George Rebane

Can’t figure out who to thank for the $500K FEMA grant the county got from the Feds.  An appropriate thank you note should go either to the good people of Ohio or The People’s Republic of China because, heaven knows, we don’t have that kind of money here in California to take care of our needs (and Sacramento is making sure we’ll have even less tomorrow).  They must know that by next month our state might start papering the walls with IOUs.  But what a bunch of kind people, wherever they may live, to send all this cash to an out-of-the-way rural county in the western mountains.  The county announced yesterday –

Department of Public Works Receives $500,000 FEMA Grant: The Department of Public Works (DPW) has been approved for a FEMA 07 grant. The grant was initially not approved but Nevada County’s Office of Emergency Services appealed, and the grant has now been approved. This will give our Department of Public Works approximately $500,000 to do brush fuel reduction mitigation along County roads thus reducing fire hazards. The initial meeting with FEMA and DPW staff will be held on January 15th. Facilities Manager, Tom Coburn, will attend for OES. The Department of Public Works is responsible for the administration of the grant. Great job, OES staff in submitting the appeal!

I guess this kind of grit and compunction in grant writing gives a whole new meaning to ‘can do’ and self-reliance.  When we extend the cup from Nevada County, we just won’t take no for an answer.  Makes you walk a little taller.  Modern times.

And now for the latest updates from “Bailout Nation”

For this bailout we go to Reuters.  There we learn that Democratic state governors are asking for an additional $1T (that’s twelve zeros folks).  These guys have been raising taxes on everything that moves while wondering why tax revenues are plunging.  And now that the bailout window is open, they want to stop raising more taxes so as not to “burden future generations.”  Their solution (drum roll and envelope please) is simply to ask the Feds for the money because they figure since that stuff is just printed in the basement, it won’t burden our kids.  The Republican Governors Association is not making itself popular by saying that printing the stuff will still hurt our children.  But the dots between the nation’s capitol and the state capitols are too complex to connect.  I guess our Governator is playing both sides of that street.

And finally, this piece regarding one more industry getting into the bail out line, we have –

Many media experts predict that 2009 will be the year that newspapers of all sizes will falter and die, a threat long predicted but rarely taken seriously until the credit crunch blossomed into a full-fledged financial meltdown.

This presents some problems in that

(r)elying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.

In Nevada County we are fortunate to have a local newspaper professing ethical standards that would never let them be compromised by a ruse as transparent as a federal handout.