George Rebane
Irene, our second politicized hurricane, has failed to deliver on its pre-show publicity. With the President rushing back to the White House situation room (shades of 'Dr Strangelove') to direct the national response to the advertised Armageddon Minus One, meanwhile the damn thing up and turns into a big rainstorm. So there he sits wearing his 'FEMA One' jacket, pondering how many votes can still be salvaged before it all settles into just another tropical depression.
In California the redistricting effort has turned into a fraudulent fiasco that now promises to give Democrats the super-majority they need to totally ignore Republicans in their eminently and imminently successful drive to turn our already federalized state into a vast wasteland of coastal welfare ghettos, parched agricultural valleys, and fleeing businesses. Assemblyman Dan Logue reports that this year’s corporate exit rate is five times last year’s. In the rear view mirror the tipping point is receding fast as CARB drives us forward in search of the promised green jobs, which, it turns out, are rarer than the delta smelt.
The Digital Divide (remember the Clinton era) has been sighted again from the hallowed halls of UC Berkeley. A recent study from their (where else?) sociology department laments that the Internet does not correctly represent the sentiments of all Americans since 25% of us have never been online. Dr Jen Schradie, the study’s author, concludes, “What this means is that relying on the Internet for either a pulse of opinion or data is inaccurate at best and unjust at worst.” (emphasis mine) Can anyone catch an early whiff of yet another federal program to impose one more layer of social justice across the land?
[update] I knew it; Russ Steele could not stay away from the political side of things. Too much will happen in our county between now and November 2012 for him to sit idly by and only comment on RR and other local blogs. So he just informed us that 'Is It 2012 in Nevada County Yet?' has launched. It would be an unkind cut to muse that, dressed in new duds, NCMW has just been exhumed and given at least one more year of life. So I won't do it.
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