil spill

It's no consolation, but the Gulf Oil Spill is not the largest in our nation's history. I come from a family of oil workers who were drilling in Kern County in 1910 when the Lakeview gusher exploded into the sky. It was five times the size of the Gulf Oil Spill and lasted 544 days. Berms were built and a lot of the oil was contained. About half the oil made it to market. The rest soaked into the near desert, where you can find it today in the form of asphalt. There is a small monument there, too.

If faced with a choice between greed and common sense, well, common sense isn't much of a motivator. Greed is powerful.

Greedy Trolls

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

A New Course for Arizona

Arizona should start 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 they could begin 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.

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

EARTH INSURANCE

At the suggestion of Chris O'Sullivan, I drove down to the Sonoma Academy last night to hear a talk by Stanford Professor Stephen Schneider. Schneider, a leading expert on climate change, was speaking at a meeting of the U.N. Association. I won't try to repeat the lecture here, except to mention some key points.

Schneider was highly critical of the (inane) ritual on radio and TV where the host presents speakers for both sides of the climate change issue: a scientist who tells the truth and an unqualified professional liar from the coal companies. The effect is to keep the country confused.

The speaker said that 97% of climate scientists believe that global warming is real and caused, in part, by human activity. (For balance, should we give the other 3% half of the air time?) What we need is to get an informed discussion going on what to do. How we cope with the change is an ethical rather than a scientific question.

Risky business--it is currently possible and relatively cheap to shoot enough dust into the air to reverse warming. The problem is that the results would be dangerously unpredictable.

This generation is deciding the climate that the next 100 generations will live with. Schneider's best hope is that the government will get serious about developing green energy sources. If we want less developed countries to take climate change seriously, we will need to help them master cheap green technology.

Schneider pointed out that most of us have fire insurance policies for our homes, although few of us get burned out. Why not take out some insurance on our planet? Funding green technology would have that effect.

--GARY GOSS

Short Items

Stephen Colbert believes we already have an effective barrier against undocumented workers. "We lined the border with our crappiest states."

Lucie Jensen has suggested that Arizona's plan to require all citizens to carry proof of citizenship (buy passports) is a tax to raise money for the federal government.

A rich man's disease?--a Chelsea Lately guest pointed out that poor people never get treated for sex addiction.

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