Month: October 2016

If you never read another book in your entire life, you must read “ The Man Who Sold America, Ronald Reagan and the betrayal of Main Street America”. For Democrats, it will confirm what you always suspected: that the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-social actions of the Reagan administration trashed practically every advance America had accomplished in the golden years of post World War II. For Republicans, the effect will be much different. You will wonder: How in the world could so many thinking adults be so blind and insensitive to the destructive effects on so many of our less- advantaged citizens? These were direct effects of the Reagan budgets from day one. He did what you wanted him to do. Now, all of us, except the one percent course, are suffering the consequences, while many of the rest of us prepare to vote for a madman.

Kudos to Bruce Sawhill’s (October 16, 2016) reasoned and factually- supported proposal to get off the dime and start using the rail corridor’s tremendous potential for moving people around the county. Now, imagine a fleet of small shuttle buses running back and forth on all the streets that intersect the tracks; picking up passengers throughout the neighborhoods and taking them to the rail line; with other shuttles taking passengers off the rail to their final destination: school, work, shopping, dining, entertaining, you name it. That rail corridor can be the backbone of a public transit system second to none. Instead of very large buses running at infrequent intervals, on serpentine, difficult-to- follow routes, there would be a fleet of small buses running at frequent intervals back and forth on simple routes. Practically everyone living in this county could catch a shuttle bus a short walk from home and transfer to a line that could take them anywhere else in the county they want to go. What’s more, the whole system can be put into effect without requiring any taxpayer money. Sawhill is right. We should quit dancing around the subject, and give people of Santa Cruz County the transportation system they deserve. Heaven knows it has been debated enough.

Could there be a secret strategy by the GOP to let Trump be Trump, continuing to shock America’s sensibilities (and keep the resulting intraparty intrigue on the front page) in order to divert attention from Republican misdeeds in states they control? It might be their best way to influence down ballot votes. After all, Trump speaks Republican better than anyone has ever mastered that language.

How can we know, as a white person, what goes through the mind of a black man after a police killing of another unarmed black man? The answer is we can’t. There is no way we can appreciate the combination of sorrow (for it may have been a relative), anger (for it will probably go unpunished), fear (for it might be me next time) and frustration (for we know such things will continue to occur and no one is doing a damn thing about it!). Will we ever be able to say: “there, but for the grace of God and the color of my skin, go I”. And will our collective attitudes change, somewhat, toward people in the Black Lives Matter movement? And when someone responds with “All Lives Matter”, can we remind them that “all lives” are not being systematically snuffed out by cops with guns?