Bullshit killing the Wolves

The same old refrain.  The same old, excuse the pun, bullshit!

The same old, State of Jefferson bullshit:  city slickers don't understand us, so leave us alone to make bigger profits by killing the herds of cattle by killing anything that gets it our  way.  Profit trumps morality and good sense!  

The same thing happened in the not so distant past.  

In 1850 California became a state, part of the land grab of the Mexican War.  

There were thousands of immigrants (that's right immigrants) who came for gold.  Unfortunately making money gold panning was not easy or very lucrative except for large companies.

So many 49ers lost (another bad pun) and had to do something else, since it was a long way to simply go home.

So they took land that was someone else's, and ranched.  The white population of California was booming, and there was a need for meat that far exceeded the wild game.

In those days barbed wire was not invented, so open range ranching was the established practice.

But, someone was on that open range: deer, wolves and people.  

The deer were shot by the thousands since they ate the grass the cattle needed. The wolves were exterminated by bounty hunters since they preyed on the cattle since the deer were gone.  And finally, the people were hunted for bounty because in desperation they killed a steer or two  to keep from starving.  Most Native American hid in the hills, venturing into the valleys to foreage for food. The 49ers had chased them off their ancient bountiful streamside  lands. 

It all came down to the bullshit (pun) cattle!  One steer killed by starving Indians meant ALL the wolves and native people had to die.

Anti-government ranchers led the charge to get the fledgling state government to form militias to hunt people because of cattle killing.  Funny how government is used to make them money?  Subsidies anyone? 

The wolves and the people were nearly completely exterminated in thirty short years.  The same bullshit was used to justify killing wolves AND people; everyone didn't understand, the ranchers knew best, the poor cattle. 

One bounty hunter, a Methodist Minister, bragged how he had been "humane"  because when he cornered a mother and two small children in a cave near Old Shasta, California, he "shot the five year old in the face with my pistol rather than use my buffalo rifle; I didn't want to hurt him".  

He shot a whimpering five year old in the face "humanely"?  What kind of human being was he....oh...a "Man of God"....

The wholesale slaughter of animals and human beings was led by ranchers!  It was all bullshit, the fact was the cattle loss from wolves and people was minimal. What was not bullshit was the justification for genocide, exterminating ALL the major predators save the white man. 

Some of the ranchers we hear now are descendants of the killers who murdered thousands.

And now the same old bullshit....the poor calves...right?

What they don't tell you is they kill ALL  those calves ultimately anyway. .  Unless the cows are milk cows, they all are butchered so we can have our Big Macs!

And it all comes down to PROFIT.   And killing boosts rancher's profit.   

It is profit that drove the last great genocide..  

Keep the wolves, fight for the environment...save yourselves and your children from the Reckoning that most assuredly is coming!

YES WE CAN

Expectations?   As I have pondered Justice (?) Scalia's now infamous slower colleges for "the blacks" versus the University of Texas, I hit on what should be obvious.

We have been trained as teachers that setting high expectations are critical to academic achievement.  A teacher's  high expectations and guidance with students is critical to how they perform.

It is true that students from poor schools, and bad backgrounds will struggle in elite colleges.  I had that experience at Stanford.  Shasta High, now a first class school, was not so in 1965.  I had a World History teacher who taught from the book with worksheets that everyone copied.  I read the text and because of my avid interest in history got a little out of the course. But, when faced with the History of Western Civilization my freshman year at Stanford, I was in deep trouble.  I did not have the background in Western Civilizations that my preppie peers had.  

It was the only class I asked to tutoring for, and pulled a C working my tail off.  

You see the Preppies were way ahead of me.  The privileged class shined in "Western Civ".  The years of privilege made a difference.  Many of the "Preppies" had traveled to Europe.  Many had gone to plays, concerts; etc.    And being a poor kid from Redding, I struggled.

I often have said the first major college football game I saw was the one I played in!  

But then I joined the ATO, a fraternity that had just been kicked out of the national for pledging men of color and Jews.  At the time I knew I was part Native American but had never acknowledged it.  I knew I was behind many of my freshman peers at Stanford; one being a friend named Mitt Romney, a very nice guy who was a preppie.

My lifelong best friend was also a preppie.  Our sophomore year, as I worked twice as hard to "get it" in classes, he pulled me aside and taught me how to write.  Both of his parents were teachers at an exclusive prep school in Minneapolis.  

He explained it was a code, that once you knew it, then let your passion take over.

Now this was while I was fighting my ass off trying to make the Stanford Varsity Football team, spending four to six hours a day, working for my board and room, AND going to class and doing homework.

It meant I could not go out and drink with the boys at the Goose, in season (?) and I just didn't have the time.

But I roomed with a guy named Al Wilburn, the first African American captain of the Stanford Football Team, an All American, pro football bound who instead decided against all our pleadings to become a .....DOCTOR.  This young man from the Fresno area, whose father was a sharecropper, and poorer than hell told us all he was going to UCLA med school and was going to be a doctor.

He was 6 foot four and weighed 245 pounds and could run like a damn deer.  I had to block him my freshman year, he almost tore my head off.

But someone along the line had raised his expectations and he was going to be a doctor by God.  And he was one of the first African Americans to pledge ATO.

And the place raised expectations for all of us.  We played against USC and UCLA when they were the best in the country; and got beat.  But my senior year, with Jim Plunkett as our QB, we almost got them.  

Raised expectations by John Ralston, one of the greatest men I ever knew, drove us, we worked and worked and worked, practicing twice as long.  I probably got beat deep  by Gene Washington and Plunkett more than any other cornerback in football.

But  the high  expectations built success.  In the classroom and on the athletic field football players were EXPECTED to be students FIRST AND athletes SECOND; so what if you studied 20 hours a day in both, we did it.

And we succeeded.  And we won.  But WE did it.  In the ATO we were brothers, we learned about each other's culture, preppies, poor part Indian kids from Redding, African Americans from L.A., Jews from New York, and Latinos from Los Angeles, we learned together; and the place drove us always expecting excellence.

So don't tell me Justice Scalia,  that African Americans need a "slower track", don't you dare.

I have seen it at the highest level.  I also was trained as a teacher to never accept excuses.  If a kid came in and said I can't, I said no...you can.  And many times they could.

Finally there was Steve Anderson.  Steve had been struck by a car when he was a toddler.  He was brain damaged and his motor skills put him in a wheel chair.  Back then we were just starting mainstreaming so he was placed in my Resource Specialist Class; I went into Special Education, that's right from Stanford to Special Education because I care about the wonder of human capacity and potential; unlike Scalia.

Scalia and his ilk would and did put students like Steve in special school, away from the privileged, away from a chance.  

Steve's parents were insistent that Steve experience a regular student's existence.  So we tried.  We tried so hard that one day, when Steve's personal aide was sick, I assigned two of my kids to push his wheelchair to PE.  They lost control of the chair and Steve rolled down a hill and suffered some minor cuts on his face.

The parents came to school to check him out.  I held my breath waiting for a lawsuit: they just laughed and said, other kids fall down don't they, we EXPECT him to be treated like everyone else.  We expect him to fall and to get up and try again!

That is what Scalia doesn't get.  That is what this country of white privileges doesn't get.  People of color don't want a handout, they just want a fair shot and to be pushed for excellence like the privileged. You delegate them to inferior schools and "slow" colleges and you don't get achievement.  AND, we lose human capital and capacity that can add immeasurably to America.  I have always thought that some poor Native American on a reservation somewhere, who will die of alcoholism, has the capacity to cure cancer; but white supremacy America is in the habit of not just wasting human achievement but crushing  it!  

Finally, when Steve graduated his parents demanded that he WALK  across the stage.  They EXPECTED HIM TO WALK ACROSS THAT STAGE!  Steve could not walk except with considerable help.  

Now Steve fell a lot.  I mean a lot.  So we tried to talk them out of it...they would have none of it.

So we practiced the walk, they call the last walk for the football seniors to the stadium at Stanford the WALK as well.  I did that one too many times.  And this WALK was only ten steps or so.  But ten steps in front of thousands of people.  

One Walk with thousands rooting you on, the other....the same!

So we practiced.  His parents expected him to make that walk. They had high expectations.  

And that graduation I hooked my arm underneath his and we walked those ten steps.  And as we walked the entire stadium erupted in applause, they rose to their feet and Steve, smiled, then laughed and mumbled,  "I did it".

DO NOT EVER SAY YOU CAN'T.  DO NOT EVER LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR ANYBODY.  STOP WHITE SUPREMACY BY TEACHING WITHOUT BIAS AND EXPECTING EVERYONE, I MEAN EVERY SINGLE ONE TO SUCCEED AND TO REACH THEIR FULL POTENTIAL.  AND THAT MEANS INVESTING WAY MORE IN EDUCATION THAN WE CURRENTLY DO!

THAT IS WHY I AM ANGRY AT JUSTICE SCALIA AND EVERY OTHER CONSERVATIVE WHO HIDES THEIR RACISM BEHIND THE HE/SHE CAN'T.........

YES....WE CAN!

Divided We Stand

I would urge you to read the article, "Divided We Stand" in the San Jose Mercury News" Sunday, December 13, 2015.  

  It shows that the entrenched system of white supremacy is only slightly less obvious than in 1960!  That is heartbreaking to say the least.

Right now the Supreme Court is about to eliminate complete any vestige of Affirmative Action.  Voter rights have already been curtailed making Selma irrelevant.  In short, white supremacy is on the rise and winning in every area.  

Consequently, people of color  lead in virtually every indicator of poverty and agony, from incarceration rates to reading scores.  Charter Schools have been pushed, along with private schools, to segregate our schools worse than 1960.  And "Black Lives Matter" is a outrage of African Americans against the wholesale slaughter of young men by the police in shoot after shoot after shoot.

A political party, once of Lincoln the Great Emancipator, now feeds off racial prejudice and white privilege.  The stereotyping of an entire religion (which is mostly practiced by people of color) is just one more example of WASPs incredible racism.  

And then there is the violence in the mean streets of America, by gangs, drug peddlers you name it, making  living to maturity an accomplishment for many.  Chicago is a town where an African American young man has more than one way to get shot on the way to school.  White kids just worry about which bus to take.  

And I haven't even mentioned Native Americans, who have made absolutely no progress in the last 40 years: none.  Sadly the Casinos have made more white people richer and the  lot of most Native Americans is the same as always, poverty, addiction; and early death.

And white supremacy rides on, in all its evil; now supported by a denier class championed by Fox News and other conservative voices who simply pretend the whole thing is not there.  After all, we elected a Black President, right; as they sabotage everything he has tried to do.

And the gap between the rich and the poor is now a chasm.  And white former middle class victims of this swindle, turn on the poor scared to death that they are next.  And, the way this is going, they already are next; poor, dying early, angry, miserable and lost.  And what do they do?  Why they rally around Trump, as their savior; who is NOT their friend by any stretch of the imagination.  

Divided we stand for sure.  And weakened as well.  America is losing. It is losing because in the world economy we do not get the fact that white supremacy is an enormous weakness, and invitation for reaction, and retaliation (call it terrorism).  Why do "they" hate us....for Christ's sake think about it!

Why do "they" hate "us"?  A Presidential candidate promises to send all the Mexicans home, stop Muslims from entering the country, then brags that "they" all love me.  

Look in the mirror this Christmas and who do you see?  When will we ever see the face of Jesus, shaking his head because we simply do not get it.  When will we stop hating and love; when?

And finally, for those who say, not me...it is our ancestors who did all that bad stuff; then why are people still screaming.  Why do we think we have integrated colleges when the University of Alabama, who just had a young man win the Heisman, still have segregated fraternities?  

How does that make any sense, if we truly are "All men are created equal".  

It doesn't...so divided we stand, with a target on us from the rest of the disbelieving world.

Here We Go Again

Here we go again.  In 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War college campuses exploded in protest.  Moreover the Civil Rights movement was going full throttle and M.L. King was murdered.  Protests shut down campuses, administration offices were occupied, the ROTC building at Stanford was torched.  

And the newspaper articles decried the immaturity and lack of knowledge of the college "spoiled brats".  Articles were written like this one, calling students immature and spoiled.  

Dr. Spock was assailed for teaching a permissive humane form of child rearing, that was a cause of young men not wanting to go off to die in a senseless war.   The fact that it was a senseless war was discounted by the greatest generation.  Parents were turned against their children, second guessing "sparing the rod".  One wonders what happens to cultures who produce soldiers first and citizens second?  

The greatest generation watched in horror as their anti-war sons and daughters resisted, demonstrated, and dropped out.  

And now, we listen to  the same nonsense when young people act like America's promise is real.

Vietnam, as it turns out was wrong.  Only the most conservative hard liner believes that the mistakes in Vietnam were warranted.  The dominoe theory, that was thrown up to us constantly by Johnson and then by Nixon, did not happen.  

Today every baseball cap you buy is "Made in Vietnam".  We discovered, after the war, that Vietnam hates China, even fought a brief war in the mid-seventies with China and is a capitalist nation economically; communist politically.  

In short the children of the sixties, spoiled and immature, had it exactly right.  The greatest generation was wrong.

And Civil Rights?  The sit ins, the marches at Selma, all led by the young.  And the deaths, borne by the young college students who discovered the white supremacy realities of the American nightmare.  And the non-violent  protests turned to angry violence when Martin Luther King was gunned down.

I suppose those riots were the actions of spoiled brats?  With yet another leader shot down, it was that superficial a reaction?  Really?    Talk to any African American about the M.L. KIng murder riots; they will tell you straight up what those riots were all about.  And the white supremacy leaders did not listen then either!  

And the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the Voter Rights Act was passed after bloody Sunday, when the march at Selma was attacked by white state troopers in an ugly example of white supremacy at its worst.  And we all choke up when we hear Glory, the song of Selma.

Milk and cookies?  Tell that to the students at Kent State with blood on the ground, or U.C. Berkeley, where Govenor Reagan earned his tough guy image by ordering actions that killed students.

And  there is David Harris, Stanford Student Body President, who elected prison over Vietnam; another "spoiled brat" ?

David Harris went south with the demonstrators; he paid his dues.  He has more love for this country in his little finger than the author of this nonsense has in her whole body.  

When  we invaded Normandy the first boats were loaded with 19 year olds.  The brass knew it would be bad and the youngest were sacrificed; they were brave and foolhardy.  The young feels the passion more and are less careful.

Young people are who die first in a war.  The Young die for old people's mistakes.  

But, as any parent can tell you, children often look up from their milk and cookies and ask, "Daddy, why are black people treated bad?"  Why are people mad at "Redskins".  Daddy, why are we fighting a war?   Daddy, why does that old man have no leg?  

It is not spoiled brats we are talkiing about.  This con has it as usual all wrong.  It is the insightfulness of innocent youth that we are seeing; calling us to our promises and ideals.

Listen to your children!  It is in their innocence that we find our idealism.

Neocon/Isis Both Terrorist

The civilized world is in a battle with terrorism.  There are several terrorist regimes, who cannot gain political footholds in any nation states, so they use fear and terror to try to undermine authority.

Terrorists are a diverse lot, ranging from tribal affiliations gone bad, to religious fanaticism.

After 9/11 Americans of the conservative persuasion, mostly Christian conservatives, decided we were in a Holy War, with Islamic Radicals who were intent on religious warfare.  The fact that most terrorists are secularists have been lost on the GOP.    

The Republican Party, in reaction to being absolutely asleep prior to 9/11, grabbed at this fabriciation, and attacked Afghanistan to destroy terrorist training camps, and Iraq to supposedly rid the area of WMDs.

They never found any WMDs nor any "Yellow Cake Uranium", but they did throw away trillions, and created even more terroists by their arrogant and stupid treatment of Iraqi Sulnnies.  George W. Bush was so ignorant of the middle east that his administration did not know the difference between a Sunni or a Shiite, or Kurd for that matter.  

He blundered into Iraq, destroyed the infrastructure, stupidly tried to privatize the rebuilding effort, put a Shiite in power, put all the Sunnis out of work, and created Issis.  

Meanwhile, the neocons persisted in a demanding yet another military solution to a complex political and historical situation in the middle east.

In short, the foreign policy of the United States is a mess thanks to neocon stupidity.  

Now, as Syria burns with Civil War, GOP "experts" decide to not take refugees and guess what, call for ground troops in Syria; which would be again stupid beyond belief.

Basically the Republican neocons are at it again, calling for widespread war to rid the world of terrorists.  

And of course, in the African black nations, the world's worst state terrorism is totally ignored because there is little oil in that part of Africa; and the faces of the victims are overwhelmingly black not white.  

Oil drives the neocons approach to the Middle East.  Donald Trump, a poltical humorist, even has stated outright that he will "take all the oil" if he is elected.  At least he is honest.  Evil but honest.  

And, fear reigns supreme.  Even though very few United States citizens have been harmed since 9/11, you would think there have been countless slaughters to listen to right wing radio and Fox News.  

Fear, fear, fear is the mantra that is used by right wingers to stir up irrational and wrong headed reactions to terrorist attacks.

This comes from the same crowd who sponsored the disaster in Iraq that is resulted in the rise of the Isis terrorist organization.

So we stumble along, deeply divided, reacting exactly as the terrorists expect, being played like a fiddle by both the terrorists and the neocons who are desperate to regain power, so they can spend more lives endlessly and get back into power.  

It is all about power, for the Isis terrorists and the neocon terrorists...

Terrorism has goals and objectives.  The terrorist has gripes and issues that got them into this revengeful state.   We never bother to investigate the reasons for the terrorism, but are lured into reactions that only feeds their recruits.

The neocons we halfway understand, the Isis no way.  

A Free Press

Two  events recently are of great alarm to those of us who still value freedom in the United States.

One was the behavior of Republicans on the Benghazi Committee in the way they handled Hillary Clinton's "testimony".  In actuality it was a partisan witch hunt; Republicans for eleven hours attacked, maligned and tried every trick they could to rattle the presumptive Democratic Presidential candidate.

Why did they do this?  American politics have  deterioriated into a Gotcha game.  If the opposing party can find a gaffe, just one, it is lifted from the tape, and played over and over during the campaign.   Elections can turn on just one gaffe.  The former  Secretary of State of the United States was fair game for eleven hours of searching for that one gaffe, that one statement from fatigue, that could win the election.

Never mind that all of us, in a pressure situation, can say almost anything.  No, the rules are now inhumanely attack looking for the kill.

And try as they might, the Republicans whiffed.   The only time the Secretary came close was when she laughed when asked if she was alone the night after the attack...the questioner lept to the attack and said, "It is not funny, four Americans died".  Ms. Clinton was certainly not laughing about the deaths but about the ludicrous question and quickly said so.  I will bet this shows up in a campaign ad!  

But that is America's gotch politics.   In the first hours long Benghazi Committee appearance of Mrs. Clinton, she in frustration said something to the effect, all of these questions don't matter, lives were lost and we need to find out why.  Conservatives ran ads claiming she really said the lives did not matter.  

Her comment was lifted out of context, placed among a damning narrative, and ran as a hit ad all over the country.  I had conservative friends actually chant this to me....It doesn't matter to Hillary that people were killed!   Dirty politics at its worst has become the new normal in Washington.  And, the right wing is practicing it at full bore.

Now the ultimate in hypocrisy.  It seems that in the last Presidental "debate" run by CNBC, with one questioner a Latino, the candidates complained about the content of the questions.  Incredibly, the head of the GOP has suspended NBC from carrying a future debate!

Interesting, Republicans get to pick and choose their questions to answer, the Democratic front runner for President is subjected to eleven hours of witchhunt with no chance to screen the questions?  

The real threat is to the First Amendment.  A free and unfettered press is essential to the existence of a democracy.  The press, and this includes Fox News, is necessary to hold politicians accountable.  Watergate comes to mind.  So does the Vietnam War and yes, the Iraq War.  During the Civil War, when the nation's very existence was in question, the free press attacked President Lincoln at every turn.  

The Press, even the opposition press, must be able to ask probing and yes even stupid questions.  This is necessary and proper to our freedom!

If a politician does not want to answer the question then he/she has the option of saying so.  There may or may not be fallout.  At a recent debate that happend to Mrs. Clinton.  She was asked about her emails and she simply chose not to answer.  That was it, no answer.  

The Benghazi Committee is not the free press, but Mrs. Clinton still showed up and endured eleven HOURS of grilling so brutal that even Republicans were shocked.  It is a direct threat to our basic political freedoms for the National GOP leadership to boycott CNBC.  

What is next, allowing political parties to shut down news companies they don't like?  That my friends is totalitarianism.  

Why Can't We Fix Things Without Government?

I just posted yet again, another picture of a gentleman helping others in spite of his age.  I have posted several examples of "paying it forward" of individual philontrophic efforts that help scores of people.

And my conservative friends always bring up the fact that Redding, a poor area, has one of the largest personal giving percentages in the state.

That's right, in spite of grinding poverty, the haves up here are overall  very  generous in their giving.

So why not just let it be like it used to be?    Before the Great Deprression personal donations and church benevolence was what took care of the less fortunate.  Why can't we just do that?

Then mean old Mr. Roosevelt came along, and socialism in Russia, making government a wet nurse.

Why then can't we just put it back, like Conservatives want to do.

Its a matter of scale and population.  

Our church had a series of meetings on what to do with the poor and homeless in Redding.  We strategized for weeks trying to maximize resources to make a difference.

With over 3000 homeless the task is daunting to say the least. 

And everytime, I mean everytime, we ultimately turn to government to do something.

Ok, this is why conservative philosophy regarding social welfare will always fail:  numbers.

That's right numbers.  There are over 300 million Americans now.    They mostly live in huge metro areas that depend on large scale infrastructures for everything.  They can't grow their own food.  They can't provide their own roads.  They can't be "rugged individualists".

Inland the smaller population numbers live more individualistic lives, but still are hugely dependent on each other for support.  In short, we ALL need each other, working together, to maintain our  wasteful and climate endangering lifestyles.

Years ago the United States made a serious mistake.  We allowed Big Oil to run our politics.  We are so enamored with automobiles that we tore down our passenger rail infrastructure; we did away with trollies, we even reduced Greyhound Bus Lines to a shadow of itself.  

We now drive everywhere, we depend on the personal automobile for our economic existence.

And that individual freedom has fooled us into believing that we are somehow separate, aloof from the rest of us.  

People are isolated in our cars, until someone swerves into our lane or heavan forbit, we have an accident.  Then wham, the government is right their in the personage of the Highway Patrol, Judges, Lawyers; etc.  In a heartbeat we realize we really were not alone in our cars.

And everytime gas prices spike we flinch; because the vast majority of us now live paycheck to paycheck.  The vast majority of us drive over 30 miles one way to work in citiies where only the rich can afford to live close to work.

Meanwhile the gap between the rich and the poor grows.  The homeless grows and we begin hearing from the demogogues who tell us all we have to do is "Make American Great Again" and we "Can Fix This".

And everyone of them on the right are USING us against ourselves.  They cater to  our panic when we slow down and realize we are trapped.  We are trapped in our myths in our yearning to be free of one another when it is just impossible to be free from one another.  

It always has been. The rugged invidualist is a myth.  In the "Wild West" the only thing that kept settlers safe was the United States Army.  That is what "won the west" by a system of brutal genocide toward Native Americans and out and out land theft.  That's right, your great grandparents stole the land, they DID NOT earn it.  The military protected them.  That's right, government won the west!

Today it will be over 100 degrees in Redding, California in the middle of September.  In the next week we will see temperatures that will set, once again, records for heat along with a drought that is endless.

Our California Dream is quickly becoming a nightmare of heat, crime, homelessnes and a sense that we can't do anything about it ourselves.

It's the "ourselves" part we HAVE to address.  WE ARE NOT IN THIS ALONE!  We have to fix it or it will fix us:  we are talking species survival here.

Rugged invidualism is a myth; never have been, never will be.  We have to realize that teamwork and working with not against government is the ONLY way we can get out of this one way trip to hell.

That's right a one way trip to hell.  Global warming is on us, poverty is on us, and yes an unfair distribution of wealth is on us.  It will destroy democracy, encourage fascism (the Republican Party has become a fascist poltical party by any political science measurement) and paralyzes effective refroms to solve problems. 

There is a reason why the Congress can't solve or do anything.  It is by design, it protects the gas, coal and oil industries who have decided to ruin the planet to protect their profits.  And they use our love of the automobile against us.

They are sly, they are very well funded, and they will never quit.  They have pledged to win this no matter what the costs.  Just like Germany in the 30s, coroporate power has thrown its power to the right wing, gambling that "at the end we can control them".  

That was crazy then, it is crazy now.  Fascism ultimately leads to conflict and leads to warfare.  And that warfare ultimately leads to ruin.  

And that is a reckoning that none of us can afford.  We can turn this around, but it will take those of us who are mesmorized by the right to blink, shake their heads and see.  It is the only way we can stop this madness.  

I pray every day that this will happen.  

The Lying Oil and Gas Companies

The truth just tell the truth.  

 

Let's talk a bit more about the gas and oil industry.  I, like all Americans, love my cars. I love the freedom of going where I want when I want.  I don't like the traffic jams and I particularly don't like having to pay more and more for gas.  I don't like the potholes in the roads and the congestion.

 

Lately I really don't like the ridiculous heat that beats down on us; nor do I like the endless California drought.  I don't like the news stories warning that either global climate change is a liberal plot and not true, or that global climate change is real and is ruining the earth.

 

I don't like President Obama warning us all the time.

 

I smell a rat and its the oil and gas companies.

 

Why are we fracking so much?  No really, why so much?  Why are we drilling for oil in the Arctic?  

 

Why don't gas and oil companies tell us what their estimates are of oil reserves for the rest of the century.

 

Why don't we start building up our transportation system to allow trains and buses?  Why don't we have a choice like we USED to.

 

Right now, to get to San Francisco from Redding you only have two viable choices; by auto or by plane (and that is expensive).  Trains come in the middle of the night and it takes a day to get to San Francisco.

 

I am old enough to remember getting to San Francisco by train in six hours!

 

 

I suggest we all demand from the gas and oil industry a straight answer to the basic question:  How much is left?  How many years of full consumption do we have?

 

I think I know the answer; about fifty on a good day.

 

So, we are looking at the ravages of rising oceans and high temperatures along with running out of gas all at once.

 

And who is leading us that way?  Who resists every climate initiative?  Who lies to us all the time.

 

The gas, coal and oil industry.  

 

Why do they do that?  Why do they lie.  One answer; short sighted profit.

 

These guys are so evil they don't care.  That's right they don't care.  The corporate culture is so bereft of morality, profit rules EVERYTHING, that they constantly lie to the public about everything.  You can count on them to resist every government regulation; as they ruin the Arctic Ocean after they wrecked the Gulf of Mexico.  Have we forgotten that so soon?  They are banking on that.  They are evil!

 

I have an idea.  As we run out of gas, go to Shell Headquarters, take the bastards out of their office and HANG THEM!   I don't advocate that, but it WILL happen if people ever wake up to the way we are being used and lied to.

 

Why do they lie?  

Why Care?

I think I need to clarify something for my friends out there.  Why the Facebook photo...why do I dwell on my 1/16th Cherokee and not the 15/16 Western European?  

Fact is I know and embrace the 15/16 Western European.  That is mostly my mother's side, God Bless her soul, a person of dignity and love for all.  

I remember when we invited one of my 1st grade classmates, a little African American girl, to my birthday party, and some of my friend's parents kept their children home.  My mother called each one of them later and read them off for being the bigots they were. 

I found out years later of course, but that is what she did.  She married my Dad, a 1/8 Cherokee knowing full well his racial history.  She did so against the wishes of some in her large family (many supported her though).  

How does 1/16th influence me so?  It forces me to remember!

I tell you the truth it was hard.  At Stanford there was a fellow teammate who was African American and kept beating me out for first string.  It was hard.  He was better.  We competed as equals.  I resented it.  But never because he was black.  I had to live with it.  I had to live with the fact that he was a team mate.  He is gone now, an early heart attack took him.  I often wish I  could speak with him one more time.  

My mother has taught me better.  My father did too.  

Yesterday I visited him in the Dementia Assisted Facility.  He rambled on about how we were born poor and made due somehow.  In spite of the agony of Alzheimers he still, once in a while, makes me proud!

That is why I keep coming back again and again to this.  That is why I keep harping on white supremacy.  

I hate it!  I love my Mom and Dad.

There are many things that conflict in a man's life.  There is much to love about our country.  There is much to hate.

The one thing that keeps coming back, that lives each day in the hearts of us all, is White Supremacy.  

Fox News claims it is gone while all of us know it is not.  The United States has done some great things.  We stopped fascism and ended the most brutal war in human history.  It nicked us, because we had to be brutal too to end it; witness the atomic cloud.  

As we opened the death camps and saw the ultimate of man's brutality the world caught its breath, then went back to doing the same brutal things it always had done.  

And white supremacy forced us to wait until the late forties before we could allow inter-racial marriage or allow an African American to play major league baseball; wait another almost twenty years before segregation ended and Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed.  

Why so long.  Why must I remember and just not know?  Why do we all ignore the evil that is right next door?  

Because white supremacy conditions our every waking moment.  It is engrained in our culture to its very core.

The more I study history the more I am appalled.  Millions of Native Americans were exterminated, millions of wildlife killed, to steal land and create the "American Dream"..We ruined our environment so we could play a new video game, take a needless ride to the store, get more and more until we are so fat we waddle to the T.V. remote.  

Why must the American Dream be at the expense of someone else, always?  Why must there be "winners and losers" in our consciousness?  Why do we continue to pollute, to watch the doe die in the gutter after getting hit by the truck?

Trump speaks of that a lot.  And many of my fellow American listen.  Trump embodies the American nightmare.  

Hate sells in white supremacy.  Love does not.

But, again at the end of the long day, the reckoning is coming.  God is not sitting idly by during all of this.  The Great Mystery need not act,  It needs to just wait.

Let Us Not Fear to Negotiate

The Iran Anti Proliferation Agreement is a good thing and should be approved.  Predictably Republicans have rallied against it, remember the Senate Republicans actually sending a petition to Iran?  

This was one of the most blatant disloyal acts I can ever remember from the United States Senate.

This all reminds me of 1919 when the U.S. Senate, looking to the 1920 Presidential election, turned down the treaty President Wilson brought back from Versailles.

History has not been kind to Henry Cabot Lodge and other Senate Republicans, who killed America's participation in the League of Nations.

This led to Italy's rape of Ethiopia, the march to World War II, and directly aided the rise to power of fascism throughout the world.  

The United States was the only world power after WWI who had the strength to provide some kind of world order.  Instead of seizing this, as Wilson urged, we shrunk back into isolationism.  Japan, Germany and Italy saw their opportunity.  Without the United States in the League of Nations it was emasculated and ineffective.  FIFTY FIVE MILLION PEOPLE DIED because of this stupidity on the part of the Republican Party.

And, they won the Presidency for three terms, culminating in the disaster of Hoover and you know the rest.

We are looking at the same thing now.  Republicans are driven by politics, and a Israeli leader who is a hawk on everything, to opposed virtually anything the outgoing Democratic President proposes.  There is jockeying for position from over a dozen "viable" candidates, ALL who oppose the Iran Deal.

Fact:  The major world powers were at the table and participated in the negotiations from the outset.

Fact:  The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved the settlement.

Fact:  The opposition has NO alternative to offer save attacking Iran.

Fact:  Iran, whether we like it or not, is an essential player in the politics of the Middle East.  They can either help or hinder virtually any efforts we make fighting terrorism in the area.   To isolate them further is stupid plain and simple.  

Fact:  History is not kind to the Republican Party and American Firsters (yes some Democrats participated in that stupidity).  They helped cause WWII!

Show some sense, read the agreement and support the President!  "Let us not negotiate in fear nor fear to negotiate", was the phrase President Kennedy used when he negotiated the end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Can you imagine if the Republicans would have blocked him?  We all would be dead!

Two babies running free in the heat

Yesterday I spent from 1:30 to 8:00 in the heat of the day.  I marshal a golf course in Redding.  The high was 112.  It hit that figure (or higher) at about 4:00 pm.  

We had about 10 people who teed off at 1:30; no kidding.  Some were tourists who had planned their round as part of their vacation, one was a fellow marshall, four were guys drinking beer who decided to do this on a dare.

We get that on hot days, people who risk their lives on a dare.

One of them, a young man of about 15, got heat exhaustion.  My training as a coach came into play, I demanded he drink lots of water (we have ice and water on our carts) and made an ice pack from a golf towel to put on the back of his neck.  Later, he was feeling better after not able to play several holes when I last saw them.  

At first his father thought it was funny, as his son got incoherent, he didn't think it was funny anymore.

Meanwhile, I saw animals in distress everywhere.  Squirrels out of the trees, lying flat in the grass, trying to cool off.  I saw deer in the middle of the day, at the stream  that runs pathetically through the course (it has mostly dried up).  The geese and ducks were out of the water, clustered under trees for shade...It was too hot in the water!

I saw a dog running loose.  I think it was crazed with thirst.  I tried to catch it, but couldn't.

I saw a falcon, on a green of all places, standing in the shade.  This was with golfers hitting balls at the green.  I drove up on it, and scared it away for its safety.  

No birds were flying, it was too hot.  

It was strangely silent everywhere except for the droaning of air conditioners in the houses, sucking the air in and expelling the hot, making the heat worse. 

And then there were the two little ones.

At about five, when the heat was the worse, my wife called me on her cell phone.  We live on the golf course, and she had been driving back from town, and saw two "babies" cross the street headed away from the creek.  She did not see  their mother.

I happened upon a beautiful doe a few minutes before, about a half mile from where my wife saw the two babies.  She told me they were very small, tiny almost, way too young to be separated from their mother.

The doe I saw was lying down next to the creek, probably suffering heat exhaustion.  The water in the creeks is rancid.

I quickly figured out I was witnessing a tragedy.  In 112 heat I sped off in my golf cart, looking for the fawns.  

The golfers has long since given up and quit, the heat drove them off.   They retreated to their cars turned on their car air conditioners and left.

The deer were not so fortunate.  I am afraid that the doe and her fawns were separated by too large a distance.   They were not weaned, they probably died in an hour or so, alone, without their mother.  I really tried to find them, not sure what I would do, but at least give them a chance.  

I failed. We all failed.

A predator didn't get them.  The predators do not move in heat like this, they stay in the shade and don't move.  The predator becomes the heat.  

The predator is the climate.  The predator is the Great Reckoning.  

WILD ANIMALS DO NOT HAVE AIR CONDITIONING.  

Air conditioning lulls us all into a false sense of security because we hide in it when it gets hot.  We shut up the house, burn more energy from a coal fired plant and watch T.V.  

Global warming cannot affect us directly anyway, when we hide in our houses.  Right?

Not so for those two little ones.  

Two more little victims of our utter and complete stupidity, of our lack of any common sense.  The victims of climate change are the weak, the young....

Two more victims of man made climate change on a hot summer afternoon in Redding California.  Two more reasons why the vultures are constantly circling over our land.  

And who will cry for them?

If Only We Were Christian

If only...If only I would not have been greeted by one of my golfing buddies yesterday who spat out, "Congratulations".  I asked him for what, and he answered the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage.  He then remarked with scarcasm about the White House lighted up in Gay Pride colors.  He spate out, "And YOUR President" ran their colors on the White House...I can't believe it".

I replied, "Have you seen the Imitation Game"?  He said he had.  He must have been asleep during the last part.

An expert on codes helps end WWII.  He is as he puts it, "a homosexual".  He is hounded after the war, arrested for sexual depravity and given hormones to "cure" his "illness".  This guy, by historians analysis, probably helped shorten the war by two years!  He winds up committing suicide.   He should have been given a medal, but like many gays, he is driven to suicide by the hate of the Bible Crazed Christians.  That's right, you drive people to sucide with your HATE.

But, now we hear the right proclaiming that they will elect a Republican President, restructure the Court and put back into place the hateful structure of religious backed bigotry we have endured for over 200 years.

That's right, religious Christian backed bigotry based on a few verses in the Bible, that have been used to discriminate against a small percentage of the population for centuries.  We are talking the Salem Witch Trials type stuff here, murder, beatings, and certainly the favorite of the "Scarlet Letter" , shunning.

Oh, yes, outcast them all.  Cluck and turn our heads away in our pathetic self righteousness.  Make sure we harm them.  Make sure we punish them.

And then, on Sunday, jump to our feet and sing Amazing Grace.  Worship  the son of man who preached exactly the opposite behavior we tell the world is demanded by the Bible.  Why would Jesus preach the way he did if he wanted his flock to act like vigilantes?

Then, act like this SCOTUS decision  will kill you.  A preachers in the midwest even threatened to set himself on fire if SCOTUS ruled the way it did.

  It will ruin Christianity right?  Another  example of the liberals trying to destroy our church.  Little children will be in danger by a 55 year old gay man who only wants legal protection for his union to another man.

There is no conncection between homosexuality and sexual predatory behavior...none.  In fact sexual predators are overwhelming heterosexual.

We have debated this for years, just like we debated racism for years.  We have fought a Civil War over it.

And you, my fellow Christians REFUSE to be Christian.  What is the matter with you?

May Jesus have mercy on your rotten souls!

In the Background He Stood Smiling

Many are talking about President Obama's Eulogy in South Carolilna.  It was a magnificant speech.

It also was very unusual, because for the first time the President really talked about race.

He dissected the past tragedy of slavery and its effect on the brutal killer who shot nine people to death during Bible study in a Church.  He spoke of Grace, a gift from God that we do not earn, but simply have God's love to do with what we can.  Most fail to even see it, because of our sins.

He described this eternal truth in a preacher's voice.

He told us the "conversation" that this tragedy should cause about race was not needed, because God only knows, we have discussed and fought over this endlessly.

It is Grace he said, Love for our fellow human, with no regard for racial characteristics, that is all we have to do.  We are blind and cannot see this simple truth.  

As the President spoke I focused on  another man on the podium.  He was in the back, fading in and out in time with the melody of the President's speech.  He smiled most of the time, with arms folded, surveying the crowd.

He was a very tall man, dressed a bit oddly  for the occassion, but his reactions to the President's message were unmistakable.  He shook his head in sadness as the President recited the names of the victims.  He smiled when the President spoke about taking the Confederate Flag down.  His eyes moistened when the President spoke of eternal grace, and being able to see that Grace and acting accordingly.

Then the President concluded his talk with Amazing Grace, which he remarkably  sung himself.  The old man on the podium was visibly shakened by this, and a tear flowed down his cheek.

And finally, in the most telling phrase in the speech, the President, as he always does, blessed the U-N-I-T-E-D States of America.  It was then that the old, tall man  applauded enthusiastically.  

The President read this slowly and for obvious effect, since  the Civil War started a few miles from where  the President stood.

As the crowd dispersed, and handshakes were all around, I saw the man, quietly walk to the back and merge into the curtains.

As he did so, he put on his  tall stove pipe shaped hat.  

The Vice President of the Confederacy Speaks

For all of you Republicans and Fox News Followers, who still believe slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, these are Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, words justifying the establishment of the Confederate States of America.

If anyone who can read English can read this and still believe the defense of slavery and racism was not the primary cause of the Civil War, then they are just living in a world of make believe!  

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails."

This and other arguments of the time have been used for over a century, since the Civil War, to justify the "lost cause" and supported Jim Crowe and still motivate racist lunatics like that demented soul who killed the innocents in South Carolina last week.

Alexander Stephens was Vice President of the Confederate States of America and is here supporting the racist explanation for the need to preserve slavery....

To be fair, to a racist, Mr. Stephens did not have access to the DNA and genetic scientific facts of the twentieth century, that prove conclusively that all of humankinds is 98% genetically the same....there simply  are no significant differences tied to racial make up....NONE!  

This is why the battle flag of the Confederacy needs to come down and off every state government vestige in this country.  And flying it should be a crime!!!!

Freedom?

I can't put this one down without another comment.  

Mr. Will, true to his aristocratic upbringing and extreme condescension, states that political free speech is somehow the same, in a coroporate context, to "discuss" fairly with individuals in the political arena.  He equates  the economic power of Apple to Greg Beale.  Both deserve the same protections for speech.  Really?  

This is the rub.  I will bet if you ask 100 Americans what free speech means to them, they will speak of an individual's right to express themselves without recriminiation.  The First Amendment does not speak of political free speech for groups, or representatives of groups,  it addresses protections for individual citizens.  

In fact, any beginning political science student will tell you that the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution as a condition of its ratification, as amendments to address concerns that INDIVIDUAL rights be protected.  Hence the right to be protected from searches and seizures, the right to be informed of charges against you; etc.  Note, how the word  individual  

comes up again and again as we study the Bill of Rights.  

There is no corporate there.  A corporation is an organization, a group endeavor, usually for profit, or also non-profit.  Corporation groups were simply not in America in 1789.  And, the Bill of Rights was never intended to protect groups, it was specifically to protect individual rights.  That was part of the grand compromise that got the Constituion ratified.  Americans remembered the repression the British had used against them in pre-revolution times, many colonists could still remember why they fled Europe to America: individualism and individual rights.  

What the Supreme Court did was to treat corporate interests like individuals.  This goes to the infamous ruling by a former court, that, as Mitt Romney famously said, "Corporations are individuals too, my friend".  

So, as individuals we would expect a level playing field when it comes to the Citizen United political, free speech, right?  As Will smugly states, "we need to not regulate politics".  

And that is simply wrong.  Politics has been regulated from its inception.  The Congress of the United States makes laws through the political process.  And from it comes regulations of all sizes and colors.   Men are indeed political animals, but if left unregulated, you get war and violence.  Even a cursory study of the French Revolution will prove that.  

So, the "regulators" as Will states, are always out there, regulating free political speech and then are shocked by how their rules backfire.    And what does he consider a backfire...like the election of a Black President???

Finally, we need to ponder what this is doing to our political process.  By equating Apple Computer Corporation for example to me, Citizens United assumes fatally that we are both individuals and therefore should be regulated little if at all.  So I take my paltry retirement income and the resources it can buy, up against Apple Computer with its Billions.  I can buy 10 seconds on the local T.V. station, Apple can buy through a Super Pac, hours on the national scale.  This is fair?  This is a fixed game!

In the United States we use T.V. advertisements (and the Internet) as part of a highly materialistic political campaign process.  The size of monetary support for a candidate is reported constantly, or at least guessed  at, thanks to Citizens United, and is used to predict winners and losers.  Dark money runs the show.  

And sure enough, the size of a political war chest directly affects the future of a candidate's chances to win.  At last check, the Koch Brothers' corporation has dedicated over a BILLION dollars to elect the President.  

The Koch Brothers have poured money into state legislative races and governors races from Maine to California.  And the results have been spectaculor, the majority of governors are conservative Republicans and same with the state legislatures.  And these "representative" bodies in no way reflect the citizenry they represent.    The book, "Whats the Matter with Kansas" springs to mind.  Currently Kansas has a zealot for a Governor, who has bankrupted the state, but politically is protected by a right wing legislature and a election process that no longer can hold him accountable.

And accountability is essential to good government.  

Citizens United ended accountability in the United States.  

This occurs because voter turnouts are deliberately suprressed, people are sick of advertisement politics, and simply do not vote, leaving exactlly what the Koch brothers and others want, a political playing field tilted heavily in their oil interest favor and not accountable to the people they do not represent; the corporations is who they really represent.  

And if I decide to speak out, what resources do I have against their billions?  This is the point that Will and the other plutocrats don't bother to tell you:  THE GAME IS FIXED FROM THE BEGINNING.  EQUATING FREE POLITICAL SPEECH BY EQUATING CORPORATIONS WITH INDIVIDUAL FREE EXPRESSON IS A FATAL CONTRADICTION.  

 How in the world can I compete in a political discussion equally with the billions of the Koch brothers, the legions of political consultants they hire, the PACS and SuperPacs they employ?

So we slide further into the fascism they are pushing for so diligently.  And George Will loves it, since unregulated is his mantra, his religion; and unregulated gets lots of Republicans elected.   

Unregulated is good, he preaches,  it will always produce a better result.  Tell 1932 that.  Tell 1939 that.  Tell WWII surviivors that.

Unregulated political speech leads to death of democracy, and ultimately war, since the political process is regarded as unable to solve economic problems and issues.  So, sooner or later, a leader comes along that says, "forget democracy" follow me...Hitler, Mussolini; etc.  Or the people finally rise up and kill them all; witness Syria and the Middle East.  

Ironically, the poltical system that the corporations work to control, in the end always leads to the destruction of the economic stability they need to continue to profit.  E

ver seen the ruins of Germany in 1945?  Consider that the Krupp Industries gave millions to support HItler and his political madness, then watched in horror as their factories were bombed into oblivion.  

Our political system from city councils to the Congress is poisoned by special interests.  The Republicans have pushed for years that this is somehow politically healthy, as one bribery case after another occurs.  Again, government regulation of political speech is seen as the enemy of democracy.  One thing it is the enemy of, bribery. 

In fact, leveling the playing field, so ordinary citizens can express their political opinions with equal volume as corporations is the ONLY way we can preserve freedom.  And, it is also the only way to continue to provide a stable and peaceful economy in which corporations prosper.  

And thanks to George Will, we are failing miserably...

The Tragedy of Shasta Lake City

Shasta Lake City, once called Central Valley after the Central Valley Project one of the largest water reclamation projects on earth, has always labored under a downcast second class stigma.

Most of this stigma  is very wrong and unfair.  Central Valley was and is one of the poorest areas in Shasta County, but much of it is not their fault.  Shasta Lake City is one of the more beautiful spots in Shasta County.  

Shasta Dam was the last large dam built as part of the  huge water reclamation projects of the early twentieth century.  Legions of workers, called dambusters, followed these huge projects to escape the ravages of the depression.  When a dam was completed, say Hoover or Boulder Dam, the Federal Government would leave a "planned" community for future generations.  

In Shasta Dam's case, there was no planned commuinity.  The dam was completed during the Second World War and the Feds did not have the extra money to leave a planned community.

So Central Valley, Project City and Summit City (named after the workers'  tent cities that grew up to support the dam's construction), had no  infrastructure, no water system,no sewage system to speak of.  The Feds just left, with practically nothing of benefit behind.  

The Federal Government did leave a small planned commuity, the administrative housing facility, which was famously taken over in the 60s by local Native American tribes for a time as a protest for the wrongs done to their land and interests. It was reduced to rubble.   Otherwise Central Valley had little in the way of a head start toward becoming a prosperous city.  I can remember during my eight years at Central Valley High School, the smell of sewage that would always follow a strong rain storm, because the sewage system was basically home made.  

So poverty was the starting point.  And a sense of being a second class area in a county that was becoming more prosperous after the war due to the explosion of the logging industry was strong.  Central Valley, in spite of the fact that the dam and federal project it was named after was directly responsible for Shasta County's affluence, was depicted in the larger community as a poor, underclass place.  

It is interesting, because the dam workers, many who lived in Central Valley, were the best paid workers in Shasta County in the late 1930s and early 40s.  They would come to Redding and spend their paychecks on the whores on California Street and the bars.  There were many fights between the "townies" of Redding, and the "hicks" from Central Valley.  There was great resentment in Redding citizens because the "hicks" from C.V. actually made way more money!  

In the mid-1950s Central Valley High School was built.  It was needed because Redding was growing rapidly, partly due to Shasta Dam, and one high school was not large enough.  Unfortunately for Central Valley High, it was the smallest high school between Enterprise and Shasta, but was forced to compete athletically in the NAL.  

So, winning was very difficult.  One year in the 60s Central Valley High did not win a varsity boys game in any sport until baseball season!

Understandably the citizens of Central Valley did not like this stigma.  And they rebelled by "unifying" Central Valley High out of the Shasta Union High School District in the early 1990s.  

At the time I was an Assistant Principal and Interim Principal of Central Valley High School.  I have the dubious honor of being the Principal of the school when it was unified out of the district.

There is more to this than  just a school reorganization.  There was a great amount of bitterness and resentment in the Central Valley community for alleged wrongs the greater Redding area constantly foisted upon them.  Some of these were fanciful, some not.  But for sure, there was a pent up resentment.  Shasta High students called C.V. students hicks and worse, while running up the scores on them.  

In the 1980s for example, the Central Valley Varsity Football Team won 3 games in the whole decade.  

The citizens of now Shasta Lake City blamed the Shasta Union High School District for this unfairness. And they had a point, the district for some strange reason, refused to allow the high school to move to a smaller school league.  This resulted in one year after another of defeat.

But, in the unification lies the moral of this story.  It should have never happened.  At the time proponents of unification studied future enrollments and quickly realized that a viable reorganization depended on Bella Vista and Columbia areas being included in the unification.  Both areas were independent and did not want to be associated with the unification, so they opted out.  This left the unified area with a small population base, in areas that did not promise rapid population growth. 

Shasta Lake City for example is a retirement community with few school aged students.  The Buckeye area is mostly commercial with few new housing developments.  So, while the greater Redding area grew into the twenty first century, the attendance area of the new Gateway Unifed School District did not.  In fact it is shrinking.  

And then, in another spurt of local civic pride, Shasta Lake City was born.

Again, this organization faced formnable obstacles, small tax base, little real growth potential, and another threat that nobody could foretell:  the implications of a killer drought on a community that relies greatly on recreation revenue from Shasta Lake.

As Shasta Lake goes, so goes Shasta Lake City.  And Shasta Lake is running dry.

So now we see about 150 students graduate from Central Valley High.  The size of the student body has almost halfed in the years since the unification.  The school does compete in a smaller school league and the years of losing have ended, but the school district is becoming less viable by the year.

Small high schools are dificult to run, because the smaller they get the more difficult it is to offer a full ranged curriculum.  College bound students transfer out to larger schools because they have to.  The University of Califorinia system requires what is called an A to G curriculum, full ranged from chemistry to calculus.  Small high schools cannot offer that.  

So Central Valley High School, who once had Bella Vista students and Columbia students in its student body, now have way less.  Ironically, the claims that under the Shasta Union High School District the school was being shortchanged have only come true AFTER the unification due to declining enrollemnt.  

It pains me to see what was a wonderful high school struggle with declining enrollment.  No school can overcome this.  The state's financial support of schools punishes declining enrollment severely.  I have often said, Jesus himself could not overcome declining enrollment.  

And now we see Shasta Lake City's council cut the fire department in half due to declining revenues in the middle of the worst drought in recorded history.  This seems to make no sense.  

But it makes perfect sense in the tragedy that has become Shasta County and Shasta Lake City in particular.  Reactionary political and educational moves almost always result in unwanted and unforseen consequences.  As it turns out Shasta Lake City and the Gateway Unified School District are in big trouble because they are separate and smaller.   

In retrospect they needed to stay part of a larger governmental entity (there was a move to incorporate them into Redding in the 1980s) for fiscal, educational and viable government reasons.  

Smaller is not always better.  I worry about my friends in the Shasta Lake City area as the days grow hotter and the water dwindles with 1/2 the fire fighters.  I worry about Central Valley High School.  

Benign Neglect

Richard Nixon, after a few years of racial unrest, versus hundreds of years of slavery, brutality and even genocide, remarked that what American needed now was a few years of "benign neglect".

And this was after the civil rights "unrest" of 1960 to 1970.  

Ten years of unrest, versus almost three centuries of racism, segragation, discrimination and murder.

Yesterday, President Obama remarked that what we are seeing in the recent protests, most peaceful, is the product of years of indifference.

There is that term again, except this time the President was not calling for more of it, but calling for it to end.

I taught and led in lower socio-economic areas for over half of my educational career.  I saw everyday the product of "benign neglect" and "indifference" in the hopelessness of school children.

The memories are too numerous to recount.  It was a culture of very limited chances.  On the Grindstone Rancheria there was a culture of despair, with drugs and alcohol prevalent, sexual and physical abuse rampant and suicides common.

In Del Paso Heights, there was violence and a feeling of anger, repressed rage for the second class citizenship that people were doomed to from birth. 

In the 1970s in Del Paso Heights, a mostly minority school district was dominated by whites.  The sports teams were great, the test scores were not so great.  We had African American leadership, but little opportunity.  The district had police, and bands of teens roamed the halls, beating those who looked differently from them.  Teachers and aides were also fair game and you were schooled to not go alone across campus.  

I will never forget after a football awards ceremony, the star quarterback for Grant High School came up to me and asked me how to get into college, "Because if I don't get out of here I will be dead before I am 25".  

I gave him some advice, and he was dead, I found out later, by 22.

And what reaction was there from the "dominant culture"..indifference.

That is the incidious part, the indifference.  No longer do you see much blantant racism, it has gone underground via a "New Jim Crowe" that incarcerates African Americans and Latinos at high rates, wiping out whole generations of young colored generatioins.   

Native Americans now have casinos, but little else, as their suicide rate is climbing.

And we have a conservative plutocracy in the country, that threatens to run it...into the ground of denial and indifference.  Fox News puts up a wall of denial; the con is that racism is dead in America, discrimination is over, no need for any affirmative action, even though all the statistics show little progress for people of color since 1960.  The United States has not put a dent into racism in this country!

People of color know there will be no change, there has been so little so far after the sacrifices of Dr. King...so few. The white dominate culture is firmly in control, the rich get richer and poor, poorer.

The statistics don't lie either, if you are of color your chances for success in this country are way lower than if you are white.

We live in a country of lies and of radical right indifference, that often result violent denial.

So police profile, they kill people of color in higher percentages than whites, and they are never held accountable.

And the streets are mean where the Police work, and they get mean as a result, going from those who should protect and serve, to those who protect themselves and beat down the enemy, who is the community they are paid to protect.  

Until recently the white dominant culture neglected these realities.  

The neglect never has been benign!  The indifference is deadly!

Entrepreneur or fool?

Entrepreneurs: I just left an "idea" on the website of the California entrepreneur who wanted to split California into six states. My "idea" was to consolidate local school districts;not exactly a new idea breakthrough.

What bothers me about these "thinkers" is most of them are engineers by training. Now, some of my best friends are engineers, but they make rotten governors. 

Public Administration is actually a skill set. In our democracy it is one that is constantly criticized by businessmen and women who , because they can run a business, think they can govern. 

I am always reminded of the most spectaculor failure of an engineer trying to govern: Herbert Hoover.

Hoover was a man of business, who trainwrecked the American government.

Now to be fair, Hoover was a product of his time. In 1930 government had a minimal role to play in the economy. Free enterprise was nearly completely unregulated, and had put the country in the ditch for years.

The Great Depression taught the country that government regulation of the economy and bureaucracies were not bad.

Today we hear calls  to eliminate these same regulations as "bloated" and ineffective. That may be true that  some that are outdated, but the basic truth that government requires, well, laws, regulations and GOVERNMENT.  

And the free thinker , who is collecting ideas, as if they haven't been been made countless times before, is almost ludicrous.  It is like only business technology billionaires can come up with ideas to reform government.  You are talking fish out of water here.  They don't have a clue!

Over 300 million people live in the United States. The vast majority of the population live in highly complex urban environments. How on earth can we govern this with the minimalist approach of conservatives is beyond me?  

What we get with small government is ALWAYS poor government, poverty and ultimately, violence.

The Marshall Plan is given credit for saving Europe from Communist take over after WWII.  The reason it worked is Marshall recruited local government experts to rebuild war torn countries and public bureaucrats who knew how to make cities work.  And he got them cheap, many still had enlistments and were in the service, or extended to do the work for a few year; and Europe rebounded faster than anyone imagined.

Credit American City Managers, sewage experts, firemen, police; etc., all those mundane bureacrats that conservatives criticize every day.  

President George W. Bush imagined Iraq as a new conservative Marshall Plan.  He promised that a conservative approach, with privatization not public administration would rebuild Iraq cheaper and better, calling his efforts a new "Marshall Plan" for Iraq.  

Nobody calls it that anymore.  Bush's efforts were wrong headed and a disaster.   Water systems STILL don't work, billions of dollars were basically ripped off by private contractors and nothing works.  This led to a rebirth of opposition to American efforts for reform, sectarian violence, and a train wreck.

Why, well go back to 1930 and Hoover, and you find the same thing.  Anti-government politicians make rotten governors.  

Now , we have made the horrible mistake of allowing big money and corporations to buy what government we have, rendering state and local governments ineffective and actually aiding the huge gap between the rich and the poor.

We need government with a new reform movement, not to get rid of government, but get private enterprise whores out of it. Otherwise, we can brainstorm all we want, it won't work!  It has never worked before, witness Hoover and lately Bush.  

There is a saying, "The People get the government they deserve".