Column 107 - Ethics

It's too bad that Bill Horn was named in the Nevada Commission on Ethics findings regarding the Bohn/Mapps affair of last Fall. As I've stated publicly and was noted in the story, I was one of those who filed complaints with the Commission, and my complaint at least was limited to John Bohn's actions – in my view, as an employee of the District, Bill Horn's options were pretty limited and I think it is the elected official who should be held to account.

 

That said, I was gratified to see that the Commission takes this seriously. My raising the issue in this space after the election was the occasion for a certain amount of mud to be slung my way, with "sore loser" among the milder epithets that came from Bohn's claque, however small it might be. I have to admit that this was somewhat vexing to me – sure, given I ran I would have liked to win, but the ethical questions in Bohn's actions raised a concern to me that was much more important than my being on the Board, and that's why I withdrew from consideration for the appointed seat now very ably filled by Chuck Weinberger.

 

To cite Lord Acton's famous (and overused) maxim, power corrupts. The IVGID Board of Trustees has pretty limited power, but for those without the maturity and integrity to wield it, that limited power still has the potential for corruption and this is a case in point. Whatever his motivation, Bohn's actions were inappropriate. The resignation of an elected public official is inarguably something the public has a right to know about and to find out about in a timely manner, particularly on the eve of an election that will fill 40% of the seats on the Board, and Bohn as Chairman had an affirmative obligation to disclose it. Given he was also a candidate for re-election, this disclosure would have, at the very least, avoided the appearance of a conflict of interest.

 

Bohn's recent intractability in the Beach access discussions continues his long-term pattern of arrogance in placing his opinion ahead of the facts and of the law. While Chairwoman Epstein and the other trustees seem to be doing their best to find a solution that will work and will protect the interests of property owners. Bohn has, since before the election, been obdurate in his insistence that the Board has no power to change the status quo, even in the face of legal opinion to the contrary, and while citing no authority more competent than his own questionable opinion to support his position.

 

Bohn should save the Board and the Village from a protracted process and resign from the Board. Lest this suggestion send my respected correspondents to the lakeshore to gather a fresh supply of mud, let me say that the only dog I have in this fight is that of being a concerned citizen. In the unlikely event that Bohn puts the interests of the village ahead of his own dubious position, I have no interest in being appointed to fill his seat and if asked to stand I will not do so.

 

I also think that the Ethics Commission should rethink the wisdom of their investigation of Bill Horn. I looked into this whole affair pretty carefully last Fall, and I don't think an investigation is warranted. For historical reasons, I am loath to cite "following instructions" as a defense, but in this case it was not Horn's place as General Manager of the District to disclose a situation that involved only the elected Board and did not touch on the staff directly. For the GM to go around the Chairman in a matter like this would have been questionable in terms of proper procedure and arguably inappropriate. I don't know who included Horn in their complaint to the Commission, but I would call upon them to withdraw that complaint. It was Bohn who acted unethically and Bohn who should be held to account.

Column 106 – Freedom of Religion

The First Amendment to the US Constitution says in part: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof." There used to be two interpretations of this Amendment – one said that the government should maintain a strict separation from anything remotely religious and the other said that while it was OK for the government to relate to religion in various ways, it could not favor any particular religion or put any religion into official disfavor.

 

There has always been a strain of religious fundamentalism in this country, and there are those who believe that since the majority of people profess Christian faiths, America should be considered a "Christian Country," whatever that means. They erroneously cite the Founders, many of whom such as Jefferson were avowedly non- or anti-religious, and conveniently ignore those who were not Christians and who contributed to the founding as well. More importantly they ignore the Founders' intent in making the anti-establishment clause the leading part of the Bill of Rights.

 

Senator Harry Reid is a Mormon, and has while he does not wear his faith on his sleeve, he makes no secret of it either. Nevertheless, as Majority Leader of the US Senate and as one of the two Senators from a religiously diverse state, he takes the Constitution pretty seriously. Last Thursday Reid invited Rajan Zed, a Hindu Chaplain and Director of Interfaith Relations at a Hindu Temple in Reno to give the customary brief prayer that begins the Senate's business every day. This was a first for a Hindu clergyman, but not for a clergyman who is not Christian – Rabbis, Imams and even Native American Shamans have given the prayer from time to time.

 

Here's where it gets sticky: a fundamentalist Christian group, the Mississippi-based "American Family Association" urged its members to object to the prayer, and three protestors disrupted the invocation by shouting from the gallery. Here is what they objected to: "We meditate on the transcendental glory of the Deity Supreme who is inside the heart of the Earth, inside the life of the sky, and inside the soul of the heavens. May He stimulate and illuminate our minds." Mr. Zed then closed with "Peace, peace, peace be unto all." He said all this in English, by the way, and for this apparently the people in the gallery and the so-called "American Family Association" felt he should be shouted down and silenced.

 

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and preferences, but the supreme law of this country, the Constitution, makes it very clear that freedom of religious expression is a core value, and that no religious expression is to be given preference over any other. As a Jew I have no objection when, 90+% of the time the invocation in the Senate is given by a Christian clergyperson. I also have no objection if it's a Hindu, a Jain, a Muslim, or a Buddhist. As a person of faith, I think it's good for our Senators to be reminded that they are working "under God," whether every one of them believes that or not, and I don't think it matters what name the invoker calls God – Deity Supreme, Adonai, Allah, God, Father, are, in my view, different words for the same entity. If I call the thing I'm sitting on a chair, une chaise, ein Stuhl, una stilla, kisei, una sedia, or any of hundreds of other words, it remains what it is, so surely God does not change from one language to another.

 

As a nation we are regressing in this regard. The curve of religious pluralism and attendant religious tolerance that seemed to have been increasing since the Enlightenment seems to have taken a downward turn. It's time we stopped allowing a small number of religious bigots to set the cultural tone and get back to the values this country was founded on.

Column 105 – Independence Day

Happy Independence Day. Yes, Independence Day – that's the name of the holiday, not "the Fourth of July." July 4 is the date of the Declaration of Independence, but a lot of things happened on July 4 and even on July 4, 1776, so I think it's important to remember what we're celebrating today, and that is Independence.

 

History has somewhat clouded the significance of that date. On July 4, 1776, the thirteen colonies of Great Britain in North America declared themselves independent. No one had ever done that before. Countries had been won and lost in wars, traded as colonies, and various dukes, earls, kings, princes, and queens had formed alliances to create new countries, but never before in history had a country declared itself independent. Naturally that declaration then had to be fulfilled, in this case by a bloody war, but that war is not what we celebrate today. The Revolutionary War is generally considered to have ended when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown on October 19, 1781 – five and a half years later, and that surrender was the fulfillment of the possibility declared in 1776.

 

The Declaration of Independence stands as one of the seminal documents of Western Civilization both because of its irrefutable logic – that all people are created equal, that they share "inalienable rights," and that governments exist to protect those rights – and because of what it inspired in other nations, notably France. But just as the possibility of independence had to be fulfilled through defeating the British, the fact of independence had to be fulfilled through the creation of a system of government that would protect it – that also took time and it was not until the adoption of the US Constitution in 1789 that we had that government.

 

This was also very significant. It was, to my knowledge, the first time in the history of the world that an intentionally secular government was created with an ironclad prohibition against the institution of a state religion and the guarantee not only of freedom of religion, but freedom from religion if one chose not to believe or not to affiliate. Again, 200+ years has clouded the magnificence of the creation of a constitutional democracy and its importance to world history. John Adams, paraphrasing the English political theorist James Harrington, called this "a government of laws and not of men," a phrase that has held its power to this day.

 

And yet democracy is only as strong as our will to uphold and defend it. Today officials as high as the President and Vice President seem to be trying for a government of men who are above the law, and this has filtered through to the point where it seems that some people think we have a "government of opinion, and not of laws." In the debate over beach access we've heard what one attorney characterized as "more bad and false law than I could have imagined." Many in this debate seem to think that because they believe something to be the law, it must be the law and how dare anyone suggest otherwise? Fortunately four of our five Trustees are intelligent enough to see through this bombast and have moved toward a very reasonable stopgap compromise and to get a qualified opinion on the points of law as a basis for moving forward.

 

Another misconception about constitutional democracy is that the majority always rules. While this is ultimately true – a sufficient majority can change the constitution – it is not true in the interim. Until the law is changed, the law always rules in "a government of laws and not of men." It doesn't matter if everyone in Incline wants our beaches to remain private if the law says they must be opened to others. Don't like it? Get the law changed, but don't accuse those charged with supporting the law of being deaf to the majority – they hear the majority, if such it is, but the law speaks louder – again, I applaud the Trustees who voted to hear what the law has to say and wonder about the one who is so certain he is right without qualified rulings on the law.

 

The point is this, folks. Independence is a gift hard-won. Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed, from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." You've heard it said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It is my sincere hope that, on this Independence Day, we redouble our vigilance against those, whether in Washington or in Incline, who would put themselves and their opinions ahead of the law.

Column 104 – Beaches (again)

Sometimes I feel like Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?"

 

The beach access issue has divided this community like nothing I've seen in my 12 years here, and as irrationally as I can imagine for a local issue. Legal threats are flying around like pine pollen on both sides. The Trustees have been threatened of they let so much as one Crystal Bay resident set foot on the beach and while I was not at the meeting on Monday, I understand that there was name-calling and threats as well as flights of high dudgeon, invocation of the Constitution and, worst of all in our community, even a threat to bring in the ACLU!!!

 

Hiram Johnson said that when war comes, the first casualty is truth – he was echoing Samuel Johnson who had said that in war, the love of truth is diminished by falsehoods that are encouraged by interests and abetted by people's willingness to believe. In the local debate, I don't think anyone is intentionally lying, but a great deal of information is being presented as "the truth" that is, at best, opinion and conjecture, and when the discourse descends to name-calling and threats, we can, I think, declare communication dead.

 

I've felt from the beginning that, in my view, there should be one overriding issue here – keeping the beaches private. If by accepting access for owners of some 400 properties - people who are, at the end of the day, or neighbors we can keep the beaches from being accessible to thousands whom we don't know, then we should. If, as seems obvious, beach access adds to the value of properties in Incline, then why not accept adding value to 400 rather than losing value from thousands?

 

Here's the point, folks – nobody is going to win this one. In the Bluth affair it took $150,000 to defend against a frivolous, ill-devised suit and we didn't get a ruling on the issues. Today it could cost $250,000 and we might not win. If hotter heads prevail and this goes to Federal Court as a constitutional issue, if the ACLU, which has no interest in Tahoe or its beaches gets involved, it will cost a lot more and we are very likely to lose. Even in State or District Court, the jury hearing the case will not be from here, but could easily be Reno-ites or Carson-ites who would love to come to our beaches.

 

I say again, this is a true no-win situation, and we are well down the road to the point of no return. Somewhere, somehow, somebody needs to be the voice of reason in this and I don't know who will do that and have everyone involved listen to them. When people are so dead certain that theirs is the right view, reason is defined as anything that agrees with that view, and anything that does not agree is considered stupid at best. Not exactly fertile ground for dialogue.

 

I wish I had a good ending for this, but I don't. I do remember one instance though that might be instructive: When Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt met at Camp David in 1978, each began by declaring that his country's giving up the Sinai Peninsula to the other was absolutely non-negotiable, and it looked like the negotiations were over before they started. One of the American negotiators, under President Clinton's direction asked each head of state separately what was really important to them about the Sinai. Begin said it was security – Israel could not have that vast territory available to be used as a base of attack against them. Sadat, when asked, also said it was security – they could not have the Israeli army occupy what they considered part of their country. When it was clear that each side had the same basic commitment, it became possible to broker a solution that Egypt would retain the Sinai Peninsula and Israel would provide security patrols there.

 

It seems to me that the question that we should be asking is "what is it that makes beach access an important issue for both sides?" Perhaps then we will find a constructive solution. Without that, to quote Woody Allen, "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

Column 103 – Red, White, and Tahoe Blue

Fair warning: This column is going to be an unabashed promotion for Red, White, and Tahoe Blue, and by way of full disclosure, I am on the board of RWTB, Inc, and have been intimately involved in the planning, so this won't be "fair and balanced."

 

To give you a little history, RWTB was the brainchild of local realtor Tom Bruno about a year ago. You may not know Tom – he's not big on social events or local clubs, but he is one of the most committed, hard-working, and self-effacing people it's been my pleasure to work with. He's a regular at the Tuesday morning Bonanza community meetings, and the bane of TRPA representatives who don't have their facts marshaled to meet his always cogent inquiries.

 

Tom surrounded himself with some equally committed folks for the Board of RWTB, Inc. – Greg Mc Kay, Bea Epstein, Bill Horn, Bill Hoffman, Tom Masterson, and Allen Ferris round out the Board, but Tom also got a huge number of people to participate – I won't attempt to name them all because I'd inevitably forget someone, but they'll all be acknowledged in the souvenir program for RWTB. This group, in turn, has raised almost $200,000 to put on what will be one of the great parties ever in Incline.

 

If you're a snowbird and just got back, here's the rundown – it started out as a three-day event; culminating in the 4^th on Wednesday, but other groups wanted to be part of it, so now some of the exhibits, athletic tournaments, and a special "Living Green in Tahoe" event at the College over the weekend. The core of the celebration, though, remains the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th.

 

On Monday, July 2^nd, a breakfast at the Firehouse will kick off the festivities, followed by a parade that will start at the "new" elementary school and go down Route 28 and Country Club, ending at the Middle School. The theme of the parade and RWTB is to honor our veterans, who will be prominently featured in the parade. At noon, church bells will ring and Mark Twain will read the Declaration of Independence followed by an Air National Guard fly-over and a World War Two-style "Stage Door Canteen" show with the Andrews Sisters redux and an old-fashioned ice cream social.

 

Every evening will see concerts at the Village Green – Monday's will be the popular local group Sol Jibe. On Tuesday the Sierra Nevada Ballet will put on a "Yankee Doodle Dance Event" in the style of George M. Cohan, all culminating on Wednesday with headliner Lacy J. Dalton before the fireworks.

 

On Tuesday the I-Can Run and Walk will be part of RWTB this year and for the less athletically inclined, the Rotary Clubs will be sponsoring the Rubber Duck Races. There will be breakfasts every day, a Barbecue and Apple Pie contest on Tuesday, and tons of other events all day, every day.

 

There will be gourmet dinners before each of the concerts and on Monday night an additional dinner at Thunderbird Lodge with the Great Basis Brass Quintet and stargazing with astronomer Dr. Paul Guttman and of course, the grand finale, the fireworks on two (count 'em two) barges in the lake – twice the fireworks display we've ever had before.

 

So plan to be here and to participate. We still need sponsors if you're inclined to donate, and if you want to donate time we still need volunteers. The plan is for this to be an annual event that will benefit the community and financially benefit local charities. Let's make this inaugural year a great kick-off that really demonstrates who we are as a community.

Column 102 – Black Swans

We hear a lot about where Incline residents differ – beach access, dog parks, almost issue that is raised seems to be an occasion for division that is often acrimonious between various people in the community, and you can't tell the sides without a program.

 

I think this focus on controversy is unfortunate on a couple of counts. First, I think it reflects the views of a very small number of people (and I'm among them) who are able, by means ranging from reason to fear-mongering, to get a larger number of people riled up. Secondly, I think it obscures some fundamental areas where IV/CB residents come together rather than move apart.

 

Last week I spent a few hours at what was billed as a trade fair put on by the Chamber of Commerce. One thing that struck me was how many volunteer and non-profit organizations that weren't really about "trade" were represented there – the hospital was giving blood pressure tests and advice on health, the Rim Trail, TRPA, IVGID, Rotary, Red, White and Tahoe Blue, Tahoe Women's Services were there, and I know there were others I'm not recalling as I write this. The Republican Advocates were there, not just to promote their view but offering voter registration to those of any political persuasion.

 

In addition to these organizations I noticed how many of the businesses that were there were supporters of community efforts – I won't name names here because I know I'll leave some out and because so many of the businesses that support the community weren't there, but you know who they are.

 

While we do argue a lot, giving of ourselves – time, money, and talent – is a deep-rooted part of the culture of our community, and that, I think, is what makes us a community. How many towns of our size have a huge facility that is completely dedicated to supporting community efforts the way that the Parasol Foundation and Collaboration are? At how many events like the Trade Fair would people who have invested considerable time and money to promote their business take the time to seek out an opportunity to volunteer for the anti-DUI effort or to run over and buy ducks for the Red, White, and Tahoe Blue duck races?

 

I don't want to sound saccharine, but I think we let acrimonious differences get in the way of our really appreciating what we have here that is more fundamental. I find that if I can sit down and talk with people and get past the rhetoric and reaction (mine as well as theirs) even those with views that are diametrically opposed to mine and even in those cases where I find their views repugnant, what is behind those views is never evil or mal-intended. I don't know why this surprises me so often – if I look at myself as a test case, I am never mal-intended by my own lights – even my most boneheaded moves have the best of intentions behind them – so why would that not be true of everyone else?

 

The philosopher David Hume once said that no number of observations of white swans will prove that all swans are white, but it takes only one observation of a black swan to disprove it. This is interesting in a lot of ways, but particularly for this discussion it points up one way that we come to focus on what divides us – we encounter someone who, for whatever reason, we react to negatively – Bill Clinton, George Bush, Michael Moore, Dick Cheney, whoever – and the logic goes like this (to paraphrase Hume): "No number of observations of good (progressives, conservatives, environmentalists, beach-accessers) will prove that all (…) are good people, but this one observation proves that they are not."

 

My point is a simple one – let's spend three times as much time and talk on what unites us so that that remains the context for what divides us, and let's remember that the word and concenpt "community" comes from "commonality."

Column 101 – Harry Reid

Well, our Nevada Senator, Harry Reid, has really stepped in it this time. Like the boy who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes, he has had the temerity to speak the truth that everyone knows about the Iraq war – it's lost – and now neocons from Washington to Incline Village are screaming for him to resign.

 

Let's see: Wolfowitz gets his girlfriend a promotion and a $60,000 raise, but he shouldn't resign, Gonzales participates in partisan firings and then obfuscates before Congress with the one form of perjury ("I don't recall") that can't be proved, but he's OK, Joe Wilson tells the truth about yellowcake and his wife the spy gets exposed by the Vice President's office in retribution and that's OK, but Harry Reid should resign and one Incliner accuses him of "sedition" and says we should look up what it means.

 

In 1798 the nascent US Congress passed the Sedition Act. This act said that anyone "opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States" could be imprisoned for up to two years. It was also illegal to "write, print, utter, or publish" anything critical of the president or Congress. This act was allowed to expire 1801 and subsequent court decisions have been based on the view that if it had been tested it would have been found to be an unconstitutional restraint of free speech. The dictionary defines sedition as open insurrection or rebellion. Neither of these facts has stopped the President's hard-core neocon supporters from crying "sedition" at Reid's effrontery, and a writer to the Bonanza last Friday repeats this canard and compounds it by invoking the hallowed "aid and comfort to the enemy" as evidence of sedition.

 

Actually, the phrase comes from Article 3 Section 3 of the Constitution, a document that the President and the neocons seem unfamiliar with. That Article says "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court." Since Senator Reid is unlikely to confess, we would have to have two people who would swear in court that they witnessed an overt act of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Not their opinion, mind you, but testimony of fact.

 

Let's look at that. It seems to me that the only ones who can say for sure whether Reid's statement gave aid and comfort to the enemy are the enemy themselves. But on more than one occasion Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda higher-ups have been reported to have said that the US presence in Iraq and the prolonging of the war there is to their benefit – that's the only testimony I know of that speaks directly to what "aids and comforts" the enemy. They don't need to win, they may not even want to win – as long as we are there and they are the underdog, they gain political traction in the jihadist world, so it seems reasonable to think that anything that prolongs the war and the US presence in Iraq aids the enemy and probably gives them comfort – they certainly seem more comfortable than we are.

 

So on the one hand we have Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi, and the Democrats saying the war is lost and insisting on a plan for getting our troops out of harm's way so that as few as possible die in service of a lost cause, with the ancillary benefit that Al Qaeda would lose whatever they gain from our being there. On the other hand we have the President and the neocons in deep denial insisting on an open-ended commitment to a war they have no plan for how to win or how to get out of. And we have the enemy saying it's to their advantage that we stay there and they benefit from it.

 

So who's giving "aid and comfort?" And who should resign?

 

Column 100 - Polemics

Last Wednesday in a guest opinion column Syd Bekowich took both Jim Clark and me to task for our last "face-off" columns on the Gonzales matter. Specifically, he accuses Jim of vindicating Gonzales and me of a "virulent" (extremely poisonous or venomous; full of malice; objectionably harsh or strong) attack on the Bush Administration. He concludes by accusing both Jim and me of "dogmatic belief that led to burning people on the stake." In Sunday's Letters, Jane Bekowich, his wife, quotes from Ralph Nader and asks if Jim and I are "trying to make us believe in your points of view or…inviting us to think through the issues?"

 

Both the Bekowiches raise valid issues but, I think, are unclear on the nature of opinion columns in general and the "face-off" in particular. Given the choices Mrs. Bekowich offers, I would opt for the second – to invite people to think is what I've tried to one way or another through my career as a writer and educator. I certainly do not expect an occasional 700 word column will make anyone believe in my point of view, and I don't think my point of view is something deserving of belief, particularly given that it changes as I get older and learn more.

 

That said, there is more than one way to (metaphor alert) skin a cat. Polemics (aggressive debate, attack on or refutation of the opinions or principles of another) is a method of argument that goes back to at least the 17^th Century, and is not dissimilar from Mr. Bekowich's own writing in his article. The opinions expressed by Jim and me in our columns are, as they say, our own, and we believe them. I believe, for example, that the import of l'affaire Gonzales goes way beyond the firing of eight US Attorneys and, along with Scooter Libby, the Iraq War, etc., etc., goes to the heart of a Presidency that is rotten to the core with egoism, greed, and disregard for the Constitution. Therefore my column was, in my view, very much about Gonzales as was Jim's. Do I invite people to think? Yes – to think beyond the surface issues to the root of how this Administration is selling this country's founding principles and our place in the world down the river.

 

Do I expect to convince anyone? No, sadly, I don't. Forget the Bush Administration, let's look at a local issue. I attended parts of the thirteen hour public hearing on beach access last Monday and was less than surprised to hear so many people that are so convinced of the rightness of their position and the rightness of their facts that they are, in my view, prepared to sacrifice what they say they hold most dear rather than compromise. It seems that no matter which way the Board decides, one side of the argument or the other will sue. If they sue, it at least opens the possibility, maybe the probability, that the courts will order the beaches opened to all, and everybody loses. Talk about the Charge of the Light Brigade.

 

And what is more dismaying is how sure everyone is of their "facts." People who spoke to me were absolutely certain that if we open the beaches to the 400 properties that do not now have access, that will mean we have opened them to the whole world. Not true. Others were certain that we could not keep the beaches from being opened to the planned timeshares and expansions of some of the Crystal Bay casinos. Not true. The "fact" that has the most currency and supposed certainty is that "properties in Incline are worth on average $50,000 more than those in Crystal Bay, and the difference is beach access." Maybe, maybe not, but no one has, to my knowledge, shown one bit of evidence that supports this claim.

 

So, Mr. and Mrs. Bekowich: Am I inviting people to think through my polemics? I sincerely hope so. Do I expect to convince anyone? No, and I'm not so arrogantly certain that my point of view is right that I even want to. Are polemics the only way to get people to think? No, it's just the method that short newspaper columns lend themselves to. If you want more reasoned dialogue, join the program on Jewish-Christian relations that Father Jim Beebe and I will be doing starting in June – you'll get a whole different approach.

Column 99 - Imus

The First Amendment is, arguably, what makes America America. Other countries have democratic governments of various kinds and share a lot of the freedoms we have – you can vote in many countries, you can bear arms – in Switzerland you're required to own firearms – other countries have safeguards against blurring church and state that make ours look weak – France, for example, is aggressively secular. But nowhere that I know of goes to the length that our Constitution goes to to protect free speech from government interference. If this is the land of the free, nowhere are we more free than we are to speak our mind.

 

Common sense and common practice has long recognized that even this right has its limits. In 1919 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said in Schenk v. United States "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic," invoking the notion of "clear and present danger" as a legitimate reason to curb some kinds of speech. More recently we have seen laws passed against "hate speech" as well.

 

And that's where it gets tricky. To (falsely) shout fire in a crowded theater clearly creates a danger – people may panic, trample others, etc. Hate speech is different than hate actions such as lynching or other physical attacks. For those brought up on "sticks and stones…" the notion of hurtful speech takes some thinking about, but we've all experienced being hurt emotionally by things others have said, so it's understandable. Still, where do you draw the line and still protect free speech?

 

When I lived in New York in the 1970's I listened to this crazy radio show in the mornings on my way to work. While other morning radio consisted of music and news, this guy Don Imus was doing all sorts of wacky and entertaining things like calling a McDonald's store, pretending to be the commander of an army base that had just had a fire in its mess hall and ordering 25,000 hamburgers to go, launching into a long string of special orders (17,000 with no onions, 5,000 with mustard, etc.) Arguably Imus created the "shock jock" genre and is the spiritual father of Howard Stern, Opie and Anthony, and the rest. Increasingly over the years Imus has pushed the envelope of what one is allowed to say and do on the radio. He was among the first to give Kinky Friedman, erstwhile candidate for Governor of Texas, a national microphone, proclaiming "They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore" the "Imus in the Morning National Anthem." A lot of what he did was funny, some of it silly and a great deal of it offensive to various people and groups.

 

Now, it's generally agreed, Imus has gone farther than free speech will allow in his comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Yet his remarks fall far short of what rap music puts out every day. Snoop Dogg, that icon of rap, says that the reason his racist, misogynistic, and insulting lyrics are OK and Imus' comments aren't is that Imus was talking about nice women and Snoop is talking about ho's, managing to reinsult black women at the same time he claims to be defending them.

 

But there's something about the First Amendment that should be understood and often isn't. What it says is: "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." This means that the Federal Government, and by extension state and local governments, is barred from interfering with free speech – it doesn't say that an employer, particularly in the media, cannot say what is acceptable for its employees to say. In return for making the public airways available to Imus or anyone else, CBS and MSNBC are not legally restricted from saying what they are willing to have broadcast under their banner.

 

Seen this way, free speech becomes self-regulating. If the public is willing to buy rap music that insults women but unwilling to tolerate Imus insulting women, then, as we've seen, Imus will go and rap music will continue to sell. I, for one think that's a pretty good system.

Column 98 - Beaches

As a psychologist, it's always been interesting to me which issues get people here heated up and which leave them cold. Dogs, and particularly the venues for their elimination functions, never fail to cause a stir. Mention affordable housing and people who are not heard from on any other issues will rise up, tar and feathers in hand, to greet you. Anything involving golf and to a lesser extent tennis will bring high passions from some.

 

But no issue seems to bring up as much choler as that of beach access and, frankly, I'm at a loss to see why. Yes, almost 40 years ago the deed that passed Incline Village from its developers to IVGID said what it said. Yes, the merger between IVGID and CBGID 27 years later said what it said. That was then, this is now.

 

It has been asserted that beach access is worth $50,000 additional value to Incline properties over presumably comparable Crystal Bay properties; yet comparable properties in Incline that have no access to Incline beaches seem to share in that $50,000 added value, so is it really because of beach access? Yet some have said that CB residents should pay that supposed $50,000 differential to get beach access. This argument makes no sense to me. To whom would they pay it? There are 400 parcels that don't have beach access and about 8600 that do. Should we create a buddy system where each of the 400 is paired with 21.5 of the 8600 and pays each of them $2,325.58 cents? And if we do that, are we prepared to guarantee that each of the 400 will get $50,000 more for their property when they sell it?

 

Then there is the "do what's right" argument. Proponents of this view say, in effect, "they knew when they bought that they didn't have beach access, so tough." I wonder how far they are willing to go to be right about this position. Deed restrictions and CC&R's do not have a good track record in the courts. Remember that there was a time when restrictions on who could live where and what they could do were common – CC&R's were used to keep out minorities, to force unreasonable compliance with regard to appearance, etc., and the courts have generally knocked down what they have held to be restrictive covenants.

 

Also the courts have not looked kindly on restrictions to natural attractions such as beaches. In cases in Connecticut and California previously restricted beaches were opened to the public when the restrictions were challenged in court. In the view of many this would be the worst possible outcome for all concerned and if that $50,000 differential is real, you can kiss it goodbye if the beaches are opened to the public. You can also kiss our relatively pleasant and uncrowded beaches goodbye. Is standing on a principle that I think is dubious in its logic to begin with worth that?

 

Here's the simple solution: give everyone who owns property in the district equal access to the beaches for an equal rec fee. Oh I know that some people will howl and I may lose some friends over this "principle." As I said, I think the principle is dubious and the potential cost of being right very high. When I lived in Vermont there was a gravestone in an old cemetery that said "Here lies the body of Justin Gray/He died defending his right of way/His right was real/His case was strong/And he's as dead as if he were wrong."

 

I think it is laudable that the IVGID Board of Trustees is willing to spend some 13 hours (hopefully with breaks) on Monday to give everyone a chance to speak their peace. If things go the way they usually go here the anti-change forces will be out in numbers and the other side will be poorly represented. No matter – this is not an issue that should be decided by popular preference. Rather the Board should do what is right for the Village as a whole and its future, and endangering the privacy of our beaches is not what is right. For the math-impaired, 400 is 4.65% of 8600. That means on a day when Incline Beach would now have 200 people, this change might mean there would be 210. On the other hand, if this goes to court, and you can bet it will, that 200 could be 400 or more as people from Reno, the Bay Area, and everywhere else stream in.

Column 97 - Incline Vision Town Meeting 2

There is an apocryphal story about a school boy who, upon entering second grade was told that one of the requirements of this school year was that he read a book of his choice, to which he replied “why do I have to read a book? I already read a book!”

I hear a similar plaint from locals about the upcoming Incline Vision Town Meeting and it makes about as much sense to me. “We did planning in 1996 – do we need to do this every ten years?”

Well, I guess the answer is yes. The 1996 planning addressed land use and a lot of good things came out of it over the subsequent years. I moved here in 1995 and a lot has changed for the better in the town since then – we have sidewalks we didn’t have, we have facilities we didn’t have, and in general the physical aspect of the village has improved in many ways. Much of the improvement has come from direct citizen involvement – the sidewalks were, in part, a result of accidents that occurred when people were walking where there were no sidewalks. The pedestrian-operated traffic light at the south end of where the Northwood/ Southwood loop intersects Highway 28 came because a group of citizens were unwilling to wait until someone being injured or killed prompted a safety measure. The skateboard park was a direct citizen effort, and on and on. I guess the connection between the Town Meeting and citizen involvement and these and other improvements is just too indirect for some people to see, but I think it’s real – when people get involved in their community beyond sitting around or writing letters to the paper about what’s wrong and “somebody ought to fix it,” good things happen.

Here’s the thing folks – in an unincorporated area outside the mainstream of county services if the residents don’t get involved, improvement is a hit or miss proposition. In November of 2005, Bea Epstein and a small group of others (full disclosure - I was one of them) took the initiative to raise the question “What do we want Incline Village/Crystal Bay to be like in 2025?” This was before TRPA’s Pathway 2007 got started, before Place-Based Planning, before much of anything was happening in this arena. That group pulled together the second planning effort in ten years and held a Town Meeting with over 300 people present. From that meeting came ten committees focusing on issues ranging from demographics to the environment to arts and culture and to recreation, encompassing a hundred or more concerned individuals that spent the next 18 months planning and working with the other efforts that got started as well. From time to time the effort was declared successful, unnecessary, dying, dead, and revolutionary, and on it went.

Now the time has come for the committees to report out what they have learned and to move from planning to action, and that is the purpose of Saturday’s Town Meeting – to move from vision to action and to come out of the meeting with commitments either for direct citizen action or action to influence the appropriate public bodies and officials.

As I told someone today, I’m too old for cynicism. When I was young and had lots of time, I could afford to say “aw, nothing’s gonna change – it’ll just be meetings every ten years forever.” Now I’m older – I don’t have the luxury of cynicism and if I’m going to help change things for the better I need to do it now. Where will you be Saturday morning? Basketball doesn’t start till 3 – why not take a chance that community involvement makes a difference, even when it takes 10 years or it’s indirect.

Column 96 (National) - Gonzales

The current issues surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales point up again the arrogance and complete lack of accountability of the Bush Administration and the willingness of its hard core of true believers to excuse the most egregious behavior on the part of BushCheneyRove on the flimsiest of pretexts.

At this point it’s probably overkill to point out that the Gonzales affair is only the latest in a long trail of lies, obfuscations, and half-truths going back at least to the non-existent WMD’s in Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s non-existent links to Al Qaeda – that trail wends its way through the abortive nomination of the totally unqualified Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, on down to the exposure of Valerie Plame and the scapegoating of Scooter Libby as the fall guy for the Administration’s lies about that. Now we have the firing of eight US Attorneys, where we are to believe was somehow just an innocent exercise of executive prerogative.

There is no question that the firings were political. All eight cases bear the same stamp – whether the US Attorneys failed to investigate voter fraud cases that might have reversed Republican victories or whether they pursued corruption charges against Republicans like Duke Cunningham, in every case they resisted interference from Washington and were fired. And please hold the letters to the editor about how Clinton fired all the US Attorneys – there’s a world of difference between pro forma firing and restaffing and firings that targeted specific people who were not, in Sampson’s words “loyal Bushies.” The issue isn’t that they were fired but why they were fired.

We are now to believe that Gonzales, who should be working on his resumé, or the feckless Ms Miers were behind the firings, but as the Romans said, in investigating guilt, ask cui bono? Who benefits? Neither Miers nor Gonzales had a dog in this fight – why would the Attorney General want to replace conservative US Attorneys, some of whom had just had stellar performance reviews, with party hacks?

The only one who had a motive was Karl Rove. Rove's job is to build a permanent Republican majority; If that means replacing principled conservatives in the US Attorneys Office with Bush loyalists; what in Rove’s record suggests that he or his masters would hesitate?

The Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act, the disregarding of habeas corpus, due process and the presumption of innocence all proclaim this Administration’s lack of regard for the Constitution and for basic justice. BushCheneyRove also have a low regard for law enforcement; preferring round ups of anyone who might plausibly be detained rather than the traditional methods of investigation and detention.

The Bush Administration is trying to hide behind the doctrine of “executive privilege,” which in this Administration’s case thinly masks contempt for the balance of powers mandated by the Constitution. When Congress rightly demands a public accounting of the actions of public officials, the President offers unsworn “testimony” behind closed doors and without a record, and blusters about a Constitutional Confrontation if he does not get his way, despite the fact that when presidents have tried to invoke this privilege, the courts have been skeptical.

The Bushies’ contempt for Congress should not surprise us. This administration has shown over and over that it does not believe that the laws apply to it, and that it does not respect its co-equal branches of government. Congress should subpoena Mr. Rove and the others, and question them under oath, in public. If Congress has more questions, they should be recalled. That’s Congress’s job- to exercise the “checks and balances” mandated by a document BushCheneyRove do not seem to have read – the Constitution of the United States of America.

Column 95 - Fox News & the NDP

With the move of the Nevada Presidential Primary up to January of 2008, Nevada has assumed an unaccustomed place in the national spotlight. Unfortunately, to some extent, that spotlight seems to have blinded the Nevada Democratic Party leadership to some things.

We have already had one debate among all the Democratic candidates save Obama in Carson City a couple of weeks ago. Another is scheduled, and for reasons that completely escape me, the state party contracted with Fox News to cover the debate. Now I’m no media expert, but that seems to me about as logical as having Al Jazeera cover a Zionist Organization of America convention.

Sure enough, a great hue and cry arose from various Liberal organizations protesting this choice, most notably from MoveOn.org. Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News and a former Nixon aide (and the man responsible for bringing Rush Limbaugh to national attention) immediately jumped on this as “outside forces” attempting to affect Nevada politics (an area that Ailes has shown no particular interest in in the past).

This seems to me to be a bit disingenuous on Mr. Ailes’ part. While the debate was to take place in Nevada and was aimed at the Nevada primary, it was nonetheless a debate among presidential candidates and as one of the early primaries, it is arguably of national interest and import, but Fox news, which is also the TV home of Bill O’Reilly and what he (without a trace of irony) calls “the no-spin zone” has repeatedly shown that it is not interested in being “fair and balanced,” but is a mouthpiece for Conservative views.

With the issue starting to be raised, Democratic candidates began to rethink their participation in the debate. Finally Ailes gave them and the Nevada Party the excuse they needed to get out of the mess without looking like they caved in to those big bad liberals at MoveOn. In a speech last week he conflated Obama and Osama in a poor attempt at humor and the debate cancelled Fox’s coverage, which Tom Collins, Nevada Democratic Chair should have had the guts to do a long time ago and the judgment not to have done in the first place.

There are 21 months left until the Presidential Election of 2008, and everyone I know is looking forward to it with dread, not because of the candidates or the issues but because it looks like it will bring one more very long round of mudslinging and dirty campaigning that will make the “swiftboating” of John Kerry look like a Sunday School picnic. Fox and other right-wing outlets are already trotting out unfounded insinuations about Hillary’s “thick ankles” (if that’s a disqualifying attribute, Newt Gingrich should give up now) and her supposed sexual preferences, Obama’s fictional mid-East ties, etc., and it will only get worse unless we, the public let the candidates and the media know we’re sick of it. Not much hope there, I’m afraid, but it’s worth a try. What do you say? Send a letter to your favorite media outlet, whether it’s Fox, Air America, CNN, or the local stations and to your party’s potential candidates and let them know you’d like to see a campaign on the issue and not on nonsense. Hey – it could happen.

Column 94 - Let's Talk Trash

Let’s Talk Trash

Overall, “trash” is a profit center for IVGID; if you include the franchise fee paid by Waste Management to IVGID. Within that profit center; recycling loses money, more than one half of which is offset by the recycling fee paid by each property of $1.25 a month. That’s right, each homeowner and homeowners association pays a whopping $15 a year for this service. Seems like a bargain to me.

No one I’ve talked to or heard from is against the recycling program, but according to figures given to IVGID by Waste Management, only about 40% of the properties that put out garbage also put out recycling – not a great showing, but better than nothing. Waste Management recycling has been called limited when compared, say to California, where state law requires a much broader scope of recyclables be picked up and processed. WM takes all kinds of glass (except blue – sorry Skyy drinkers), most metal containers, and plastic bottles with a number 1 or 2 recycling classification. They also take newspaper and other kinds of paper. You can recycle corrugated cardboard, but only if you bring it to the WM facility on Sweetwater, which is open normal business hours during the week and until noon on weekends.

Recycling is one of the few things around that has almost no downside. The more products we recycle and reuse, the less energy is needed to manufacture new products, the fewer trees are cut down to make new paper, the more money the recycling companies make and the more money comes back to IVGID under the contract with WM. The 40% rate of recycling participation here may be due to lots of part-time residents or to a need for education. Making recycling easier and recycling more materials may also help increase participation.

The argument has been advanced that expanding the recycling program might increase the cost to homeowners. Okay, but even if it were to increase by a factor of 5, that means we’d go to $6.25 a month or $75 a year, a figure that’s not going to break or even be noticed by anyone. I spend more than $6.25 a month at Starbuck’s. Right now we recover about 3.25% recyclables from the total volume of trash collected. Estimates are that expanding to other plastics, picking up cardboard at curbside, etc. could increase that recovery rate into the teens.

The one troubling thing in all this is a question that no one I’ve asked has answered to any degree of satisfaction, namely why the contract for trash/recycling pickup is not put out for competitive bid. I’ve heard explanations ranging from “all the potential bidders subcontract to WM (true) and won’t bid against them (maybe)” to “WM is mob-connected and bad things would happen (patently ridiculous). But we won’t know if competitive bidding will make a difference if IVGID doesn’t put out a request for bids and see if they get any.

While I know that there is such a thing as no-bid (also known as sole source) contracts, these are generally used only in unusual situations. Such as when only one firm has a product that will meet the government's needs or only one firm can do the work, or when national security is involved. I see no compelling reason for IVGID to sole source contract for trash and recycling.

There is still time to make your thoughts known to the Board. I for one would like to see (a) recycling expanded to include a wider range of plastics and curbside pickup for corrugated cardboard, and (b) Requests for bids to go out to other providers in the area – if no one bids, fine, but let’s give the little guys a chance against WM, the thousand pound gorilla of the industry. What do you think?

Column 93 - Responsibility

Well, last week the wider world intruded on us in an unpleasant way. Four Incline High Juniors are accused of sabotaging the school buses in a way that could have resulted in damage and even potentially loss of life. As usual, school officials and people who know the accused say they are nice kids, never would have expected it, etc., and I have no doubt that is true.

Now this is no Columbine, but it still is cause for concern. I’m sure the four of them never thought far enough ahead to realize the potentially disastrous results of their actions, but while that might mitigate their guilt, it does not remove it. These are eleventh graders – if they don’t already drive, they will be eligible to drive soon, and they are a scant 18 months from leaving home, high school graduates, ready to go out on their own into the world – I don’t think it’s too much to expect that they should have given the implications of their actions more thought.

No one knows for sure why many young people today seem to be so prone to irresponsibility. I don’t think it’s all young people or even a majority, but it’s a large enough number for the problem to keep showing up – in school shootings, vandalism, graffiti, and now in cutting brake lines on school buses. As a psychologist who used to work with children, adolescents, and their families, I feel like I should understand, but have no confidence that I do. One possibility is that the consequences are just too remote for people of that age to think about.

Here’s an example: When I was about 10 or 11 years old, Nancy Brown and her brother Bruce offended me in some way that I can no longer remember, so some of my friends and I got a bright idea – we took some excelsior (shredded paper that bananas came in) and a .22 caliber bullet that we got God knows where, embedded the bullet in the paper, put it under Nancy’s window, lit the paper and ran away. Within minutes two things happened: a neighbor put out the fire and a police car, called by another neighbor, pulled up in front of my friends and me and took us into custody. Not more than 15 minutes after setting our primitive IED, I was in front of my parents with a policeman behind me, confessing what I had done and on the receiving end of some serious consequences.

It seems to me that this would be unlikely to happen nowadays. More likely the neighbors, if they were looking at all, would have felt it best to mind their own business, the police, if they were called, would have been careful not to violate any rights I might be thought to have, and my parents would have tried to understand or defended me against the police rather than punishing me. Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but it seems to me that we have lost sight of the facts that (a) children are essentially amoral beings who have to be taught right from wrong and (b) the systems – police, teachers, parents – that are there to teach them and to make sure that bad choices have undesirable consequences have had their hands tied by fear of seeming abusive, violating “rights” that may or may not be useful and a culture of psychologism that makes responsibility a bad word.

I feel for the parents of these four children, but I hope that, if they are guilty, their punishment is significant enough to have them learn something useful. The worst thing they could learn would be that they can do something wrong and then they or their parents or a lawyer can game the system so that they escape the consequences of their choices and their actions.

Column 91 - Recycling

Most of you will be relieved to hear that I won’t be writing another column about John Bohn, but I will take one last word. If last week’s letters in which Bohn and his cronies trotted out the “sore loser” chestnut is the best he’s got, then I think that it’s likely that the complaints filed with the state and any recall effort anyone decides to undertake will likely be successful. The State Board of Ethics has let me know they have decided to look into the matter, so I’ll leave the rest up to you, the residents to say what kind of person you want on the Board.

Now to other matters that deserve our attention. As you may have heard by now, the IVGID Board, at its meeting tonight, will have its first hearings on the renewal of the contract with Waste Management, the company that handles trash and recycling in the District. In this hearing, the public has the opportunity to give the Board its input on this matter, one that affects all of us.

To be sure, Waste Management has been doing a good job for the District to date. They have shown that recycling is a viable business for them in Incline and when you factor in the fees they pay, it is profitable to the District as well. For a very small part of our utility bill we have the advantage of having much of our recyclable trash picked up at curbside and the ability to bring other recyclables, particularly corrugated cardboard, to the facility as well.

Still, we could have more. Right now only number 1 and 2 plastic bottles are accepted for recycling, leaving other plastics to go into the trash. Judging my what I see in the streets on trash pick-up days, many people do not bring corrugated cardboard in to be recycled, and non-corrugated cardboard of the type used in many household items is not accepted for recycling. Finally, the trash/recycling facility on Sweetwater is open only until noon on weekends.

If you believe as I do that recycling has a clear benefit to the environment, tonight’s meeting is an opportunity to let the Board and Waste Management know you want more – not because there is anything wrong with the job they’ve done to date – there isn’t - but because we’ve sent the benefits of that to the District and to the environment and want to extend those benefits.

I would like to see pickup of all cardboard – corrugated or not – at curbside, extension of the plastics recycling to containers other than bottles and extension of the facility’s hours until 4 or 5 on weekends so that residents who spend their day building or cleaning up aren’t restricted to the morning hours to bring in their trash or recycling.

Whether you agree with this or not, tonight is an opportunity to make your views heard by the Board early in the contract renewal process, while there is still time for them and Waste Management to research the impact of these proposals and see what makes economic and environmental sense.

If we can turn out a couple of hundred people for a debate on a non-issue like “affordable housing” then surely we can pack the hall for this, an issue that will have immediate effects on all of us.

Column 92 (National) - Education

Due to a combination of work travel and a death in the family, I missed the deadline for a head-to-head column with Jim Clark last Sunday. The Bonanza was kind enough to provide space today, and since Jim addressed education, I’ll do the same.

I agree with Jim that the data on all-day kindergarten are not persuasive, and it was probably a good move on Governor Gibbons’ part not to commit to it. I don’t know that I would attribute quite the same dark motives to those who support all-day kindergarten that Jim does, but in a time of limited education budgets, it doesn’t seem like a good bet to me.

For the past year or so I’ve been working with an organization called the Center for Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Learning (CERTL) at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. CERTL has mostly been involved in curriculum improvement, but more recently was impressed with a very substantial body of data that indicates that communication and collaboration amongst teachers, administrators, students, and parents is a, if not the critical determinant of student achievement. Based on that, CERTL asked the organization I work for to join with them under a grant from the National Education Association to do a pilot program to see if, by improving communication we could impact student achievement. We are working with six schools in Winston-Salem – we purposely targeted the six schools in the district that are in the most trouble under No Child Left Behind standards and have been working with the Principals and key staff in these schools.

I just got back from our third workshop session with the teams from the schools – we have two people from CERTL who provide on-site coaching and support between the workshops – and was very impressed with the progress the schools are making. Trust and morale levels are rising, even in a couple of the schools where communication had been pretty much non-existent. More importantly, students are starting to feel the impact of the change. Let me tell you about one example:

Jerilyn is a first-grader who has been a behavior problem since day one. Finally the teacher called in the school guidance counselor, who is a participant in our program, to evaluate him. The counselor, using communication and listening skills she attributed to her work with us, heard something and asked Jerilyn “do you like to read?” Jerilyn replied in his usual surly tone “yeah.” She went on to ask, “do you like to read hard books?” “yeah.” So she had him start reading – first grade, second grade, third grade level books – he breezed through them all, so she took him to the Librarian who gave him more advanced books – up to fifth grade level and he aced them all. She gave him a comprehension test and found he understood what he was reading perfectly. The Counselor then took him around to the Principal, the Assistant Principal and others and had him read for them.

On the way back to his classroom, Jerilyn burst into tears. Asked why, he said “This is the best day of my life! Nobody ever bragged on me before, nobody ever told me I was smart.”

Jim talked about the Edmonton Experiment in schools running themselves – that experiment is based on the same premise as our work in Winston-Salem – that if you give teachers the freedom to teach and don’t hogtie them with tests, regulations, arbitrary standards, and red tape, they will teach and students will learn – that’s all they want to do, and given the opportunity they will do it. It’s very early days for Governor Gibbons, and readers of this column will know that I’m no fan of his. But if he is serious about implementing self-determination for our schools and our teachers, he’ll have my support on that at least, and I’d urge you to ask our representatives in the legislature to support this very worthwhile program.

Column 90 - The Board's Responsibility

Tom Meyer’s article in Sunday’s Bonanza asks “Did the Board Fumble the Process” of selecting a replacement for Bev Mapps. I’m afraid the question could be answered “yes” based at least on the expectations the Board created in people’s minds.

Last week, as most readers will know by now, the IVGID Board of Trustees selected Chuck Weinberger to fill the seat vacated by Bev Mapps’ resignation. I say “selected” rather than “elected” because by all accounts the process that IVGID HR Director Susan Johnson designed and the Board spent hours debating in December went by the boards (no pun intended) when push came to shove.

To forestall reaction, let me be clear – I have no issue with Mr. Weinberger’s being selected, I think the idea of a younger member of the community on the Board is a good one, and his background seems very well suited to the job. I held no particular brief for or against any of the other 13 candidates, and do a little dance of joy every time I remember that I withdrew my name from consideration.

At the same time, I think there are a couple of issues that can’t be ignored. The Board had a procedure that they were understood to have adopted (though it’s not clear that they actually did); it was thought by many who attended the meetings that they were to select from the 14 candidates a top 3 and then debate that top 3 to elect a new Trustee. They spent all day interviewing the candidates then the Board discussed their top 3, and on a pre-emptive motion elected Mr. Weinberger. At the very least this flouted the expectation the Board had created with many in the community and in the view of at least some of those who put their hat in the ring disrespected their candidacy.

This clumsy process may be reflective of good reasons, but it further undermines public confidence in a Board that has already seen its integrity compromised by a (now former) Chairman’s ill-considered, unethical, and possibly criminal actions last year and by that same individual’s high-handed dealing with the public in what are, by law, supposed to be open and transparent processes. The new Chair is Trustee Bea Epstein, and I can’t think of a better person for the job, but she has her work cut out for her in restoring the public’s confidence that the IVGID Board are really acting as Trustees of the District’s and its residents’ interests.

Hopefully Ms Epstein will take the lead in ending the Boards appearing by its silence to tolerate Trustee Bohn’s actions last year in withholding news of Ms Mapps’ resignation until after he was re-elected. Complaints have been filed by residents with the Nevada Commission on Ethics, the Sheriff’s Department, and the Attorney General’s office, but the Board’s has thus far allowed Bohn to stonewall the public and stifle any inquiry into what to me seems a clear conflict of interest. If my email and conversations around town (many with people who start by saying they have never agreed with anything I’ve written before) are any indication, a large segment of the public in both Incline and Crystal Bay has lost any confidence they may have had in the Board and in the governance of the District.

What is likely is that the Ethics Commission, the Sheriff, and the Attorney General will be too long in following this up if they follow it up at all. If the Board does not take action to call Trustee Bohn to account and Bohn does not do the honorable thing and resign, the only recourse left to the public will be a recall. By my reckoning, this would require the signatures of 800 to 900 District voters, which is not an impossible number and there are people who will take it on, I’m sure.

Still it would be far better for the community if the Board were to police itself, and I hope that Chairwoman Epstein will make this a high priority – I can think of no better way to start a new term of the Board than by making a clear statement that arrogance and wrongdoing will not be tolerated.

Column 89 - civility

I’ve spent the past week or so in Hawai’i on vacation, and while I’m here, as I always do, I’ve been reading the local newspapers. One thing that struck me here is that the Hawai’i legislature has overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses, the recently re-elected Governor is a Republican. Despite this disparity, the legislative and executive branches seem to work together well and accomplish a great deal.

Interestingly enough in addition, the letters to the editor in the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin are quite civil. Writers certainly do not hold back on their opinions but they state those opinions without personal attacks and name-calling. Friends and family here who read the Bonanza are quite surprised and disconcerted at the nastiness of letters to the editor in our little paper.

I wonder why this is so. Are people in the Aloha state somehow more polite? Are they smarter? Or does the balmy island weather just take their edge off? Or is there just a small group of people in Incline who prefer personal attacks and name-calling to reasoned discourse?

I think I speak for Jim Clark and Andy Whyman when I say that those of us who write opinion columns in the Bonanza try to keep those columns reasoned and on the topic. We don’t expect everyone to agree with us or even anyone to agree with us – these are, after all, our own opinions – but it’s interesting to me that there are four or five people who seem to think that vituperation is a clever or intelligent response.

When I began to write my column and then again when I ran for office last year, a great many people told me they hoped I had a “thick skin,” and for the most part I think I do. But at the same time I have to wonder what motivates people who think that the fact that Andy or Jim or I state our opinion in a public forum gives them license for personal attacks and name-calling.

To give these individuals their due, I guess it takes a modicum more courage and integrity to write a signed letter to the editor (the Bonanza doesn’t accept unsigned letters) than it does to flame someone anonymously on the web, but I don’t think it’s that much more. I don’t doubt that they have friends who prefer to remain anonymous and who cheer them on, and I guess that’s a plus.

Still I have noted that I never see these individuals at IVGID meetings, particularly the ordinary meetings, or active in Rotary or Parasol or other community activities. Maybe they think their contribution lies in the supposed cleverness of their shots at those who do, but I have to say that after being in Hawai’i it just seems petty and nasty.

So I’ll keep writing and speaking out, as I’m sure will Jim and Andy and others, and I won’t give the snipers the satisfaction of our silence or withdrawal. I just wish they’d come up with something useful to say.

Column 87 - Bohn Must Go

As one who is committed to seeing the issue through to a just conclusion, I’ve found the community’s response to the Bohn/Mapps issue at IVGID gratifying. At one holiday party I literally could not cross the room without being stopped repeatedly for a discussion of what is happening and people’s reaction to it. The main thing I noticed was the degree to which Chairman Bohn’s campaign of deflection and obfuscation seemed to be working in the absence of concrete information on why Ms Mapps resigned, when she resigned, and what she said in her letter(s) of resignation. As long as those things remained unknown, people naturally gravitated there rather than to the more important question of the propriety of Mr. Bohn’s withholding the information.

With the publication of Ms Mapps’ first letter in last Wednesday’s Bonanza, we have almost everything out in the open. We have seen both of Ms Mapps letters of resignation and, admirably, she has written her side of the story in a letter to the editor and submitted to an interview besides. So let’s review the bidding:

In early September, Ms Mapps submitted a letter of resignation to Chairman Bohn. This is the letter that was published last week. The letter contains serious accusations regarding the General Manager’s behavior toward a variety of people, and of Mr. Bohn’s handling of the issue. Ms Mapps chose to resign over these issues. You can argue with her choice, but:

HER RESIGNATION IS NOT THE ISSUE; THE ISSUE IS JOHN BOHN’S ACTIONS

The issue is also not what Mr. Horn did or did not do – these are matters for the Board to investigate and deal with. Ms Mapps says she requested that Bohn submit the letter to the other trustees so they would know why she was resigning. She states “They should have known and been told. That was John’s doing.” Even if she had not resigned, allegations as serious as those in her letter should have been made known to the Board, in confidence if necessary, but made known.

With regard to a specific allegation in Ms Mapps’ letter, she states she was told by Bohn that he had spoken to the Board Counsel about a concern she had and she later found out he hand not spoken to the Counsel – in other words he lied to her. In his brief interview, Bohn does not deny that charge.

We further know that, after a conversation with Bohn Ms Mapps wrote a much milder letter of resignation, which she was then persuaded by Bohn and possibly Scott Brooke to withhold until after the election. We also know that Bohn did not confer with any other Trustees about persuading her to do this, and that he stated in an earlier interview that he did it out of a concern for the “fairness” of the upcoming election. To withhold this information from the Board and the public would be questionable under any circumstances, and is at the least an inarguable conflict of interest when Bohn was a candidate in the election in question.

We also know that Bohn has given statements about his actions that are grossly inconsistent, saying in one case that he decided to withhold the information and later in an unagendized statement at the December 6 Board Meeting, placing all the responsibility for the decision on Ms Mapps with no reference to his own participation in the decision.

None of the above is speculation, analysis, or conclusion – these are the facts and they are on the record.

The residents of IVGID are free to draw their own conclusions, but if Bohn’s actions do not rise to the level of unethical behavior as defined in Nevada's Ethics in Government Law (NRS 281.411 through 281.581), then to paraphrase the immortal Barbara Jordan, perhaps that 20th Century document should be consigned to a 21st Century paper shredder.

In my last column I called upon those who are outraged by this flagrant abuse of the office of Trustee to be heard, and they have been. John Bohn has demonstrated and been publicly criticized for his contemptuous treatment of the public he was elected to serve. He treats public comment in a patronizing and offhanded manner, as if it were an annoyance.  He is probably also contemptuous enough of the public to think that this will die out over the holidays. Mr. Bohn, it will not die out. As an ex-military man I know you are acquainted with the requirements of honor and I call upon you to do the honorable thing and resign from the office you have dishonored. If you do not, I and many others have pledged to do everything in our power to see that you are removed. You have already put a Trustee through having to deal with resigning – do not force the voters into the further misery of a recall.

Column 87 The Government They Deserve

The phrase “public office is a public trust” is part of the American political ethic. NRS  281.421 (the state’s ethics statute) states that “In Nevada, a public office is a public trust held for the sole benefit of the people. Public officers and employees must commit to avoid conflicts of interest between private interests and public duties.”

In this regard, a great many people have spoken and written to me to express their outrage at IVGID Chairman Bohn’s withholding Beverly Mapps’ letter of resignation on his own decision, yet few seem to be taking any action. If I am the only voice for what seems to be pretty widespread community outrage, then what is predictable is that the issue will die a quiet and unfortunate death.

The tactic of some to attack the messenger (me) both personally and by distorting what is said and then attack based on those distortions has hit a new high (low?) on this issue, recalling Churchill’s observation that “Some people's idea of [free speech] is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.”  Let me see if I can clarify a few things for those who are interested in facts and clarity.

First of all, none of this is an attack on Ms Mapps, or her resignation – this was her right. The issue, which some would have us ignore, is that the Chairman, a candidate in the election, (a) chose to decide what the electorate should or shouldn’t know, (b) chose not to consult with anyone else except the resignor and the attorney for the Board, and (c) chose to flout established Board procedure by withholding Board Correspondence from the agenda.

There is one point worth noting, though. Ms Mapps’ letter of resignation contained strong criticism of the Board, which criticism has been lost, in part because Chairman Bohn seems to have felt that the Board could wait to hear this criticism from one of its members who felt strongly enough about it to resign.

Secondly, this is not about how the election might have gone if this information was made public – the law is clear that the election would have been for two seats, with the third then appointed by whatever means the Board chose. One could, however, argue that the resignation and Ms Mapps’ criticism were something the voters had a right to know as they decided how to cast their votes.

Thirdly, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, this is not about my supposed vaunted ambition to be on the Board – if that were what I wanted to do, the smart thing would have been to keep quiet, kiss up, and do my best to be appointed on December 13th. One factor in my withdrawing last week was that I got tired of this specious argument being used to deflect attention from the real issues.

I believe the facts indicate that, at the very least, John Bohn violated his public trust in that he had a conflict of interest. I do not find it credible that someone of his background and experience is, as one correspondent suggested, naïve or unaware of this. If he could not see at least the appearance of a conflict he acted incompetently; if he could see it he acted unethically; if he did so in order to maintain the dubious power of being a Trustee and the minor honorarium it carries with it, he acted criminally. I don’t claim to know which is the case, but I do believe that the residents of the District are entitled to an accounting by Mr. Bohn and also from Ms Mapps, who remains an elected official. What we have gotten instead is silence from them and  attacks, distortions, and name calling from people “defending” them.

David Simon said that “one of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage.” That seems to be the case here in Incline where outrage is short-lived, and seldom translates to action. The Board meets tonight to decide on their procedure for interviewing candidates and next week to select a new Board member. Both meetings will include public comment. If you feel strongly one way or the other on the issues I’ve outlined here, I urge you to go to the meetings and use your three minutes of public comment to demand an accounting and express yourself.

If you will allow me one last quote, de Tocqueville said that “in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.” I will do my best to make sure this issue doesn’t go away, but if I am the only voice of the outrage many people profess, then the issue will fade away and, I suppose, the residents of Incline will have the government they deserve.

Column 86 (National) A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal

As you can imagine, I found the results of the mid-term elections, in the words of that guy in the credit card commercials, “rewarding – very, very, very, rewarding.” As Frederic Hertzberg in the current New Yorker, “This election was a crushing rebuke to Bush and his party. The rest is interpretation. Nearly everyone agreed that public anger about the Iraq catastrophe was paramount. To the surprise of much of the political class, exit polls suggested that corruption was almost as formidable a factor, especially among Independents and disaffected Republicans.”

The spinmeisters on the Right are working overtime to put some lipstick on this pig, but clearly Bush has spent not only his supposed political capital, but that of a lot of other Republicans as well. Now the Democrats are in control of the Legislative Branch, and could be considered to have the edge in the race for the Presidency in 2008. Unfortunately, that consideration requires that we ignore some unpleasant realities about my party of choice.

Without stretching too much, one could make the case that the Democrats did not win the election so much as the Republicans lost it. The incompetence and corruption on the GOP side made it easy to run on a “we’re not them” platform, and while I wish it weren’t so, the Democrats did not have much more of a coherent story or message than they did in 2004. For the Dems to take advantage of their newfound political capital we will have to do more than clean things up over the next two years – we will have to find our ideological feet and get them solidly underneath us.

The key issues of the day are, for the most part, not very arresting or not ones on which the left and right disagree in compelling ways. The war in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster, and the only real issue is how to withdraw and how fast. Predictably Bush will find some way to get the GOP off the hook on this one over the next two years and, by referencing the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, defusing the war as a political issue. Minimum wage, gay marriage, the death tax do not admit of a clear political divide and in any case are not real “grabbers.”

There is, I think, an issue on which the two parties clearly divide and that is of sufficient importance and impact that the Democrats could build a platform around it, and that is the environment. At this point the scientific community is as unanimous as it can ever get on the issue of climate change. While pundits, columnists, and novelists who would be pundits insist the scientific evidence is equivocal, there has not been a single peer-reviewed scientific article that dissents from the view that the climate is changing in the direction of global warming and that that change is potentially calamitous. Even Bush has admitted that America’s addiction to fossil fuels, particularly oil, is dangerous, the Republican Party remains in thrall to oil interests and to vested big business interests in general.

So my recommendation to the Democrats, regardless of whom they run, is to start early and often to build a campaign around the environment – not spotted owls or endangered fish (though those are important also) but around energy policy, alternative energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and, yes, nuclear), and reversing global warming. That’s a horse (or a donkey) they can ride to the White House.

Column 85 - He's Back

He’s b-a-a-a-ck.

I warned people who didn’t like my column that they should vote for me or I might be back. Well… Seriously, though, Andy has been doing a great job and has graciously offered to alternate weeks (and months for the national columns) with me, so here I am.

It’s been an interesting six months. Everyone should run for office at least once in their life if only to get a feel for what the political process looks like from the inside. I must say that the local races were (with one notable exception) remarkably civil, particularly as compared to the state contests, and while I’m disappointed that Nevada didn’t follow the national trend toward rebuking the Administration, I was gratified by the results nationally, some of the state results, and most of the local results.

Now we have a new wrinkle in local politics. IVGID Trustee Bev Mapps has resigned, and in her letter of resignation takes a swipe at her fellow Board Members. It seems odd to me that Ms Mapps’ idea of how to meet the Board’s responsibility “to provide a level of oversight to IVGID and its management” is to resign, but that’s what she has done.

What seems more odd to me is that Mapps’ letter of resignation is dated September 11th but was not made public until after the election. Rumors abound that someone received the letter well in advance of November 8th, so one has to wonder if someone sat on it and why. Would the results of the election have been different if Mapps’ charges were known and if it were known that the first duty of the new Board would be to appoint another member? I believe that the residents of IV/CB have a right to know if this news was withheld and by whom, and to inquire into the motives and ethics of whoever was involved in hiding this information.

Chairman Bohn is quoted in the Bonanza article giving a whole list of criteria the Board will consider in making this appointment including the ambiguous “personality that would be a good fit with the other trustees.” Conspicuous by its absence is any reference to the fact that there was just an election in which 40% of those voting expressed their preference for new people and new thinking on the Board. It seems to me that this should be the major thing the Board considers.

The first announcement was that the Board would interview candidates and make a decision on January 10, after Mapps’ resignation takes effect on December 31st. Now the date has been moved up to December 13th, when Mapps will still be on the Board. Again, one wonders why. The Board has 30 days from December 31st to make an appointment before the issue goes to the County, so why move it up? Will Mapps vote on her own replacement or will she (as I believe she should) recuse herself?

Also, if four Board members vote on the fifth, what happens in case of a tie? NRS 318 calls for the County Board of Commissioners to fill vacancies on the IVGID Board – presumably the County Board has delegated this responsibility to the IVGID Board, but who breaks a tie? My guess would be the Commissioners – do IV/CB residents want this decision taken at the County level?

Obviously I have a dog in this fight. I still want to be on the Board for all the reasons I made clear in my campaign. More importantly I want to see the views represented by the 2,649 votes cast for Tripp Hudson and for me (only 1,266 less than the combined total for the incumbents) honored in filling the vacancy on the Board.

The Bonanza has opened a forum on the North Tahoe Living website (www.northtahoeliving.com) on this issue and I urge residents to make their views known to the Trustees, to Jim Galloway our Commissioner, and to each other through the forum and the paper. Most importantly, let the IVGID Board members know if you want them to honor the results of the election or if you are OK with their electing a Trustee to a two-year term on their own.