#120 / Joy

  

Joy is the proper response to the gift of life that God or something has bestowed upon all of us day after day after day, and then at some point for no more days.... Famously, dogs have a natural gift for the ethical obligation of joy. Our dogs, my dad said, were great role models. He was correct.

     Rivka Galchen, "How I Became A Vet"

 

I am not much of a "dog person." I might as well confess that, right off the bat. I also have to say that I found "How I Became A Vet" somewhat "weird," to pick a way to describe this short story, which can be found in the March 6, 2023, edition of The New Yorker magazine. "Vet," by the way (though I am pretty sure you don't need this explanation), refers to the author becoming a "veterinarian," not an armed services "veteran."

If you click on this link, The New Yorker will perhaps allow you to read Galchen's story, even if you are not yourself a subscriber to the magazine. As I say, "How I Became A Vet" is a weird kind of story, about how the veterinarian narrator (a female) figures out why a series of otherwise unrelated and apparently "normal" dogs are jumping out of cars, or are otherwise jumping over a specific bridge railing, in the town in which she practices veterinary medicine. Her animal patients are of all persuasions, from cats, to dogs, to parrots, to horses. The "Vet" figures out the mystery - why those dogs are jumping over a bridge railing and injuring themselves - which is when she becomes a real "Vet." In the process, to give the whole plot away, the narrator loses her veterinary job with some kind of corporate animal care facility. That loss of her job does not, apparently, appreciably diminish her joy at becoming a real "Vet."

I draw your attention to this story - a "weird" story - only because of the quotation I have duplicated above, which comes from the very start of the story. 

I agree with the "Vet" that our proper response to being alive is, as she says, "joy." 

Dogs can give us a clue. And so they do. Even I know that (even though I am not a "dog person").

Whether you are a "dog person," or not, let's all try to remember!

 

 

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Image Credit:

https://www.goodtimes.sc/things-to-do-in-santa-cruz-march-22-28/

#119 / Biden Makes His Pitch

 

I found out about President Biden's announcement that he will run for reelection through lots of email bulletins that flooded my inbox. I also got the word from Heather Cox Richardson, who writes a daily "Letter From An American." 

 

Cox's "Letter," on April 25th, included a link to a video announcement by Joe Biden himself - his official campaign kickoff video. I clicked and listened. If you haven't heard Joe Biden's pitch, you can click on that video yourself, and see what you think. It's just over three minutes long. 

I tend to have positive feelings about President Biden, but I wouldn't say that I am uncritically supportive. I do have some criticisms. Still, I have to say that I completely endorse one of the statements that Biden made in his announcement video. If you regularly read these daily blog postings of mine, you've heard the same thing from me, and more than once. I think our President needs to understand this - and it's clear to me that Joe Biden does: 

 

There is simply nothing we cannot do, if we do it together.

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https://youtu.be/ChjibtX0UzU

#118 / Only The Lonely

 

 

If you click that video link, above, you will hear the incomparable Roy Orbison sing "Only The Lonely." Click that link to the title if you'd like to read the lyrics. 

Marta Zaraska, a Polish-Canadian science journalist whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Scientific American, Spectrum, The Atlantic, Discover, and other publications, has written an article in the online magazine Quanta, in which she claims that "feelings of loneliness prompt changes in the brain that further isolate people from social contact."

 

I am absolutely prepared to believe it, and I am not at all surprised to learn that there are genuine physical manifestations, deep inside our brains, associated with the sense of isolation and loneliness that can sometimes overwhelm us. 

Speaking individually, we need to be aware when such feelings of loneliness start to creep up on us, or even when they presume to attack us "full frontal." If and when that happens, we can (and need to) take steps to confront and deal with these feelings, because loneliness is dangerous, both to ourselves and to others.

Speaking from a social, or collective, perspective, let's all remember that we are not, actually, just a bunch of isolated individuals. We are, as I repeatedly claim, "together in this." This is more than a pious wish. I am convinced that it is, in fact, a profound truth about our human condition.

May I suggest that both "talking to strangers" and our active engagement in politics are helpful and effective ways to combat loneliness and all of its deleterious individual and social impacts?

 

That's true - and I am convinced of it. I am speaking from personal experience, too. My engagement with "strangers," with people whom I didn't know, in the fight to "Save Lighthouse Field," transformed my life. It certainly changed the future of the City of Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz County. Click here for a reference to a publication of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History that includes my personal account of what we did!

Political engagement? Yes! If you want to fight loneliness, my advice is to get personally and politically involved!

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#117 / The Press And Media As "Representative"

 

There are some stories that are important enough to pause the news cycle and linger on them, to explore not just what happened, but why. And so it is with Fox News’s role in the events leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Thanks to a recent filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuit against Fox, there is now compelling evidence that America’s most-watched cable news network presented information it knew to be false as part of an effort to placate an angry audience. It knowingly sacrificed its integrity to maintain its market share.

 

The quotation, above, comes from a New York Times' opinion piece by David French, "Why Fox News Lied to the Viewers It ‘Respects.’" French's column is worth reading, and if The Times' paywall permits, a click right here should take you to it. 

Of course, we now know, as French did not, when he wrote his statement, that the Dominion lawsuit against Fox has been settled - at a huge cost to Fox. Nonetheless, while the lawsuit has been settled, I think that it is still worth paying attention to one of the statements that French made in his discussion. Here it is: 

In the emails and texts highlighted in the Dominion filing, you see Fox News figures, including Sean Hannity and Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, referring to the need to “respect” the audience. To be clear, by “respect” they didn’t mean “tell the truth” — an act of genuine respect. Instead they meant “represent.”

 

I think this observation is not only accurate; it is important. 

 

Fox News is not, ultimately, in the business of "presenting the news." It is in the business of "representing" a particular political perspective - the Republican Party/Conservative/Right perspective.  

 

The Guardian, a British newspaper, commenting on news coverage of the horrific train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, said that "the right racialized the Ohio train disaster." Fox News is prominently featured as one of the "representatives" of the right that The Guardian says is seeking to "racialize" that accident.

I think everyone should understand that Fox News is not "objective," much less "fair and balanced," as Fox News used to claim.

However, to try to be a little bit "fair and balanced," myself, let's not fool ourselves. Let me say that I think that all commercial news sources tend to "represent" a particular position as they "present" the news. When I read The Wall Street Journal every morning I note that The Journal has a "slant" on the news (it's a lot like the Fox News slant, and Fox News and The Journal are both owned by the same person). This is, though, not something out of the ordinary.  The New York Times and The Washington Post, which I also read on a daily basis, pretty consistently "represent" a particular point of view on politics, society, and the economy. Donald Trump, and his supporters, have fulminated (and continue to fulminate) against the so-called "mainstream media," certainly including The Post and The New York Times, and they say that they are biased and dishonest. Are they wrong?

 

Actually, I think that they do have a point. The commercial media - on all sides - virtually always tends to "represent" a particular perspective. There is no totally "objective" and "fair" presentation of the news, and it is up to us, if we don't want to get fooled, to remember this!

 

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#116 / Challenging The U.S.

 

The "Saturday Essay" in the February 3, 2023, edition of The Wall Street Journal was titled, "Challenging The U.S. Is A Historic Mistake." The article was accompanied by the image above.  

 

The Journal's paywall may well deny access to non-subscribers, but if you can access the article, it's worth reading. I say this even though I found the article rather infuriating, since I am not among those who glory in American belligerence. In other words, I find it frustrating, as an American, to read assertions like the following:

There is no denying that China has acquired substantial global power and influence in recent decades. Even if this is “peak China,” as some suggest, it is already East Asia’s economic hegemon and, were it not for the U.S., would likely become the region’s political and military hegemon as well (though perhaps not without a conflict with Japan). Left to itself, a modernizing China could one day dominate its neighbors much as a unified, modernizing Germany once dominated Europe and a modernizing Japan once dominated China and the rest of East Asia. Those powers also believed that “time and momentum” were on their side, and in many respects they were right.

Yet those examples should give Chinese leaders pause, for both Japan and Germany, while accomplishing amazing feats of rapid expansion for brief periods of time, ultimately failed in their ambitions for regional hegemony. They underestimated both the actual and potential power of the U.S. They failed to understand that the emergence of the U.S. as a great power at the beginning of the 20th century had so transformed international circumstances that longstanding ambitions of regional hegemony were no longer achievable (emphasis added).

The implicit message of arguments like those just reproduced is that all nations should simply defer to what the United States' government wants, given that the United States has enough military power - real and potential - to survive any attack and to destroy any attacker. Just "get with the American program." That's the message.

I think that's a bad message for the United States to be broadcasting, because it will lead to episodes like the war in Ukraine, a conflict in which Russia decided to test the hypothesis that running up against the United States will always be a losing proposition. Whoever eventually "wins" that war in Ukraine, millions of ordinary men and women will "lose." And, despite what The Wall Street Journal says, we don't really know how bad those losses will be, and who will be the ultimate loser. It could be the entire world!

That said, there is something worth learning from what The Journal says in its "Saturday Essay." At least, I think so. The position of the United States in our Post World War II world would allow us, should we stop asserting that everyone has to do it our way, under the threat of military action if they don't, to help mobilize effective global efforts to achieve what John Lennon has called for - a world in which we will all be able to "live life in peace." A world that will "be as one."

 

"Be as one" isn't some dream! In fact, that's an accurate statement that provides us the truth about where we really are. And now, we know it:

 

 

We have a chance, right in the present moment (disappearing in the near future), to make the "be as one" reality a genuine reality, and a reality that we all, increasingly, realize is our true destiny. We are, worldwide, "together in this." 

 

Throwing the United States' military might around isn't how we're going to get there. IMHO!

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.wsj.com/articles/challenging-the-u-s-is-a-historic-mistake-11675441152

(2) - https://www.rediff.com/news/report/the-devastation-in-ukraine/20220303.htm

(3) - https://aleteia.org/2022/10/18/these-7-people-saw-the-earth-from-space-and-this-is-the-surprising-thing-they-all-said/
 

#115 / Experts

  

As I have observed, more than once, Hannah Arendt is not a fan of government by "experts." Click right here if you would like to review one of my recent postings on this topic. The picture above, incidentally, is accompanied, online, by the following headline: "A Team of Experts, Ready to Scale." That headline, and the website to which it is attached, highlights the fact that an inordinate and inappropriate reliance on "experts" is not confined to the governmental sector (though that is what Arendt was focused on).

 

A lot of right-wing resentment of "big government," and the "deep state," is fed by a belief that governmental agencies, of various kinds, are inappropriately trying to assert their power over individuals by claiming an "expertise" that is unjustified. Arendt is no "right-winger," but as noted, she is no fan of "experts," either. 

 

I thought to comment on this topic because I recently received one of the daily bulletins sent out by email by a now-retired local attorney, Jeff Bosshard, who is promoting an online version of what KSCO Radio used to provide for my hometown community - a "right-wing" view of issues of public interest and importance. You can see Jeff's denunciation of "experts," below. 

 

I think Jeff is a little "over the top," since he is attacking not only the idea of government by "experts," but, the way I read it, the whole idea of self-government. He thinks our lives should be "governed" by an "invisible hand," which operates by letting everyone act individually. Still, while I don't agree with Jeff Bosshard's view of our political world, I don't want to be put into the position of saying that we should turn our key public policy decisions over to "the experts," either. I don't buy the argument that "the experts" know what is good for us better than we do, ourselves, which is one thing that Bosshard is protesting. I am with Arendt in how to set the balance right, which means that if we want to have our government respect and reflect our own decisions (as opposed to the recommendations of the so-called "experts," those "consultants" who claim to know more than we do), we need to be much more personally involved in politics and government ourselves. 

We do "Live In A Political World," and it is we ourselves, not the "experts," who need to decide what the shape and substance of that world should be.

oooOOOooo

The Signs of the Times

Jeff Bosshard

 

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” – Thomas Sowell

None of us needs any so-called “experts” to guide us in our daily lives – not just our health or economic life but all aspects of human life. We should therefore reject anyone’s notion that we need to follow or obey them. In my whole life I never ate detergent or put glue in my hair: I just knew better than to do such things. On the other hand, I did drink water from a garden hose and rode in the back of pickup trucks without any harm to myself. Today finds me so done with the so-called experts, as all of us have a well-developed sense of direction keeping us out of harm's way. I am sticking to my trusty old reliance on my “gut feelings” that have guided me through most of my life. For lack of a better word, some of us call this phenomenon of listening to ourselves “intuition”. But whatever you call it, to me as an adult in charge of my own life it is just constant answers to prayer. It comes to our thoughts as messages from the Great Mind that created us, when we first turn away from untrustworthy external sources. Guidance is given continually and freely, but you have to be tuned into it.

We also have accessible group guidance, noted by French economist Frédéric Bastiat as he perched himself on the top of the Eiffel Tower, looked down at the people scurrying around far down below him, and marveled at the fact that Paris got fed without any central direction at all. This was free enterprise at work; you can’t see it but you can discern its effects. It is the “invisible hand” which Scottish economist Adam Smith set forth in his seminal work “The Wealth of Nations” published in 1776, which along with “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine formed the socio-economic bases for our War for Independence. That led to our creation of the United States of America, and soon enough powered its emergence as the pre-eminent force for economic growth and well-being in the world. That made America the leader of the free world.

Think about it; we all marvel at the teamwork of the championship sports teams, and the beauty of music played by an orchestra. But these all have a coach or a conductor. Compare all of them to the teamwork made at least potentially possible by the invisible hand: all 8 billion of us cooperating, producing goods and services, and thus fighting poverty. When the human race bans protectionism and regulation, the invisible hand will take over without any central direction at all. If that isn’t a miracle, then nothing is. What Adam Smith considered the invisible hand was God’s hand.

The first so-called expert from which I have long ago turned is Dr. Anthony Fauci. Despite his best efforts to steer us in another false direction, 66 percent of Americans now lean toward a lab origin of the COVID-19 virus. A whopping 86 percent of republicans believe that the pandemic started in a Chinese laboratory and even a majority (54 percent) of democrats agree. They agree with me. His campaign against the lab leak theory and the attendant media blackout on the issue notwithstanding, the overwhelming evidence pointing to a lab leak has been apparent for some time. The fact that a highly unusual coronavirus with engineered-looking features appeared on the doorstep of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the world’s premier laboratory for coronavirus engineering, has always been a dead giveaway.

Remember, this is the “expert” who first told us that masks would not work to prevent the spread. Then he wanted to order us to wear masks and keep our distance. Then we must vaccinate. Finally, his advice was to shut down the entire country – businesses, churches, schools, whatever. The result was the shattering of our economy. We should also remember that, before his advice proved ill-founded, we made him a temporary cult hero. We know that the course of the pandemic would likely have been very different, had Fauci not covered up its origin. His self-serving incentive to cover up the origin had a tremendous impact on the nation and on the world. Sweden bucked the trend and did not go down the fateful lockdown path. Public health officials there allowed life to continue as normal.

The outcome for Sweden has been very positive. It had the lowest excess death over the past three years of any country in Europe. Having kept schools and the economy open, Sweden also avoided the collateral damage we see everywhere else. I personally also chose to go my own way – thank God – and was spared much of the disaster that we as a whole country felt. When I was told to stay home, I went to work, or hiking in the park. When the parks were closed, I walked on the beach. When the beaches were closed, I walked on the (mostly deserted) public roads.

 

For like reasons, I certainly do not accept the mouthings of other “experts”, such as those telling us that people-caused carbon emissions are causing “climate change” toward life-ending global warming. Less than 50 years ago they were preparing us for another Ice Age – which of course never came. Do you see my point? Do you see how a God with sufficient intelligence to “invent us” would never allow someone’s bad advice (so called “orders”) to lead us to fail.

Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is certainly the most marvelous concept in all of economics. The claim that “competition tends to bring about a better product” is profound, and is part and parcel of the invisible hand. It explains, for example, the inefficiency of the post office and the department of motor vehicles, which are directed by humans. The reason we have pretty good fast food, contrarily, is due to competition. McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, and all the other participants in this industry, are continually trying to figure out better ways to satisfy customers, whether it’s by shortening lines and thus wait times, or introducing newer and better products, or providing scrupulously clean restrooms. Why? Because they are profit seekers – self-motivated to provide what you want, or need. The only way they can make the profit they want is by providing good products and services you want. So they do – and they do it better than any expert, or five year plan from a central government, or decree of crowned head or elected leader.

You need not have expert advice on where to go to school, what to study, what career to follow, where to live, who to marry (or whether to marry at all), or any other important decision in life. We do not need to listen to Dr. Fauci, Al Gore, or Little Greta. After all, that invisible hand is there for you. It would be available to the people who call themselves experts, too, if only they would listen to it. But the scientists will mostly agree with whoever pays them. And none of them pay a price for being wrong. We shun their meddling with our direct line to the “right way.”

P.S. It should be very clear that politicians are not experts, and we certainly should not follow their self-centered advice. That includes former President Donald Trump advising us to protest his looming arrest. We all remember where that led on January 6, 2021.

JEFF BOSSHARD, Juris Doctor
"The Signs of the Times"
P O Box 606, Freedom, CA 95019
Phone: (831) 818-9806

Join me Fridays from 1:00 to 3:00 PM
on Internet Radio SantaCruzVoice.com

 

 

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Image Credit:

https://bigvalley.co/insights/team-of-experts/
 

#114 / Mechanisms Of Wealth Inequality

 

Evan Osnos writes for The New Yorker. In the January 23, 2023, edition of the magazine, in an article titled, "Trust Issues," Osnos outlines some of the financial and legal mechanisms that have generated the wealth inequality that is now one of the most defining characteristics of the economy, society, and politics of the United States. 

 

The family used as the example of how the system works is the Getty Family, known to San Francisco Bay Area residents because of Gordon Getty, "a composer and a philanthropist in San Francisco, worth an estimated $2.1 billion." Gordon Getty came to his money from his father, oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. He was J. Paul Getty's fourth child. Gordon himself had four sons with his wife, Ann. "Secretly, he also fathered three daughters in Los Angeles during an extramarital affair." When the daughters' existence became public, Getty "cut his daughters in on the Getty fortune, using a trust fund." Osnos tells us just how the "trust fund" system works. 

 

Hopefully, interested persons will be able to read what The New Yorker has to say about the Getty family, and about how the "trust fund" system perpetuates wealth inequality. The "trust fund" system is what the Getty family uses to shield its fortune from virtually any and all taxation - and of course the Getty family is just an example of how all the rest of the super-rich do it. The system described will increasingly act to siphon the wealth of the nation into the hands of a very small number of persons. Meanwhile, hard working Americans are ever less well off.

I like to tell those who read these blog postings that "we live in a political world." In case you haven't noticed it, the specifics of the "political world" in which we currently reside is governed by rules that perpetuate and accelerate wealth inequality. 

We can learn about how the system works by reading The New Yorker - and by otherwise studying how our economy and politics are currently structured.

We should be aware, though, that there is nothing "inevitable" about the rules that currently allow the Trumps, and the Gettys, and the other other super-rich families that dominate our politics to grow their riches while the rest of us are increasingly impoverished. 

To change the rules, though, the non-super rich are going to have to get organized. Getting "mad" about how the system is currently operating might just be step one in motivating us to do what is necessary to change the situation. 

If you'd like to "get mad," read that article by Evan Osnos. I think it will make you just as mad as it made me!

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Image Credit:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/23/the-getty-familys-trust-issues

#113 / Wanna Bite?

 

I often find myself feeling pretty positive about what I read in Peggy Noonan's columns in The Wall Street Journal. Noonan was Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, and the forum in which Noonan now holds forth is definitely on the "conservative" side of the political spectrum. In other words, approving of what Noonan has to say is an example of me getting out of my normal "comfort zone," politically speaking. 

 

Still, I often do appreciate what Noonan has to say, and I particularly appreciated Noonan's column on Saturday/Sunday, April 22-23, 2023, which she titled, "Artificial Intelligence in the Garden of Eden." 

 

Noonan is speculating, in that column, on the origin of the Apple logo, which might well be understood to depict the apple offered to Adam, just a minute after he decided to "take a bite." Noonan is thinking (as the image above, from her column, suggests) that the Apple logo directly refers to that Bible story about Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden.

 

 

Steve Jobs, who approved the familiar logo, never copped to the idea that the logo was in any way an allusion to the Bible story. The official reason that the logo includes that "bite," as Noonan tells us, is that the bite was to help us all understand that the fruit depicted is, in fact, an "apple," not a "cherry," or some other fruit. My search on the internet does confirm that this is the official explanation of why the Apple logo shows that "bite." I was interested to see, as I did look around for an explanation, that the well-known logo actually replaced an earlier logo depicting Issac Newton sitting under an apple tree. 

 

Noonan is not buying the official explanation. Here's her take: 

 

You can experience the Old Testament story as myth, literature, truth-poem or literal truth, but however you understand it its meaning is clear. It is about human pride and ambition. Tim Keller thought it an example of man’s old-fashioned will to power. St. Augustine said it was a story of pride: “And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation?”

I always thought of the Apple icon: That means something. We are being told something through it. Not deliberately by Jobs—no one would put forward an image for a new company that says we’re about to go too far. Walter Isaacson, in his great biography of Jobs, asked about the bite mark. What was its meaning? Jobs said the icon simply looked better with it. Without the bite, the apple looked like a cherry.

But I came to wonder if the apple with the bite wasn’t an example of Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious. Man has his own unconscious mind, but so do whole societies, tribes and peoples—a more capacious unconscious mind containing archetypes, symbols and memories of which the individual may be wholly unaware. Such things stored in your mind will one way or another be expressed. That’s what I thought might be going on with Steve Jobs and the forbidden fruit: He was saying something he didn’t know he was saying...

 

Noonan goes on to say, in her column, that "developing AI is biting the apple.... People in the tech world want, unconsciously, to be God and on some level think they are God." Noonan's prediction about A.I. is that "something bad is going to happen." If you want to learn a bit about how bad it could get, I recommend that you watch the following video presentation. It is an hour long, and well worth your time, in my estimation. 

While I like what Noonan has to say in her column, I actually think that it's not just "people in the tech world" who "want, unconsciously, to be God and on some level think they are God." 

 

One of the implications of my "Two Worlds Hypothesis" is that we all, ultimately, are living in and dependent on the World of Nature, or the "World That God Created," as I sometimes call it, and that because we live most immediately, in a human world, a world that we do, in fact, create, we start getting our "worlds" mixed-up, and we start thinking that we can act independently of what the World of Nature requires. 

Consider that video. 

 

Think about the implications of what Noonan has to say. 

 

Watch out what you bite!

 

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.wsj.com/articles/artificial-intelligence-in-the-garden-of-eden-adam-eve-gates-zuckerberg-technology-god-internet-40a4477a 

(2) - https://1000logos.net/apple-logo/

(3) - https://youtu.be/bhYw-VlkXTU

#112 / Two Stories From Yesterday's Papers

 

I read four newspapers every morning - in their hard copy versions. I read a lot of online news, as well. Sometimes - and in fact quite often - the various newspapers I read cover the same stories. Sometimes, and yesterday provided an example, different newspapers, in completely different stories, provide a similar lesson and illustrate a similar point. 

STORY #1

Friday (yesterday), the San Francisco Chronicle had a commanding front-page story by Michael Cabanatuan. Cabanatuan reported on the decision by the owners of the Oakland A's to relocate the team from Oakland to Las Vegas. A big, bold headline (and a striking photo) proclaimed:

 

'Brutal' decision by A's

 

As everyone knows who has been following the story, the City of Oakland, and the owners of the team, have been in a long negotiation, as the owners have said that they wanted to build a new coliseum on the Oakland waterfront, which development would, allegedly, provide lots of community benefits, though it would also, undoubtedly, result in a massive subsidy by city taxpayers. While working with Oakland, the owners of the A's have, simultaneously, been negotiating with the City of Las Vegas - and again have been looking for a public subsidy for their private business. 

 

Recently-elected Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao stated that she was "blindsided" by the brief phone call she received from the team, on Wednesday evening, telling her that the team has now struck a deal with Las Vegas, thus terminating the possibility that the A's will pursue their purported plan to build a $1 billion, privately financed 35,000-seat waterfront ballpark in Oakland, with an associated commercial development nearby. In a separate story on the Chronicle's sports page, Mayor Thao was quoted as follows: "it is clear to me that the A's have no intention of staying in Oakland and have simply been using this process to try to extract a better deal out of Las Vegas." Private profits, not community concern, have led to the decision. 

STORY #2

My hometown newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, had another story, also on Friday (yesterday), about the Food Bin and Herb Room, a local business located at the corner of Mission and Laurel Streets, and much beloved by local residents. The owners, who bought the business in 2019, are planning to tear down the stores located on the site, and then to build a five-story, mixed-use building (without any parking for residents), which development would include 3,200 square feet of commercial space. The concept is illustrated below. Essentially, the proposal is for an off-campus "dorm" for UCSC students. 

When the current owners bought the business, here's what they told the community, by way of an article in the Good Times newspaper published in Santa Cruz: 

 

The couple has thrown themselves into making improvements to the Food Bin while striving to preserve its quirky character. Customer service is their No. 1 priority, and Ewlensen says that overall the community has been very supportive. In the future, they’d like to continue to offer more local products, remove the bulky vapor extraction behemoth from the front of the Herb Room, and refurbish the side garden to forge a community gathering space where they could host First Friday-type vendor events. “We always want to keep its vibe,” says Ewlensen. “It’s not your standard grocery store. It’s unique, and we want to keep it that way.”

 

The latest plan doesn't really seem to carry forward this thought. Tearing down the structures that have housed the business would seem to move in exactly the opposite direction - and, of course, the proposed replacement development will massively impact the adjacent residential neighborhood. In that Sentinel article on Friday, the owners, and the company that has helped the owners design this proposed development, stated that the purpose of the project was “to thoughtfully develop their parcel and breathe some new life into the beloved stores,” and to "create an enduring home for the Food Bin and Herb Room (emphasis added)."

 

RUMINATION/CONCLUSION

For what it's worth, I will state my personal preference for developers who will "tell it like it is," and not pretend that community concerns are driving development decisions when private profit is the actual motive. At least as I see it, that's what is going on in both Oakland and Santa Cruz - and that is, of course, fully consistent with what are, or at least ought to be, our expectations. Private property owners are interested in private profit. Development decisions are driven by money - not "community spirit" - as these two different stories both make clear.

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://localwiki.org/santacruz/Food_Bin_%26_Herb_Room/_files/Food%20Bin%20-%20sign%20-%201.jpg/_info/

(2) - https://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/odn/sanfranciscochronicle/default.aspx

(3) - https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2023/04/20/developer-presents-plans-for-food-bin-herb-room-development/

#111 / The Right To Be Rude

 

In the same edition of The New York Times that carried the story I commented on yesterday, reporter Jenna Russell informs readers that "In Massachusetts, [the] Right to Be Rude at Public Meetings Is Protected." 

 

Pictured above is Louise Barron, who was threatened with removal from a meeting of the Southborough Select Board, after Barron claimed, in public, and apparently rather vociferously, that the town had violated the state's open meeting laws. 

Let's stipulate that Barron was "rude." She accused a Select Board Member, for instance, of "being a Hitler," which is pretty much the same charge that a member of the community made about a former Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz, some years ago, and for which the community member was forcibly removed from a City Council meeting by the Santa Cruz City police. Rudeness is offputting, and can definitely be disruptive. Still, and this was the official holding of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in a democracy, we don't have to be "polite" when we confront our public officials.

 

We have, in other words, "the right to be rude," and aren't you glad we do?

In the news, recently, has been a discussion of the rude treatment afforded to a member of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, who was asked by a conservative student group to speak to law students at Stanford Law School. Justice Stuart Kyle Duncan was, essentially, shouted down by protestors - students at the law school - who were anything but polite. If you would like to see a nine-minute video of how the Justice was treated, click right here. 

Stanford Law School, of course, is a private institution, not a "public" one, and the students involved in heckling Justice Duncan may face some kind of discipline by Stanford, since Constitutional guarantees are guarantees that apply with respect to governmental actions. I will say, as a comment on what happened at Stanford, that I don't think that I, personally, would have joined in heckling the Justice, as obnoxious as I think some of the Justice's views are. I doubt that I, personally, would have chosen to be so "impolite," and I am pretty sure that I would not have tried to prevent the Justice from making a speech he was explicitly invited to come to the law school to make.

 

That said, whatever I might have chosen to do, myself, in the context of the appearance of Justice Duncan at Stanford Law School, I do uphold our general "right to be rude." I think the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court handed down a correct decision, in the case that came before them.

 

Let's hope that our own Supreme Court will do the same thing, when and if similar issues are raised at the federal level, and when and if someone claims that citizens are not allowed to be "rude" to public officials. 

Oh, yes we are!

 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/us/massachusetts-public-meeting-discourse.html

 

#110 / Just Us

 

Emily Kohrs, pictured above, served as the foreperson of a special grand jury, empaneled in Fulton County, Georgia, to investigate whether former President Donald Trump, and his associates, meddled in the state's 2020 election. As The New York Times Magazine has noted, Kohrs "got under America's skin." This is, generally, because she was not shy about talking about her experience on the grand jury, after the grand jury was discharged. 

Chatty and amiable, Kohrs — a 30-year-old woman of elfin appearance and breezy affect, who described herself as between jobs — recounted the prosecutors’ wrangling of witnesses and the grand jury’s recommendation of numerous indictments. She offered her thoughts on figures like Lindsey Graham (“I really liked talking to him”) and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia (“a really geeky kind of funny”). She seemed awe-struck by some witnesses (“my coolest moment was shaking Rudy Giuliani’s hand”) and marveled at the length of a Trump phone call the jury heard (“I would’ve lost my voice if I had talked for that long by myself”). She described passing the time by sketching witnesses and swearing in the state House speaker while holding a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” ice pop from a party in the district attorney’s office. Asked by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters about Trump’s claim that a partially released grand jury report amounted to “total exoneration,” she rolled her eyes. “Did he really say that? Oh, that’s fantastic. That’s phenomenal. I love it.”

 

It is thought by many - by lots of "serious" people - that grand jurors are not supposed to be so chatty, although The Times did not find a violation of any actual rules governing grand juries in Georgia. "In the manner of someone who is rarely afforded privileged information, [Kohrs] seemed equally enamored with dishing it and withholding it." Again, that approach has gotten "under the skin" of a number of people, and has ruffled the feathers of those who think that some (possibly consequential) breach of decorum might have occurred. Investigative reporters, hot on the story, have pursued Kohrs' background. They have found (wait for it) that her older social media interactions indicate that Kohrs has had a past interest in.... witchcraft.

 

In the hard copy edition, The Times Magazine article on Kohrs is titled, "Just Us." Should "ordinary people" be allowed to assume roles in which they are not only allowed, but required, to judge those with power, and with wealth, and those who seem to be "bigger than life?" 

 

Now there's a question! That is what grand jurors are required to do. As indicated, lots of people have gotten their feathers ruffled, seeing how our political and governmental system actually works. It's "just us," in the end, just ordinary people, who are at the foundation of our system of government. 

 

Imagine that!

 

Boy am I glad!!

 

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Image Credit:

https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1326867/pg1

 

#109 / Consultants: I Am Glad Someone Has Noticed

  

Not so long ago, I mentioned the observation, by political theorist Hannah Arendt, that there is a tendency for members of the public - that means all of us - to get "frightened" by the divisions and disagreements that are so evident, and inevitable, in any genuine politics. The solution often sought, says Arendt - and NOT a good idea, the way she sees it - is to think we can escape the rough waters of political choice by delegating key decisions to "experts." 

In fact, the giant bureaucracies that now typify government at all levels (even the local level) have not calmed public concerns about how politics works. In fact, members of the public are now increasingly alienated from their own government, since our government, at all levels, seems to have little to do with that ideal of "self-government" that we profess to believe is the whole reason for the existence of government at all. Check out the Declaration of Independence if you are uncertain about this fundamental understanding of what American government is supposed to be all about. 

 
Despite our historic commitment to "self-government," our government is is more and more seen as a kind of "deep state," and the idea that we might have any sympathy, or affection, or even any tolerance, for those in charge of the government - I am talking about "politicians," our elected officials - is very much put in question by almost everyone, and again, at all levels of our government. 

Arendt's observations about how Americans have wanted to flee from genuine "self-government," in order to assuage our fears that division and dissolution will tear us apart, as the inevitable result of the "plurality" that is an undeniable aspect of our life together, has led to the creation of the large, governmental bureaucracies that are such a prominent part of our government today. 

But, as it turns out, even those government bureaucracies want to be insulated from the necessity of making difficult political choices in an environment of major disagreements in the public. Hence, "consultants!"

 

I live in Santa Cruz, California, which was, fifty years ago, a place where genuine "self-government" established itself, and fundamentally transformed the community. I am speaking from personal experience. During the last twenty years or so, both city government and county government - and, most importantly, the public - have left the days of "self-government" behind. Elected officials - specifically, members of the City Council and the Board of Supervisors - routinely defer to what the hired city and county staff persons tell them they ought to do. 

But... the expert staff members who have been delegated basic responsibilities by our elected officials have themselves attempted to escape responsibility for making decisions about what government ought to do. They hire "experts." For almost everything!

This is what The Big Con, a recent book by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, tells us, and if you don't want to read the entire book, you can get a good idea of the argument by reading a book review by Barton Swaim, published in The Wall Street Journal - the paper's paywall permitting that, of course. 

I have to say, having read the review, I am glad someone has noticed!

 

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https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710959/the-big-con-by-mariana-mazzucato-and-rosie-collington/

 

#108 / Remote

 

Jane Margolies reports, in the March 8, 2023, edition of The New York Times, that cities are "Awash in Asphalt and Mindful of Societal Woes." Because our cities are, indubitably, "awash in asphalt," as Margolies tells us, cities are "rethinking" their parking needs. Margolies is definitely talking about a real issue in land use planning and decision making. It's a big issue, too - and the controversies surrounding efforts to reduce parking requirements for new development have come to my own hometown, Santa Cruz, California. If The Times' paywall lets you do so, the Margolies' article outlines the issues quite well.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that we do, particularly at the local level, need to pay attention to what sort of provisions for automobile parking we should demand, as new development projects are approved. As I have opined before, I do think changes are needed. We need to reduce the use of single-occupant vehicles (even if all the vehicles could be transformed into "electric" vehicles - as opposed to our current fleet of hydrocarbon-burning autos, which are accelerating the global warming that is putting our human civilization in peril). 

That said, the decisions are not easy ones. Simply providing for many fewer parking places, while allowing new development to proceed otherwise, which is what some advocates are urging, may not really work out very well in real life. It's a "chicken and the egg" kind of problem. If we did the right thing by building 15-minute cities, and if we moved from a system that assumes that every resident will have a personal automobile to convey that one person around wherever she or he wants to go - if we provided real alternatives - then vastly reduced parking requirements in new developments would be a "slam dunk." However, we are not, actually, anywhere near doing that, and development is proceeding apace. To repeat myself, the decisions are not easy ones. 

In her article, Margolies quotes Priscilla Barolo of Carmel, California. Barolo works for Zoom, and she isn't going to need a parking place at her work, she says - or maybe anywhere else, either. Barolo's assertion is that "Remote is going to be my future."

We could build our cities on the basis that "remote" is going to be everybody's future. No one will ever have to travel to some place where they will physically meet with other people. Everything will be "remote." 

Just a caution, here! Zoom, of course, has an economic interest in making sure that we all stay home and stare at our screens, instead of going to work, or going to class, or speaking at a city council meeting - or even when we need groceries (though Zoom hasn't gotten into that market yet, at least as far as I know). 

Do we really want a society that solves our parking dilemma by turning us all into "remote" individuals, isolated individuals, individuals who don't actually have to run across each other in real life?

I say: "NO."

Let's work on the parking issues that confront us. They are very real. But let's not try to solve that problem - or any problem - by eliminating direct, human-to-human contact as we pursue our individual lives. That's both a temptation and a real danger. 

 

Think about it!

 

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Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/business/fewer-parking-spots.html

 

#107 / The DeSantis Model

 

Ron DeSantis, Florida's Governor, might not run for president next year, appearances notwithstanding. At least, that seems to be the implication of a recent New York Times column by Ross Douthat. Douthat's column is headlined, "Why DeSantis Has to Run Next Year." When newspaper columnists are opining on why a prospective candidate "has" to run, it's obvious that the candidate doesn't, actually, have to do any such thing. 

Probably, though, Ron DeSantis will run for president, and if he does, feel free to give the credit to Ross Douthat! 

 

It was another Times column, actually, that most attracted my attention when I read the Sunday edition of The New York Times newspaper on April 16, 2023. That other column, written by Sam Adler-Bell, was titled, "The DeSantis Model." I am citing here to the hard-copy version. Online, as is so often the case, the headline was different. 

At any rate, what I first noticed, when I read the Adler-Bell column, was that the campaign "model" that Adler-Bell thinks that Governor DeSantis is following is an "individualistic" model. Without actually saying so, Adler-Bell's column makes clear that DeSantis has likely decided to run for the presidency after consulting with... himself! The campaign - if he runs - begins and ends with HIM, although I do want to provide this caveat: it seems to be accepted within the world of politics that the actual brains behind the DeSantis' campaign is not, so much, Ron DeSantis, but Casey DeSantis, his wife. 

My point is that the DeSantis campaign is definitely following an "individualistic" model. An individual, Ron DeSantis, has decided that HE wants to be president (again, let's give some credit to DeSantis' wife). Having made that decision (final or tentative), the individual who has made the decision is then moving ahead to try to forge a winning effort to achieve the goal the candidate has decided upon. 

Candidly, this "individualistic" model is the "typical" model. This is certainly the model successfully employed by our former president, Donald Trump. Winning the presidency is an object of personal ambition. The campaign begins with an individual decision, and then either progresses or not. 

There is a different "model." The other model is that the campaign does not begin with the candidate's individual decision to try to get elected; it begins with groups of people within the body politic who approach a potential candidate in whom they have confidence, and whom believe might be able to win, and then convince that potential candidate to run, to carry forward an agenda in which they believe. The campaign begins not with an individual, but with groups trying to find someone to represent and carry forward the issues in which they care about.

This doesn't happen too often in American politics, particularly at the highest levels, but it is a different "model." I know about that model from my personal experience on the local level. When I first ran for the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, I did not, myself, formulate the idea that I should. I had absolutely no thought or idea that I should or might run for office. People came and asked me to run. Thus, when I did run, and when I won, the success was not simply my "individual" success, but the success of those who had a specific political aim in view, when they persuaded me to run, to advance it. The victory was a "community" victory, not an "individual" one.

This approach to politics is the opposite of the "DeSantis Model." 

I recommend it!

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Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/opinion/trump-feud-ron-desantis.html