Greg Collins Comes to COS

Visalia City Councilman Greg Collins paid a visit to the College of the Sequoias Young Democrats meeting and had some prescient observations to go along with giving the group some insights into his common sense approach to city governance.  Greg brings the training and experience of a professional urban planner to his decisions and votes on the council.

He emphasized his long-held view that infill, or developing vacant and unused land within the built-up parts of town, needs to provide the basis for short-term growth.  It's more efficient in a number of ways.  First, it saves the city money because necessary infrastructure, such as water, sewer, roads and electrical are already in place.  Second, when development is compact it reduces driving mileage, cutting down on air pollution and the frequency of traffic accidents.  Third, it reduces emergency response times.  Finally, avoiding sprawl saves Valley farmland.     

Greg pointed to new projects underway.  One of these is an arrangement to return 13 million gallons of city-treated sewage water to agricultural use in exchange for 6.5 million gallons of new clean water.  The pure water will be pumped into local ponding basins to recharge the city's falling water table. As Greg said, "We live in a desert.  If we don't protect our water resources the cost will be more than we can afford to pay."  Visalia is the only local city to have a  project like this.  He also indicated his support for a city legal action to oppose Cal Water's plan to drastically increase water rates for Visalia residents.

Councilman Collins is a registered Democrat but the ballot is non-partisan and Greg agrees that's how he sees his service.  "There's no Democratic or Republican way to fix a pothole," he explains.  He  described himself as fiscally conservative, insisting on balancing the city's $250 million budget.  The city did a lot of belt-tightening during the Recession, which Greg points to as the main reason the city is in strong fiscal shape now, unlike some other California cities that have or may face default.

Yet he is at the same time liberal on his commitment to quality of life issues.  With revenues returning, he now sees scope for some improvements.  A new animal shelter will soon go out to bid, and is expected to cost $5-6 million.  Bids for a new water treatment plant have come in up to $30 million under expectations.  He wants to give city employees a raise, feeling that their willingness to accept pay cuts while taking on additional work during recent lean times has earned them a well-deserved reward now that financial conditions are improving.     
 

Greg became the youngest Visalia City Councilman ever when he first got elected back in the 1970s.  He was spurred to do so because as a recent college graduate in urban planning, he and some friends decided to attend a council meeting and saw them approving projects that went completely against the principles and industry standards he had learned in school.  Instead of going along with the old boys network he walked the city door to door and got elected.

Greg Collins has been on and off the council over the past thirty-plus years, serving as mayor at times but also sometimes facing strong political and monetary opposition from developers who want every project approved no matter what.  His principles, track record and common-sense approaches indeed mark him as a fine leader who can resist pressure and is truly the "quality of life candidate." He richly deserves re-election to the Visalia City Council on November 5.

"Common Ground" Monday Night at Cafe 210

I'll be participating in a panel Monday night at Cafe 210.  Everyone is invited.  Cafe 210 is located at 210 W. Center Street in Visalia, and the program will run from 7:00 to 8:30 P.M.  The topic is "Common Ground." 

The program will start with two panelists, Porterville Mayor Virginia Gurrola and College of the Sequoias English instructor Jane Thomas, sharing their experiences and difficulties with finding common ground. 

After them I will go on with my friend and COS History colleague Stephen Tootle.  Stephen is faculty advisor for the College Republicans and I share the same role for the COS Young Democrats.  Our aim is to search for common ground on a variety of issues while modeling civil and respectful dialogue between people who frequently disagree.

The application to current social and political discourse in our country should be rather apparent to anyone who is paying attention.  I hope to see you there!

    

Where I Stand on Poison Gas

There is understandably and rightly much talk about Syria right now, and I believe a lot of it misses the point.  The point is poison gas.  Some talk of doing more to encourage negotiations.  Sure, that would be nice.  No doubt that is being pursued behind the scenes by many with good intentions, from Ban Ki Moon to Switzerland to the U.S. State Department.  For me, I do not expect there to be any  negotiations any time soon with Russia and Iran backing one side and the Saudis, Gulf States, Turkey and France backing the other, not until one side feels it has lost on the battlefield and is ready to capitulate.  And none of that matters anyway, when it comes to poison gas. 

A grand strategy would be good.  Do we back all the rebels, just the nice rebels, or stay out?  We seem to be rather unsure.  Most of us don't want to get mired down in the Syrian Civil War.   And I agree we shouldn't.  But that is a separate issue from the use of poison gas, which has been illegal by international agreement since shortly after World War I.  

As for me, I want to live in a world in which nobody ever uses poison gas and the ban on it is strictly enforced.  Whoever uses poison gas needs to gets smacked, and hard.  The calculation of any actor in the future has to include the certainty that if it uses poison gas it will lose its air force and a good many of its other assets capable of delivering more gas.  Ruthless people will do anything they need to do to hold onto power until the cost outweighs the benefits.  Arguments of any rationale that end with the conclusion that we need to let anybody get away with using poison gas are terribly naive, as far as I'm concerned.  We stop this now or we will see more and more of it in the future. That's where I stand.

U.S. Moves Toward Intervention in Syria

President Obama met with his national security team yesterday to decide what to do about Syria amid mounting evidence the Bashar Assad regime has used chemical weapons recently in its civil war, purportedly resulting in the deaths  of hundreds of civilians.  Reports today indicate U.S. Naval forces are being moved closer to the Eastern Mediterranean nation.

The president said a year ago that the use of lethal chemical weapons in Syria would constitute a "red line" necessitating an international response.  It appears the Administration is currently analyzing evidence to make certain that a chemical attack did in fact occur.  The president spoke with British Prime Minister David Cameron by telephone yesterday.  The prime minister's office released a statement saying the use of outlawed chemical weapons would constitute a grave threat to international law and require a firm response.  It also said that regime interference in United Nations inspection efforts indicates the Assad government "has something to hide."

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters it is pretty certain that such weapons were used.  He said the Defense Department has presented the president with a range of options.  He declined, however, to specify those options or to confirm reports that Navy warships were now massing within range of Syria.

President Obama has heretofore been reluctant to get directly involved in the Syrian civil war which has now raged for over two years, created up to two million refugees and cost, according to estimates, over 100,000 lives.  A rising against the authoritarian Assad regime began in conjunction with the "Arab Spring" movement in 2011.  The fighting has seesawed back and forth, with Arab states sending support to rebel groups and Iran and Russia backing Assad.  The tangled forces involved in the fighting include Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shi'ite extremists on Assad's side and some al-Qaeda affiliated groups in the opposition.  Obama has been concerned to keep aid to the rebels out of the hands of the al-Qaeda jihadist Sunni forces allied with the more democratic groups all fighting to oust Assad.

"If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it - do we have the coalition to make it work?" Obama said in a television interview broadcast Friday. "Those are considerations that we have to take into account."  It seems the verification and the international backing are now being sought.

If action is taken, expect it to take the form of cruise missiles launched from Navy warships, the same type of action taken against the Libyan regime in its civil war.  Targets would probably include Assad's air forces and artillery units, the regime forces most capable of delivering chemical agents against the Syrian populace and rebel fighters.

Current Events Quiz

Here's something fun to challenge yourself with.  The very highly regarded Pew Research organization developed this 13-question quiz on current events.  I invite you to take it and see how you stack up against 1,041 randomly selected adults.  I ran across this when my friend Louie Campos posted it on Facebook.  This link will take you to the quiz.  It includes not only words but pictures, maps and graphs.

I did get all 13, but had to guess on one and got lucky.  Just so you'll know when you try it, the one I had to guess on was the logo.  Good luck also to you, and let us know how you did!

GOP Chair Tries to Cow TV Networks

Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Reince Priebus throws an ill-considered fit, Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post, and Obama yucks it up with Jay Leno.  (I'm only including the question about the Republican National Committee Chairman.  To see the other questions and answers click on the link to the magazine in line one of this paragraph.) 

First, Benson's question:
 
NC chairman Reince Priebus delivered an ultimatum to CNN and NBC earlier this week: Pull the plug on your planned Hillary Clinton film projects, or we won't allow you to air the 2016 GOP primaries.  Do you think the RNC chair has a point? And, tactically, is this a smart fight for him to pick? 

(Actually, he threatened to freeze the two networks out of any Republican primary debates.)

And here's Rich's answer: 

It seems that almost no one debating this has seen the Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job directed by Charles Ferguson, who CNN has hired to do its Hillary documentary. It is a scathing (and superb) takedown of the Wall Street financial establishment that looted the country during the bubble and precipitated the crash. My guess is that David Brock has seen Inside Job, and that might explain in part why Media Matters is against Ferguson taking on the assignment for CNN: It's impossible to imagine that Ferguson would do a hagiography of Hillary, whose husband's administration empowered many of the villains in Inside Job. (And it tells you what kind of idiot Priebus is that he is looking a gift horse from CNN in the mouth.) As for the NBC miniseries starring Diane Lane, does anyone really believe that such a project long before the election, broadcast on a network often seen by fewer viewers than Univision, is going to seriously alter public perception of someone as well known at this point as Hillary Clinton? Perhaps most idiotic of all is Priebus's threat to bar GOP presidential primary debates from airing on CNN and NBC in retaliation for those networks' "in-kind donations" to Hillary. Does he really want to go there? Fox News, after all, is a 365-days-a-year in-kind donation by Rupert Murdoch to his political party. But let's say for the sake of argument that Priebus pulls off his boycott and even achieves what is surely his dream scenario - that all Republican debates be held under the auspices of Roger Ailes at Fox. What the GOP will end up with is a presidential field that panders entirely to the party's base - the perfect way to facilitate, say, a Paul-Cruz ticket, provided that Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann doesn't make a comeback. Good luck with that in November 2016.

Rich gives a great answer.  Just as the most interesting question about the Democratic nomination contest for 2016 is "Will Hillary run?" the most interesting question on the Republican side is "Will they finally pull out all the stops and nominate a full-blown extremist?"  As they come more and more under the spell of the Tea Party monster they've created, the answer has a stronger and stronger chance of being  "yes."  If so the likely result will be a defeat on the scale of the Goldwater debacle in 1964.  Party Chairman Priebus's threat keeps that scenario open for the reasons Rich cites.  This could all be a lot of fun.  Things are, as Alice exclaimed in Wonderland, getting "Curiouser and curiouser!"       

Vacation to Oregon and Washington

My wife Joan and I are back from our wonderful whirlwind sixteen-day vacation to Oregon and Washington.  The main highlights were  McKenzie Bridge and Portland in Oregon, Seattle, Washington and Ashland, Oregon.

We spent four days in a cabin on the McKenzie River.  The hamlet of McKenzie Bridge is 46 miles east of Eugene up the McKenzie River in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.  It was four days of restful solitude in the midst of verdant greenery and running water.  We spent many hours just sitting on the porch of the cabin catching up on our reading and watching birds and the occasional river raft expedition go by.  We took a hike one day to nearby Sahalie Falls and Koosah Falls.

                                                                   Koosah Falls

Then it was on to Portland to stay with my dear friend from college, Jeff Deiss.  Joan went to the National Handbell Convention for four days while I chummed around with old friends.  One spectacular view was from the top of a hike up the Columbia River Gorge to a point called Angels Rest.  Here's the view facing west back toward Portland.

Columbia River

 

 

 

 

Next we drove the three hours up to Seattle to spend a couple of nights at my sister Toni's.  A highlight was Seattle's wonderful Arboretum and Japanese Garden. 

Japanese Garden

We also took a fascinating trip to the Museum of Flight at Boeing.  It included everything from the Wright Brothers to spacecraft.  We saw their early production facility, World War I and II planes and took a terrific tour of a B-17.  We ventured into the Space Shuttle's cargo bay and saw the Air Force One used from the presidencies from Kennedy to Nixon.

With Toni and Joan beneath a World War II B-17G Bomber

We then went south to Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  We got to see two plays, "The Taming of the Shrew" and a non-Shakespeare play called "Tenth Muse."  "Tenth Muse" starred Vivia Font, an actress my daughter Marie has worked with in San Diego.  Both plays were superb.  Unfortunately, wildfires near Grants Pass, Oregon, about 30 miles north of Ashland, had filled the air with so much smoke that the two plays we were gong to see in the outdoor Elizabethan Stage theater, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Heart of Robin Hood," were cancelled.  Toni is going to use the vouchers to go back to Ashland and see some more plays when she can get away again.

It was a wonderful trip and provided a great combination of quiet, sightseeing and time with old friends.  Soon enough we will return to the frenetic pace of being back at work, but will start refreshed and with fond memories to look back on.