Sosbee.com

As I listened to the State of the Union address on Tuesday, it was easy to visualize the current sad state of the rest of the world. The hideous, intractable, difficulty facing the world today is TRIBALISM. Tribalism in all its unfortunate manifestations has by now become so universal as to make constructive human interaction almost impossible. Sunni/Shiite, Tutsi/Hutu, commie/capitalist, you name it, like oil and water they just don’t want to mix, even if doing so would greatly benefit both sides. You see it in American politics where Republicans, in their zeal to discredit Democrats, consistently act in ways that do damage to everyone, including themselves. Tribal loyalty trumps (there’s that word again) the common good. Even the word “common” is anathema because it is too close to “communism”. We cannot do much about tribalism elsewhere, but if we don’t get the Republicans to start putting the common good ahead of their political agenda, things will only get worse for most Americans.

It is sad, indeed, when people like Tim Donnelly (January 11, 2016) feel that paying workers a living wage is moving “too close to communism.” Since the ‘80s, when the country became so infected with a particularly insidious disease now known as Reaganism, wages have been going steadily down to a point where today, too many millions of Americans, no matter how hard they work or how many jobs they hold down, cannot even afford what are the simplest, most essential, basics of life. The whole notion that higher wages cause runaway inflation is a myth used by the wealthy to “conserve” the shameful inequality of our current tax system. The single most significant effect of higher wages (as they were before Reaganism infected the country) is simply more money in circulation. Inflation “as an economist would describe it is: “more dollars chasing fewer goods”), and it is manageable. Hard times, as too many of our neighbors have found, is not.

“ Judge declines to halt work on soccer field”, meaning 1500 local young folks must give up their athletic activity for two months to benefit the multimillion-dollar enterprise known as the NFL. It is not as if the media has no place to set up their equipment or hang out before and after the event. Every media company, foreign or domestic, has field equipment they can deploy to any place on the globe to cover news as it happens. Where were the “media villages” for the previous 49 Super Bowls? Did they make 1500 young folks search all over town for fields on which to practice or compete? Let the media use their own location equipment parked on adjacent streets and parking lots, able to be set up and taken down on a moments notice. They do not need a “media village” to do their job. Judge Huber had a chance to do the right thing , and he fumbled. Big time!

I could not disagree more with your suggestion that we, in essence, lighten up from the fear and loathing being spread by those who would like to be president of the USA. With the number of our fellow Americans, our friends, neighbors, relatives struggling to meet the basic necessities of life, and way too many having already sunk below the poverty line, it is extremely right and proper that we wake up to the political practices that have brought us to this sorry date, and do something about it. Curiously, you imply that Bernie Sanders supporters “care little about the details, of his soak the rich solutions to some very real economic problems we face”. Do you realize that your use of the term “soak the rich” is exactly the kind of fear and loathing that people of means have for those other people who have been shut out of America’s greatness? No thinking person is unaware of Wall Street’s culpability in causing the Great Recession, nor the unsustainability of an economic system that channels all the benefits of America’s productivity to the top while keeping the rest of us scrambling to survive. You may think “things are not that bad” and we should “appreciate what we’ve got.” There are more than a few who would disagree and strongly. The insurance-based healthcare system alone is enough to spark a revolution if we don’t fix it.

Once a myth gets started, it is hard to change. For some reason, the term “passenger rail” only means one thing do some people: a diesel locomotive pulling a train of passenger cars. For reasons too numerous to explain here, that mode of passenger rail is totally unsuited for our rail line and will never happen. What is perfect for Santa Cruz just happens to be an old fashioned, but state of the art, trolley car, running at frequent intervals on the track, fed by small electric shuttles running at similarly frequent intervals on the local, neighborhood streets. Such a system would provide public transit service for the thousands of residents for whom the Metro does not work that well. Large diesel buses, running infrequently (and mostly empty) on serpentine routes, are too inconvenient for many people. The Regional Transportation Commission has gone to a great deal of effort over many years with countless hours of public input to develop the best way to utilize the truly priceless railroad asset in our midst. When the final mass transit mode is selected, it will most certainly not be a TRAIN. The Rail Transit Feasibility study conducted by an outside firm unfortunately focused on a passenger TRAIN. Obviously, they were not familiar enough with trolley car operation to know how it would fit the Santa Cruz situation perfectly. So, quit worrying (and quit throwing mud at the RTC). Trains are not going to be the way people are moved around in Santa Cruz.

Beware of groups which advocate public school reform. Always check out the membership, and you are likely to find a “wealthy technology businessman” or group. These people can assemble a team of high powered lawyers to attack what they believe is the major obstacle to learning for children in low income areas, that is: teachers unions. These evil unions protect “less qualified teachers” from being replaced so that “high need” students can achieve better results. In other words, the old “blame the teacher” policy in action. Republicans have introduced several bills attacking the teachers unions’ job protection policy, and are pursuing their ill advised and underhanded attempts to shift control of education from local public school boards to national, for-profit private school chains. Please note that these are big money people who know nothing, literally nothing, about education, but know a lot about the profit potential of “school reform.” What is so sad about this situation is the opportunity lost when the big-money crowd does nothing, again nothing, to correct the real cause of underachievement by high need students, which is: the grinding poverty which is simply too prevalent these days.

What makes anyone think that Donald Trump is an anomaly, that he only makes outrageous statements for effect? His level of support and large crowds, are a clear indication (if we needed one) that he speaks exactly the way Republicans think. Period!

Your editorial of December 4, 2015, had to just the right headline: “How much bloodshed will it take?” You gave us a pretty good case for confiscation when you stated: “What they have in common is guns.” We realize that we can never identify all the mental cases or jihadists abroad in the land, but we could make it a federal crime for anyone other than law enforcement or military to possess an assault rifle or handgun. Period. Give everyone 30 days to turn in such murder weapons to the local sheriff. After that, “ Carry a gun, go to jail”. Rifles and full length shotguns, of course, would be exempt. But law enforcement would be given the authority to stop and question any person of suspicious appearance, and keep this authority in place until all the murder weapons are gone, removed and destroyed.

That’s right. Blame the teachers. According to William Scherer’s December 2 letter, poverty has nothing to do with California’s fourth graders’ poor test results. Is Mr. Scherer aware of any teachers who are producing high scoring students in spite of their coming to school sleepy, ill clothed, ill fed, from severely dysfunctional home conditions, in poorly maintained school buildings, short of supplies, with none of the luxuries and backup enjoyed by teachers in more affluent districts? There are such superhuman individuals who produce outstanding students from low income families. These dedicated teachers come to work every day and do their best with what they have, and yes, they belong to a union, which, among other things, protects them from the political machinations of school administrators and “reformers”.

Reactions to these mass murders all seem to follow the same pattern: Progressives call for more “common sense” gun laws, but reactionary Republicans point out how ineffective these laws turn out to be, and about which the bad guys “don’t give a hoot” as John Rocki points out in his letter of December 5, 2015. So, we need to get beyond “common sense” and make it a federal crime to simply possess either kind of murder weapon: hand gun or military rifle, and yes, confiscate every one of such killer weapons. Skinheads will be apoplectic, of course, and organize an armed revolution, no doubt, hole up in Idaho, somewhere, and dare the ATF to come get them.