Tahoe Ticker Column 10 – The Scorpion and the President

President Obama has been in office exactly seven months. During that time he's accomplished a lot, particularly in terms of the stimulus program and the economy is clearly turning around.

But in his campaign Obama was very strong on health care reform, and basically bet on a "daily double" of the economy and health care. No one is quite sure why, but he seems to be faltering on the latter. Common sense to the contrary, the President and his advisors seem underestimated the ability of the Republican Right/Health Insurance/Big Pharma alliance to play dirty. Now we have the same folks who swift-boated John Kerry and who tried to sell the country that Obama is not a citizen trying to ensure that there is no reform.

And make no mistake: the issue is not the public option, or "death panels," or illegal aliens – it's reform itself. Not all Republicans, not all health insurance companies, and not all pharmaceutical companies are against all reform, but enough are, and they have enough money, that they are very close to owning the debate. As happened with Clinton, if Obama loses ownership of the debate, he loses the issue, and that would be tragic.

If you spend any time at all in the Middle East, you'll hear this story: a frog and a scorpion are escaping a grass fire. They come to a river, and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across. The frog demurs, saying he's afraid the scorpion will sting him, but the scorpion points out that if he does that, they'll both die, so the frog agrees. Sure enough, halfway across the scorpion stings the frog and as they both go down the frog asks why. "It's my nature" replies the scorpion.

The point of that parable in this context is that the Left is very close to sharing responsibility with the Right for killing reform. We are starting to hear how disappointed they are, how it's the public option or nothing, and how Obama is proving to be "just another politician." And when they sting Obama, we'll all go down and they will say "it's our nature."

I am 100% for the public option, but I would rather have reform without it than no reform. A number of other countries have instituted universal access without a public option. I don't know if the "pools" is the right option, but nothing shuts down useful debate – debate that can come up with solutions that no one could have thought of before – like a "my way or the highway" approach.

My point is, give the guy a chance. You elected him because he made big, bold promises and he is clearly committed to keeping them. He's as far from "just a politician" as it gets, and he's learning that politics is an art of persuasion, collaboration, and, yes, compromise. With any luck he'll be in office for 96 months. It's been 7. Let's not sting the guy who could carry us to a better shore just because he's not doing it the way we think he should. It's not about the swim, it's about the shore.

Tahoe Ticker Column 9: Whom the Gods Would Destroy

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad" is an adage the origin of which is lost in antiquity. For a saying to be around as long as this one has, there must be some truth in it, and the antics of today's right wing hopefully will bear it out.

That there is plenty of madness is indisputable; and with any luck at all it is a precursor to the destruction of the far right in this country.

To begin with we have the "birther" non-controversy, complete with a (badly) forged Kenyan birth certificate. WTF? I haven't seen people so impervious to reality since I worked in a state psychiatric hospital in the 1970's.

Then we have the pathological denial that anything about Obama's stimulus plan is working –economic growth, while not yet positive, has reversed and is headed in the right direction. Ditto for unemployment. The "cash for clunkers" program was so wildly successful in stimulating car sales, taking gas guzzlers off the road and putting more fuel-efficient cars on that it ran out of money and had to be re-funded. For the Right Wingnuts this is evidence of the program's failure!

They can't beat health care reform on the merits of their case so they are now invoking boogey men (boogey persons?) – reform will kill your grandmother! It will force you to have abortions! You'll wait in lines! It's the first step toward Communism! Obama is a Nazi (Rush Limbaugh)! And so to combat this spectre of home-grown naziism, let's use Nazi tactics and take over town hall meetings and don't let anyone speak but us. Kind of like the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.

Oh, and let's call everyone racists – Sonia Sotomayor, Henry Louis Gates, and especially Barack Obama. And let's invoke integrity, "family values" and "what would Jesus do" while (a) resigning a public trust and getting divorced (Palin), (b) carrying on extramarital affairs (Ensign, Sanford, et al), (c) putting a mistress's son on the party payroll (Ensign), (d) lying through your teeth (RNCC staffers who claimed not to have known of Ensign's doings when they were discussing them in emails at the time; Limbaugh making up parallels between Hitler and Obama)

So the evidence of madness, whether from the gods or otherwise, abounds. Now let's see if this means that the far right is on the road to destruction. One can only hope.

An Extraordinary Evening (Letter to the Editor of NLTB)

About 45 years ago I sat in the second row of the Eastman Theater to hear Yehudi Menuhin play the Beethoven Violin Concerto. It was an experience I treasure and one I never thought would be equalled.

Last night I sat in St. Patrick's Church and heard Elizabeth Pitcairn play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto on the "Red Mendelssohn Stradivarius," and my experience in the '60s was surpassed. What a talent this young woman is, and what a career she has ahead of her.

We are fortunate beyond measure to have a symphony orchestra and chorus like TOCCATA here in Incline - in a place with extraordinary music programs and talents, TOCCATA and its driving forces James and Nancy Rawie, stand out. That they could get a world-class talent like Ms Pitcairn and her extraordinary instrument and that they could assemble the musical talent that they have is remarkable.

If you missed "A Mountain of Mendelssohn," you missed a remarkable evening, but watch for future TOCCATA programs - they deserve our support.

Turning Over the Rocks

July is only ¾ over and it's already been a singularly bad month for news on the ethics front.

At the top of the list we have "The house on C Street," where a group of US Senators and Congressmen live together, professing deep Christian faith and morality, and at the same time either engaging in their own and covering up others' extramarital affairs. The former group included the sanctimonious John Ensign of Nevada and the now-laughingstock Mark Sanford of South Carolina. To compound the hypocrisy, both have announced they have no intention of resigning, even though both called on President Clinton to resign when he got caught in his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

When are we as a nation and as voters going to get it? These holier-than-thou types have a very high probability of being hypocrites. I'm not saying all religious people are phonies – far from it – but public officials who trumpet their "faith" seem to keep coming up lousy. There is a reason that the founders went to great lengths to separate church and state, and this is a prime example of it. I'm not condemning them for having "strayed" – the best of us have fallen prey to that – it's being so damned sanctimonious about others. Wasn't it He whom they claim to worship who said "why do you take note of the grain of dust in your brother's eye, but take no note of the bit of wood which is in your eye?"

Then we have a double-header – the eminent scholar Henry Louis Gates is arrested after the police were called by someone who saw him "breaking into" his own home in Cambridge, and a member of the traveling troupe of Porgy and Bess, staying at a private home in San Francisco, has the police called when she goes into the house and again when she lingers in her car to complete a phone call. Both their "crimes" seem to be GATBWB (going about their business while black).

After the last election, much was made of our having entered a "post-racial" era – an era when race will not be a factor in our lives and racism is over. There's no question that the election of Barack Obama signaled a sea change in American culture, but folks, it ain't over. When a black man in his own home who objects to the police being present is arrested for "tumultuous behavior" and when a black woman can't enter a house where she is a guest without being under suspicion, just how "post-racial" are we?

And finally, we have 44 politicians, civilians, and clergy arrested in New Jersey after a ten-year corruption investigation involving money laundering, influence peddling, etc. Again, we have public figures including Rabbis (lest you think this is peculiar to fundamentalist Christians) espousing high morality while operating immorally.

What the hell is going on? I'd like to think (and this may be whistling in the dark) that, with Bush, Cheney, et al. out of power, we're starting to restore honest to public life, and that these things are coming to light as the rocks of integrity get turned over. Let's hope so.

An Interesting Story

A traveler  is flying from Asia to the UK in the first class cabin of a 747, en route they stop at Mumbai where an elderly lady joins the flight and sits next to our traveler. He does not particularly want to engage in any conversation with the lady, and is a bit put off by the fact that despite lots of space on the plane, she is seated in the same row as he is.In fact,
he does not understand how she is there at all as she does not look like she has any wealth at all. The lady asks, "who are you" he replies with his name reluctantly, then she asks "and what do you do?" - determined to close this conversation off, the traveler informs her that he is a senior executive of a global oil distributor and that he is returning from a significant business trip - unimpressed, the lady asks "yes, but what do you do that matters?" 

The person who related that story to an audience at Impact Development group in 2005 then informed the audience that he realized that this was in fact Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and that challenge made him re-assess his life and purpose, within a year of that flight he had left Shell and became a regional director of Business In the Community. 

The King is Dead, but…

Throughout history there have been individuals with prodigious musical talent – Mozart and Beethoven in the Classical Age, Duke Ellington and Eubie Blake in the Jazz Age, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger in Folk, Leadbelly in Blues, the list goes on and on.

But when did musical talent, even genius, become the object of veneration and idolatry? In my own lifetime I can remember that Sinatra was idolized, but his various character flaws were not overlooked, Elvis was certainly the object of fan mania, but no one overlooked his drug problems in assessing his character.

Now we have the one some would characterize as Elvis' successor – from the King of Rock 'n' Roll to the King of Pop. He died at age 50. From the viewpoint of my advanced age, I can go along with characterizing that as "untimely" or "dying young." The cause of death is, as of this writing, still open, but there are indications that his known addiction to prescription drugs may have been a factor. His character is certainly open to question. Allegations of child molestation were never subjected to legal test, and it seems that payment to the accusers may have kept them from going to trial. He certainly was not a model of good judgment, dangling a baby from a Berlin hotel window and stating publicly that he saw no problem with sharing his bed with young boys.

So why is he being idolized in death, while his character flaws are being minimized? Suddenly he is a hero to African-Americans who resented his changing his appearance with the effect, whatever the intent, of looking more Caucasian. Fans are praising him to the skies as a fallen hero. Frankly, I don't get it.

He was talented and made a career of entertainment innovation. He was definitely entertaining. He was also deeply flawed. His celebrity and his wealth allowed him to buy his way out of trouble (for $25 million in one case), but that does not make his action less heinous. So why, in the days following his death of as yet undetermined causes, were we subjected to adulation unbalanced by any response to his character? And why do I have the feeling that no matter how balanced I try to be in this column, I will be resented for even mentioning his faults? Have we, as a culture, descended to the point where if someone entertains us, we don't care about anything else?

Ticker Column 5: Sexual Hypocrisy

For politicians, sexual peccadilloes cross party lines. We had John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, and Jim McGreevey on the D side (and of course Bill Clinton – even St. Jimmy Carter "lusted in his heart," which may be his only working organ – certainly his brain is vestigial). On the GOP side we have most recently had Mark Sanford, and also Larry Craig, Newt Gingrich, David Vitter, and locally John Ensign and the dimwit governor of Nevada, Jim Gibbons.

So what's the difference? Well for me it's that the Republicans who can't keep it in their pants seem to be so bizarre about it and to do such an awful job of going public with it. Take Ensign – this guy has been as sanctimonious as an Irish priest about "family values," while he's having an affair with a campaign staffer and employing (and buying off) her family. Ditto Gingrich. Gibbons, faced with hundreds of text messages to his paramour, expects the public to buy that nothing was going on. The prize, of course, goes to Craig (he of the "wide stance") voting piously against any legislation with a whiff of treating GLBT folks as human while cruising men's rooms. So what is it all about?

I'm not one to take a moral stance on this – my history is such that a road to Damascus conversion this late in life would be disingenuous. What people, including politicians, do is their private business. But there are a couple of things I don't think it's too much to ask of people who would style themselves leaders of society. First, if you screw up (pun intended), have the decency to come clean responsibly. Don't drag your wife and family in front of the cameras to pretend they're forgiving and supporting you. Don't insult the public's intelligence with idiotic denials like the guy caught in flagrante delicto by his wife who says "are you going to believe me or those lying eyes of yours?" Finally, be consistent – if you're gay, whether you come out is up to you, but don't persecute others in the GLBT community by speaking against them and voting against their rights. If you're straight, don't preach fidelity and then go to your mistress's bed. Really – is that too much to ask?

And finally, if you are going to engage in any of that hypocrisy, when you're exposed as the hypocrite you are, have the decency to resign and go away.

Proposition 8 and the Constitution

The trouble with a bi-weekly column is that you sometimes get a bit behind the news. As everyone knows by now, the California Supreme Court upheld the legality of Proposition 8, which effectively bans same-sex marriage. It seems to me that this august body is reading the law through some lens other than its sworn duty to uphold and protect the Constitution.

The First Amendment to the Constitution leads with a simple but clear statement: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

This means that US citizens are free to practice any religion they choose or to practice no religion if they so choose, and it means that no one can impose their religious beliefs through law on anyone else and that a person's religious choice cannot be used as a qualifier for public office.

When the Constitution was written, slavery was legal and widely accepted; when slavery was no longer accepted, the Constitution was amended to reflect that change in the public will and consciousness. Similarly for voting rights, taxation, and other issues. Where the public will proved to be misguided (i.e. prohibition), the process of amendment set it right. Works pretty well, don't you think?

Notwithstanding that, we are seeing some serious attempts to subvert these Constitutional fundamentals. The so-called Religious Right believes that its moral values should stand above the Constitution and that these values, though manifestly religious in nature, should be the law of the land. They would impose their values on all of us, most recently their values around the institution of marriage.

Marriage is a funny thing in a country without an established church. Fundamentally it's a civil contract between two people. Period. In a country that, besides having no established church also has the free expression of religion, marriage may also be a religious sacrament. In this country, for the sake of convenience, the civil power has been delegated, though not exclusively, to clergy so that people don't have to have two ceremonies. The ultimate power, though, resides with the civil authority, as witness Nevada's requiring a State license for anyone, including clergy to perform marriages. Civilly, there is no basis for saying that the contract must be between persons of opposite gender any more than, a hundred years ago, there was a basis for saying the persons must be of the same race.

The only point that should be at issue in the same-sex marriage debate (which shouldn't be a debate at all) is equality. A religious institution has the right to proffer or deny its sacraments to anyone it chooses, presumably based on its system of beliefs. In fact, that right is generally strongly protected – if a practitioner of Santeria sacrifices an animal as part of their religious ritual, they are exempt from prosecution under animal cruelty laws. If a Native American group takes peyote as part of their rites, they are similarly exempt from the drug laws. So if a religious groups wishes to bar same-sex couples from the sacrament of marriage in their church, they have that right and the right is and should be inviolable. But the government operates (or should operate) under a different ethic, the ethic of equality. This is no less true for same-sex marriage than it is for cases of discrimination in housing or public accommodations. In short, the government should operate according to legislated regulations, not religiously dictated morality.

The Religious Right have a Constitutionally guaranteed right to their beliefs. They do not have the right to impose their values on the Constitution, and yet they try – as they are trying with abortion, stem cell research, and as they will try with other things. They can try – the Constitution guarantees them that right also – but they can't do it, and whatever your religious or moral beliefs about these issues are, you can't afford to let them.

Bonanza Column 155 – Memorial Day

The National Memorial Day Concert from the Mall in Washington, D.C., is as much a part of the holiday as picnics, a day off, and flying the flag. This year's concert was the 20^th annual, and if you missed it you missed something really special.

The annual concert has all the elements – patriotic songs, flags and uniforms, moving tributes, and most of all the memory of those who served and gave their lives. This year's concert also focused on those who, while they may have physically survived their combat, will never be the same. A case in point is José Pequeño, a Staff Sergeant in the New Hampshire National Guard who volunteered to deploy to Iraq. While on duty, he was calling in about a suicide bomber when an insurgent tossed a grenade into his Humvee. He lost the bottom two lobes of the left side of his brain, and doctors held out very little hope for his recovery. His mother Nellie and sister Elizabeth went immediately to his side and remain there over three years later. At the concert they were front-row center.

As with most severely brain-damaged patients, it was very hard to tell how much of the proceedings José was taking in. His body is stiff and contorted, his head twisted to the side, his mouth open. His mother and his sister were in physical contact with him the whole time and talking to him as he was praised and saluted, standing as a symbol of all the severely injured and disabled veterans, and particularly of those with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

I have no use for war as an instrument of foreign policy; at the same time I recognize that, from time to time, wars will be fought, young men will die, and those who live will be forever changed. I'm not a pacifist. I believe that we must defend ourselves, our freedom, and our way of life when it is attacked. Moral choices are not always easy choices, but they must be made.

At the same time, I believe that wars of aggression, wars of pre-emption, are profoundly immoral. In hindsight it's easy to say that we would have been justified had we attacked the Empire of Japan before December 7, 1941, but it's easy to be right in hindsight, and we still hold that particular pre-emptive strike as one of the most immoral acts of warfare ever – would it have been less immoral if we attacked them instead? I think not.

The war in Iraq, where Sgt. Pequeño gave what amounts to the last full measure of devotion to his country and his comrades – where his young life effectively ended – is a war born of a pre-emption that was questionable at best. Everyone but the very few diehard defenders of the war has admitted that the intelligence was flawed, to put the absolute best case forward – falsified is closer to the mark.

Until 1950 almost all the wars fought by the United States were fought to throw off the yoke of tyranny (the Revolution), to meet aggression (the War of 1812, WW 1, WW 2), or to preserve the values on which the country was founded (the Civil War). In every one of these cases we emerged from the horror of the wars stronger and sounder as a nation. We had done the right thing, respecting the cost but not stopped by it. There were a few aggressive wars in there – the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War – and we can't say that these left us better as a country. Since 1950 we have had a series of wars of questionable provenance – Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, and now Iraq.

When the moral compass of those in power wavers and becomes shaky, young men like José Pequeño pay the price. In the small town where I grew up there was a statue of a WW 1 Doughboy inscribed "Lest We Forget." If we do forget, then the sacrifices of the José Pequeños will be in vain, and that will be the end of us as a nation.

Tahoe Ticker Column 3: Climate Change

I've worked in a number of areas over the years (decades?), but they've all had something in common. In every case, the people who were most prominent and respected in the various fields were those who stuck very close to the evidence.

I began my career in brain research, and that's kind of a no-brainer. You do what you do, measure what happens, analyze the data, and report out on what it shows. As a clinical psychologist it was a little less clear, but I quickly learned that therapy was most effective when it dealt with what was actually happening in the patient's life, and interpretations and advice worked best when they stayed close to the facts.

In business consulting, one of the most highly respected books in the field is "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. I've talked to Collins about the research and writing that went into that book, and what struck me was the integrity of his sticking to the data even when it didn't go where he expected it to go. One of the major findings in that book is the importance of leadership in moving companies from being good and solid to being great. Jim had believed that leadership was an overrated concept, and was chagrined, annoyed even, when the data said otherwise.

So why is it that when the conservative forces in this country and the so-called Christian Right have a problem with an issue of science, evidence and the scientific method suddenly don't matter? Take climate change. The data are not 100% on either side of the question. If the 20^th Century taught us anything, it is that science doesn't allow for absolute certainty. So scientific inquiry proceeds based on the preponderance of the evidence, not "beyond a reasonable doubt."

I'm not an expert on climate control, so when I want to learn about it I go to those who are – climatologists, geologists, earth scientists, marine scientists, etc. As a scientist myself, I look with great skepticism at, say, an economist making statements about climatology. The Right, apparently, has no such problem. Those on the Right who would have us believe that climate change isn't a problem, or that human activity is not a factor in what from the evidence looks like a potentially disastrous trend toward warming seem willing to quote economists, government professors, doctors, pretty much anyone who will say what they want to hear. On the scientific side of the argument, the alarm is being raised by people whom we would expect to know what they're talking about – who have done the research, gathered the data, and who, to my relatively untutored eye, don't seem to be straying too far from the evidence. Yet the Right seems to want to play "we have as many 'experts' as you do," and expects that to carry the argument.

With a bit of a twist, the situation is the same with stem cell research, Scientifically, there is no question that stem cells hold the possibility of great medical advances. Many people oppose stem cell research on what amount to moral grounds, particularly where the cells are derived from embryos. I don't agree with them, but I can respect their moral convictions without endorsing them. What I can't respect is cloaking those moral arguments in arguments about the efficacy of stem cells, arguments the data simply do not support.

And don't get me started on evolution vs. creationism. If you want to believe in creationism, great, but don't try to use science's always being open to new evidence to cloak what is, at root, a religious, not a scientific position.

The point is, let's stick to the data.

Bonanza Column 154 - Volunteers

I've said it before and I will say it again – Incline Village/Crystal Bay is the home, or at least the West Coast Distribution Center, for "no good deed goes unpunished." The latest is the spate of letters to the Bonanza taking the volunteers on the Nuisance Ordinance Committee to task for being "self-serving" and "power hungry." Give me a break!

In this town of some 9000 "residents" (only about half of whom live here full time) there is a handful of people who actually work for the betterment of the community. There are the 5 IVGID Trustees, the people who serve on advisory committees for golf, tennis, skiing, etc., the people who volunteer for Parasol, Project Mana, Tahoe Women's Services, and other worthwhile organizations (sorry if I left anyone out – I can't list them all, probably don't know of them all). Then there are Red, White, and Tahoe Blue, the Nuisance Committee, and the people who volunteer at churches etc. I would guess, given the overlap in all these groups, that it might amount to 500 people or so. These are the people who care enough about the quality of life in our community that they actually give of their time and themselves. Others may give money, go to fundraisers, and the like, but these are the people who use those funds to execute on the vision and mission of those organizations.

On the other hand there is a group that I suspect is much smaller – certainly it's the same 5 or 10 people who write the letters to the Bonanza, but let's say they represent another 20 or so – who just can't stand to see anyone try to do anything positive. They have a Constitutional right to express their opinion, and far be it from this opinion columnist to say they shouldn't, but really – do they have to insult the commitment of the people who actually do something?

Self-serving? Please tell me whose selfish interest is served by a committee that is trying to work out how to have junk cars removed from people's lawns, or excess noise curbed, or eyesores like the Orbit station removed? Does anyone on the committee own a car removal firm or make money off things being quiet (?!), or maybe someone owns an ugly former gas station removal company? I don't think so.

Power hungry? What power? The power to serve on the IVGID Board and get abusive phone calls at 3 am? The power to … I just don't know. I mean I can't even make this one make sense.

Oh, I know – the power to exclude people from the beaches! No, that's in the CC&R's that founded the village. Maybe the power to keep people from sitting on the sand to watch fireworks. No, those same people buy punchcards at their own expense to make sure no one is excluded. Maybe the power to cloud men's minds. No, that's Lamont Cranston, the Shadow.

What rot! What utter balderdash (sorry, but it's a family newspaper). These people are volunteers – they are people who contribute and give back. I guess they shouldn't do that – they should stay home and write letters maligning the commitment of those who care enough to actually do something positive rather than whine and complain.

As I said, give me a break. You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem. Which side are you on?:

Bonanza Column 153 - Hypocrisy

This is supposed to be my "off" week, but Andy is still on holiday and when I get a request from an ardent fan, it's hard for me to ignore it.

You may recall that in last Friday's paper, my long-time reader Bill Silcox requested that I "explain what U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (and by inference, President Obama) meant when she wrote that returning veterans should be investigated as right–wing extremists, according to a nine-page report that was made public on April 14." He said my view will be "of interest," and I really can't fail to respond to a request like that from an admirer.

The problem is, I can't exactly respond because Bill doesn't have it quite right. According to Fox News among others, the DHS report in question contained a caution that returning veterans might be targets for extremist recruiters, and that we should be aware of that. Granted, not the most delicate thing to suggest, but a long way from saying that the veterans (not the recruiters) should be investigated as right-wing extremists. Further, when Napolitano realized what the report said and how it would be taken, she publicly and openly apologized for it and did so personally and face-to-face with the head of the American Legion, who graciously accepted her apology. Both the actual substance of the report and the Secretary's apology were widely and respectfully reported on both sides of the political spectrum of news organizations.

Now I realize that the sight of a high government official accepting responsibility for something that happened on her watch, clearly accepting and admitting that it was an error, and apologizing for it rather than staunchly defending that it's right because the Administration said it's right would be unfamiliar to some, but that's what happened, and Bill, respectfully, you have your facts distorted and just plain wrong.

A report last week said that only 21% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans – maybe an all-time low point for the Grand Old Party. I think one reason for this is that it must be embarrassing for anyone with any ethics or integrity to be associated with a party that, for the eight years of the previous administration, lied their (our) way into a bloody war, sloughed off responsibility for the disaster of rebuilding after Katrina, and all the rest.

What's amazing is that that remaining 21% keeps doing it. Last week Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) had the colossal effrontery to refer in open session to the hate crime murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming as "a hoax, and did that with Shepard's mother in the gallery! And this is only the latest in a series of lies, rumors, and false reports from the likes of Cheney, Rove, Palin, and the rest of the ever-shrinking right-wing Republican crew.

So Bill, thanks for asking. I know, because you've written in so often, that you are a regular reader – and I appreciate your designation of me as the NLTB's "ace columnist," although I think you may have made a spelling error. In any case, with Jim and Andy I'm at best one of three aces. As to expressing my political views and putting down previous presidents, well, the first is actually my constitutional right, and as to the second, it's really only one previous president – I'm pretty OK with many of the other 42. Anyhow, thanks for your interest.

Ticker Column 2: Red, White, and Tahoe Blue and Crystal Bay

As recent articles in the Tahoe Ticker have made clear, it's a pretty tough time for a great many people in the Tahoe Basin. The winter has been slow due to the economy, and then made worse by the sparse snowfall. Christmas week was a teaser – we really thought it might be a great season, but then we didn't see any real snow until March, and while it helped it was, economically, too little too late. The simple fact is that once Spring comes and the weather gets warm here and elsewhere, people's thoughts turn to golf and tennis, even if the snow is good.

Still, there are a lot of people here who, to put it charitably, have enough money that they don't have to worry. Unfortunately many of them do worry – about themselves and their own narrow interests. There are a few people in Crystal Bay, and I do believe it's just a very few, who have made it their lives' work to gain access to the beaches in Incline Village, even if that means that the private beaches become public. They have the unmitigated gall to frame their quixotic crusade as a civil rights issue and to compare their "plight" to the situation of African-Americans in days before the Civil Rights Movement. If that weren't so arrogant, it would be laughable.

These individuals' latest crusade is against Red, White, and Tahoe Blue, the Incline Village/Crystal Bay Independence Day celebration that is coming into its third year. By way of full disclosure, I'm one of the founding members of RWTB and on its Board. The Board is composed entirely of volunteers who are committed to a community celebration and to raising money for local charities. In the first two years of RWTB thousands of dollars went to local causes and the celebration consisted of entertainment, community fun (a rubber duck race, an ice cream social), a parade, and a tribute to local veterans.

Some of these events take place on the beach – the rubber duck race, the fireworks, and one barbecue. Actually, while the fireworks take place on the lake, they are widely visible. Last year a very popular event entailed watching the fireworks from the Village Green, across the street from the beach, while the Reno Philharmonic played, and the view was great. The Village Green is open to anyone, by the way.

Each year members of the RWTB Board have quietly purchased extra punch cards and made sure that no one was excluded from the events on the beach. Individual Board members have gone out of their way to invite Incline and Crystal Bay residents who don't have beach access to be their guests on the beach, but that apparently isn't good enough for the Crystal Bay few. They will settle for nothing less than full access and have instituted legal action to that effect. Well, this is America where anyone can sue anyone for anything, so I guess that's their right (or Wright), but it's going to cost the District, and therefore the residents, a lot of money and in the end there's a strong likelihood that the courts could open the beaches to the public. For those of you keeping score at home, the residents-only policy is a significant contributor to home values here, and if the beaches go public the values will go down. Great timing, eh?

I'm not going to debate the merits of private vs public beaches. The salient point here is, I think, that the Incline beaches have been residents only from the beginning of the community and everyone who purchased a home without beach access knew that when they bought. Their rec fees are lower as a result, and it doesn't make sense to me to now say "no fair." If you thought it wasn't fair, you shouldn't have bought that house.

With all that, to call RWTB discriminatory is sheer demagoguery. Don't make the mistake of buying in to it. Come to RWTB, give to RWTB, and have a great time. I know I will.

Bonanza Column 151 – Will No One Rid Us of this Noisome Governor?

Will No One Rid Us of this Noisome Governor?

Next Friday, May 8^th, Governor Jim Gibbons will be coming to Incline for a town hall-type meeting. The venue is not determined at this writing, but the D.W. Reynolds Building is a good bet. I imagine Gibbons thinks that a trip to Incline will be a friendly affair. Our community has the reputation of being pretty conservative Republican town (despite having gone for Obama in the election) and it's predictable that a lot of those who turn out will support Gibbons in a knee-jerk conservative kind of way.

Maybe the rest of us should turn out also. As I've said before in this space, this is one of the worst governors in the United States and, just a couple of weeks ago, he got a new title:

Our winner... Governor Jim Gibbons of Nevada.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the FBI is investigating him for having allegedly accepted unreported gifts or payments from a military contractor, while the Governor was a U.S. Congressman.

But he has an explanation. "I have heard," he says, "that the Democrats have paid to have these Wall Street Journal articles written."

Governor, don't you think, if the Democrats could get good coverage out of the Wall Street Journal by paying for it, they might spend the money on a little higher-value target than the Governor of Nevada?

The Wall Street Journal, for cryin' out loud!

Governor Jim Gibbons of Nevada... Today's Worst Person In The World!"

That was Keith Olbermann on his TV show on April 10^th. Now despite Keith's side-shot at Nevada, we have further evidence that our governor's train is leaving the tracks. The news reporting of the Wall Street Journal, unlike its editorial pages, is among the best in the country. Gibbons' allegation (he later backed off, but it's on the record) that somehow this Republican paper was bribed by unnamed Democrats to malign him borders on paranoid psychosis. This comes on the heels of the latest episode in the ongoing saga of the Governor's divorce with new accusations of infidelity by his wife.

Of course we also have Gibbons' demonstrated incompetence in dealing with the state's budget crisis and his predilection for cutting education, presumably on the assumption that an uneducated electorate is his and his party's best insurance. Then there are the allegations of questionable contributions that are continuing as he raises money for a reelection campaign.

Sooner or later Nevada voters need to wise up. Harry Reid has made a big contribution toward our state not being seen nationally as a two-bit operation supported by gambling and prostitution, but as long as we have a governor who spouts paranoid nonsense, can't manage his domestic relationship with any honor or integrity, and is plagued by allegations of corruption that touch both him and his estranged wife (a Google search on "Gibbons Nevada" and "scandal OR accused" yields 489,000 hits in less than a second and includes names like InTreppid, Ozmen, and others), and as long as we are in the bottom tier of the 50 states in education and in the top tier in things like alcoholism and suicide, we're unlikely to be respected or seen as respectable.

TT Column 1: Susan Boyle and Mexicans

Let me introduce myself – I'm a business consultant and freelance writer. I've had a political column in the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza for the past several years in which I've attempted to bring some liberal/progressive balance to the largely conservative North Shore. In addition to politics I write on religious/spiritual topics and have a forthcoming book in that area. In this column on Tahoe Ticker I hope to bring some of both to readers both in the Tahoe basin and elsewhere. Now to business:

Unless you live in a cave, you have probably been exposed to Susan Boyle over the past couple of weeks. She's the 47-year old English woman who went on "Britain's Got Talent," the UK version of American Idol and wowed the whole world. What's interesting about this to me is that if she had just submitted a tape or sung with only the audio on, you would have thought "great voice." What made her such a sensation is that she is a rather ordinary looking middle-aged woman who was visibly nervous and at the same time, to use a Britishism, "cheeky." In the US we use a different anatomical reference, but mean the same – gutsy, a little brash, and a dash of impudence.

No matter how often we hear and say "you can't judge a book by its cover," we still do. If you watch the clip on YouTube, the judges and the audience are laughing at her until she opens her mouth to sing, and then they're astonished, as if age or looks or dress or anything else had anything to do with musical ability.

Now expand that out – we prejudge everyone and everything we encounter, and unlike a TV show that is set up for moments of high drama, mostly our prejudgments determine not only our behavior but the fate of those we judge. Since the 1960's there have been numerous studies that show that if you give teachers classes of equal ability but tell one teacher the students are bright and the other that the students are slow, the expectation set by the description has enormous power in determining the students' performance. What's remarkable about our first African-American President is not that he got there but that we had to go through 43 white men, many of them unexceptional, to finally elect an exceptional black man.

People who live at Tahoe have an extraordinary record of charitable giving – there are foundations, individual donors, fundraisers, etc. that account for hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable giving every year. Unfortunately a lot of that giving is going to support programs and institutions that look a lot like the donors. A private school for the children of the privileged raises a hundred thousand dollars to fund its programs while the public schools are laying off teachers and cutting programs, and programs that benefit those who need it most go underfunded and under the radar of people who could support them.

One such program is called ARC – Adventure, Risk, Challenge. ARC is a non-profit program that, for several years now, has worked with English Language Learner (read Mexican-American) high school students in a year-round program that combines a 40 day summer program of outdoor leadership and academic education with ongoing work that turns out college students and community leaders. ARC has programs on the North Shore at the UC Berkeley Sagehen Field Research Center, in Yosemite in conjunction with the UC Merced Science Research Institute, and has had (and will have again) a program in Santa Barbara with UCSB. ARC has an amazing young staff in both centers, and is, like many programs of its ilk, massively underfunded. Maybe a program that starts with the Hispanic equivalent of Susan Boyles and turns out extraordinary human beings deserves at least as much financial support as do prep schools and animal rescue efforts. Or we could just figure what the hell – they're Mexicans.

Column 151 - Optimism

Tough times notwithstanding, it's hard not to be optimistic after attending Star Follies.

It's silly – an amateur hour of of local people in outlandish costumes, dancing with varying degrees of imprecision and lip-synching to loud music in a showroom that is a shadow of its former self.

It's a group of people – adults and children – having the time of their lives working their tails off to support our schools, and having such an infectious good time that you can't help but enjoy it.

This being Incline, I'm sure there are people who subscribe wholeheartedly to the first view – fortunately those folks don't come to the show and spoil it for the rest of us.

I think Star Follies has an importance to this community that goes beyond what it does for the schools. Since the early 90s, a group of writers, researchers and educators has been re-examining the profession of Psychology's focus on pathology and trying out the study of what can go right with people and institutions. These thinkers don't claim to have invented anything new or created a new profession, rather they distinguish themselves by their perspective. The value of positive psychology lies in its uniting of what had been scattered and disparate lines of theory and research about what makes life most worth living, according to Dr. Martin Seligman, a leader of the movement.

This research suggests that optimism actually affects the quality of our lives. Not an unquestioning, "glass half-full" positive thinking, but a healthy optimism, grounded in reality. Not being Pollyanna and thinking everything is wonderful, but making the best of things that happen. To use Star Follies as an example, we can bemoan funding cuts to the schools, blame the government and the economy, and be unhappy or we can seize the opportunity to create a great community event, have a lot of fun, make new friends, and raise a bunch of money in the process. Does that make it right or OK that the schools are underfunded? Of course not. But it gives us something positive we can do in the face of an unpleasant situation.

To use a formula developed by Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, a positive psychologist at Harvard, we can give ourselves Permission to be human – to be unhappy about the situation, to feel powerless, then we can Reconstruct the situation – glean learnings from it and search it for opportunities – and then keep it in Perspective – look at how the problem fits into the great scheme of things with respect to the quality of our lives and, in the case of Star Follies, shift our perspective from "the State and Federal Governments should do something" to "we as a community can do something on our own." PRP – Permission, Reconstruction, Perspective – is at the heart of positive psychology.

I think we're ripe for a revolution in our perspective. Whatever the economic factors, one thing that got us through the Great Depression was American optimism. Optimism became unfashionable after that, for some reason. It came to be called boosterism and cheerleading. As the country got more "sophisticated" after World War II, as the pseudo-sophistication of pessimism came into vogue, optimism came to be seen as naïve and "Midwestern,". As much as we may make fun of the French with their veneer of boredom and existential angst, their relationship to the world became our model, at least for those of us who wanted to appear "smart." Optimism was relegated to the realm of the quaint and as early as 1949 in South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein poked fun at the "cockeyed optimist, immature and incurably green"

Well, maybe we lost something in "growing up" as a country, and maybe a lot of the ills and malaise of our culture are the national equivalent of a depressive neurosis. Maybe being "stuck like a dope with a thing called hope" is not such a bad thing. In fact, research in positive psychology shows that pessimism may put people at risk for chronic physical and mental illnesses and an earlier death than their optimistic counterparts.

So let's give ourselves permission to be human – scared, worried, discouraged, let's reconstruct - rather than hoping against hope that things will get back to where they were, let's look for a reset to a more reasonable, sane level, and let's keep things in perspective – we live in the most beautiful place on earth, we are alive and thriving, and we have in our midst people like the producers, directors, cast, and crew of Star Follies who are working to make our community a better place and not waiting for "them" to fix it.

Column 150 – Gibbons (again)

Just when you think there's nothing more to say about Governor Jim Gibbons, he up and pulls another one. Like other grandstanding Republican governors including such luminaries as Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal, Gibbons has indicated he is considering refusing Federal Stimulus unemployment funds. What makes Gibbons more fun than Palin and Jindal, is that he's so inept at handling the political side of decisions like this.

First of all, he's made it an ideological issue – it's about "the Federal Government usurping state powers." Not really, but doesn't it sound great if you're a 1950's conservative? Then when Reps. Dina Titus and Shelly Berkley (both Democrats, of course – remember Reagan's 11^th Commandment) have the temerity to question turning down the funds, he criticizes them for their "attitude that Nevada should bow down to the federal government and give up its own state sovereignty in a mad grab to claim every last penny of stimulus dollars." Wow. Bow down to the federal government? State sovereignty? We're in the worst economic shape since 1929 and this governor is worried about state sovereignty? Give me a break!

Then we find out that, while the staff in the governor's office has been cut substantially (good economic move, except for those fired), the salaries of those remaining are being raised (bad move economically, politically, socially, morally, ethically). Let's cut teachers' salaries and make them pay more for their medical insurance, let's cut money from higher education, let's cut the pay of other state employees, lay them off, etc. But let's give Gibbons' staff a pay raise? I have an idea, let's ask all the people that have taken on more jobs in their work place because other people were let go and didn't get a raise. What do you think they would say?

I've been following the blogs on this last issue, and some people are trying to defend the governor saying it's good business practice – let people go, then raise the salaries of those who remain – after all, it's a net savings – Gibbons' office is under budget (and, incidentally, therefore exempt from legislative review of his practices). You know – like AIG paying "retention bonuses" to the people who stay on, like there aren't ten equally qualified people out of work who could replace them if they left. Well, I work with a lot of businesses – big ones. Businesses with budgets and workforces larger than that of the State of Nevada, and I've noticed something about the companies that aren't looking for a bailout – that are struggling through this downturn. For them, and by them I mean the CEOs of these companies, good business practice includes, but is not limited to, the balance sheet – it includes doing the right thing by their employees and the communities and society of which they're a part. Most of those CEOs, and most of their employees, would rather take a pay cut across the board so that people don't have to lose their jobs. Sure, no one likes it, but no one likes to see their neighbor or co-worker out of work either. Gibbons, apparently, doesn't feel that way about his staff.

I've been tough on Gibbons in these columns – I think he's intellectually, morally, and ethically challenged, and no more fit to be Governor of Nevada than he is to be an Olympic Diver. But can't he at least make a show of giving a damn about the people of the state? To put some vague ideology about "state sovereignty" ahead of jobs, to cut education in a state that's perennially at the bottom of the ladder for educational quality in the country – as Joseph Welch said to another official who put doctrinaire conservatism ahead of basic honesty and humanity: "If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me…Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

By the way, I've heard from a number of you asking if I'm going to write a column on the IVGID Board's reversal on the domestic partner benefits issue. I actually wrote one online, and the Bonanza posted a link to it in last week's paper – if you missed that, it's at http://tinyurl.com/gurowitzondpissue or on my blog at http://www.egurowitz.blogspot.com or on my Facebook page.

Column 149 – Domestic Partner Benefits Redux

Eighty percent of the IVGID Board got it 100% right last Wednesday. The discussion of reversing their ill-conceived decision to revoke benefits for the domestic partners of IVGID employees got off to a strong start as Trustee Bea Epstein read a statement that was both considered and compassionate in an argument for her motion to reconsider. A surprise came when Trustee Gene Brockman, who had voted for the revocation, said that his concern was based in the current policy's use of a declaration and suggested using an affidavit instead. My dictionary defines an affidavit as "a sworn statement in writing made especially under oath or on affirmation before an authorized magistrate or officer," while a declaration is "a statement made by a party to a legal transaction usually not under oath," so there is a basis for the distinction.

Trustee Chuck Weinberger added a strong statement refuting the three supposed bases for the revocation – finance, danger of abuse, and community sentiment – with clear facts, and after some more conversation, Chairman Ted Fuller opened the floor for public comment from the standing room only crowd, which was overwhelmingly in favor of the motion to reconsider. The most predominant theme of the public comment, particularly an impassioned statement by community activist Barbara Perlman-Whyman, was fairness and equality, and in my view that raised the next hurdle.

Trustee Brockman made the very valid point that married couples were not required to provide proof of their marriage, and if an affidavit were required of domestic partners, then proof of marriage should be required of married couples. So far, so good. He went on, however, to say that in addition to the affidavit of committed relationship, domestic partners should be required to provide other evidence – for example, a joint checking account, joint ownership or lease of a property, which married employees are not required to provide. Oops, there goes the equality. There are plenty of married couples who, for a variety of reasons, don't have joint accounts or joint ownership, and in any case why should any evidence beyond a sworn statement be required? After all, isn't that what a marriage is (in the civil sense) – a sworn statement of commitment?

Here's the deal: there's no such thing as partial equality. To return to the dictionary, "equal" means "identical in mathematical value or logical denotation." Identical. Not similar, not sort of like, not identical up to a point but then one of them has some more, identical. After the 4-1 vote to rescind (about which more in a minute), the Board voted to charge staff with coming up with a new policy that included an affidavit. Hopefully the staff will respond to the Board's and the community's commitment to equality, and come up with a policy that sets equal requirements for all.

Now about that 4-1 vote. After public comment, Trustee John Bohn attempted to thwart the vote, first by conflating the idea of domestic partner benefits with gay marriage and then, in a trifecta of hypocrisy, to suggest that, since the courts have ruled (misguidedly in my view) that the full faith and credit provision of the Constitution did not apply to gay marriage, the Trustees would be violating their oath to uphold the Constitution if they voted for the motion. When it was clear that that tortured "reasoning" was not going to fly, he tried an even more far-fetched idea – that since the majority of Fortune 500 companies have domestic benefit coverage, a minority must not have it. Presumably that was supposed to have some logic to it. Amid cries of "resign" and "recall" from the crowd, Bohn's view was repudiated and the motion, which should have been unanimous, passed 4 to 1. Too bad. A unanimous vote would have gone a long way toward repairing IV/CB's image in the larger world, I guess you can't fix arrogance and Trustee Bohn continues to mistake the limits of his vision for the limits of the world.

Column 148 – Town Center

Aside from the occasional brain spasm by IVGID Trustees, things are notably good here in IV/CB. We can feel the effects of the economic crisis, but arguably not as acutely as they're being felt in other places. Non-profits are certainly feeling it – donations are down sharply, but those fundraising efforts that really matter seem to be holding up. The IHS Boosters crab feed was a success, Project Mana is still able to help people who need food, and local businesses are even pitching in with discounts for people bringing in canned goods that then go to Project Mana.

Even Nature seems to be pitching in. the March snows should go a long way toward saving the winter tourist season, and who knows, we may even be able to launch boats this summer.

The Boulder Bay Project debate has been remarkably civilized and the folks who are promoting the project are going out of their way to listen to those with concerns and reservations. In short, they're acting like real members of the community. Now news reports have indicated that another major development may be in the offing. The "old" (K-2) elementary school on Southwood will be closing soon, and there is starting to be discussion of possibilities for developing that plot, possibly along with the site of the Village Center, though I don't think anyone has asked the tenants of the Village Center how they feel about that. IVGID is being proactive in getting involved in any plans for the school site, and others including my alternate-week colleague Andy Whyman and developer Vince Scott have been looking at possibilities ranging from recreational use, housing, eldercare facilities, and public facilities have been floated. Even more encouragingly, Scott and others have prominently mentioned "green" building as integral to their plans.

In TRPA's Pathways 2007 planning and our own Incline Vision meetings, the notion of a center for the village in the area of the school site and Village Center came up repeatedly. I've lived here for over thirteen years and came here for years before that, and can remember the sense, when I first came here, of there being no "here" here (to steal from Gertrude Stein). IV/CB really has no community center of gravity – we have the Raley's Center, Christmas Tree Village, the Village Center, and the Hyatt/Country Club Center, but none of these provide what I remember "downtown" providing in the small town where I grew up – not so much a commercial center as a place to come together. I can remember on Friday nights, during the Christmas shopping season, and on Sunday afternoons you would run into people you knew downtown. In the first two cases the stores were open late, but on Sundays it was more a matter of the movie matinees, and people going for walks, and generally knowing that downtown was a place you'd see people and have an opportunity to socialize without having to entertain or plan.

I think, and people in the TRPA and Incline planning workshops seemed to largely agree, that we need something like the downtown I remember. Not the glitzy "ski village" that you find at places like Northstar, Squaw, Whistler, Aspen, and Vail – that sort of place isn't for families and residents but rather for tourists. Rather, something more like the idealized "Main Street" of Disney World – small shops, eating places, parks, and walking paths where we can go to be together, talk, and generally be a community.

This being Incline, some will disagree. Any move for change here runs up against those who want things to be as they were 20 or 40 years ago, but that's not going to happen. It seems to me that we have three choices – become a destination resort like Aspen or Whistler, which I don't think anyone wants, remain an aging community where half or so of the residents are here part-time, or be a real community with a diversity of ages, incomes, etc. In order to do the last one, we will need to create the things a community needs – facilities for old and young, opportunities for all, and places to go that accommodate a range of incomes. A town center would be a step in the right direction.

Column 147 – IVGID Board Revokes Domestic Partner Benefits

The published vision of IVGID says, in part, "we will maintain the reputation of our Community as an excellent place to live, work, recreate, visit, and invest." The actions of the IVGID Board of Trustees last week in revoking a long-standing policy of providing benefits to domestic partners of employees has done violence to that vision. The story was quickly picked up by the national media, and the reputation of our community is sadly tarnished.

The Bonanza editorial staff did an excellent job of dissecting the issue on Wednesday, and if you have not read the editorial entitled "An Embarrassing Stance," I recommend you find it online and read it carefully. I won't repeat their points here, but do want to weigh in with a couple of my own.

In Wednesday's page one story on the issue, General Manager Bill Horn is quoted as saying "the newspaper has made a controversial issue." I would submit that blaming the newspaper for the controversy is disingenuous on Mr. Horn's part. The Board created the controversy; the newspaper did its job in reporting it.

One fact not sufficiently emphasized, in my view, is that this is not a new policy, but the revocation of an old one. IVGID has offered domestic partner coverage in the past, and stopped doing so when the District changed to a carrier, St. Mary's, that did not offer this coverage at the time. Since then, St. Mary's has started offering the coverage, and it would seem that continuation of this benefit would be a no-brainer. It's interesting to note that, according to their website, Saint Mary's Preferred Health Insurance Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Saint Mary's Health Plans which, in turn, is owned by the Sisters of Saint Dominic. Last I looked, the Catholic Church placed a strong value on marriage, yet here is this health plan offering domestic partner benefits. At least 1300 private companies in the US offer this benefit, as do numerous colleges, universities, and municipalities.

Right now, exactly two IVGID employees are affected by this revocation. These same two were covered before the change of carriers. It seems unlikely that this will open the floodgates, and as pointed out by the Bonanza, the total coverage for these two amounts to 0.14% of the total IVGID budget. Some cost savings.

Other arguments advanced for the revocation are equally specious. The real point of domestic partner benefits is fairness. Marriage, where the government is concerned, is a civil contract. The fact that this contract is also, for many, a religious sacrament is irrelevant to a governmental body – only the civil aspect obtains. For IVGID to provide different benefits to those who choose to enter into this contract, which is a private matter, than to those who for whatever reason do not is unfair on the face of it, and that is why the thousands of entities referenced above have domestic partner benefits. A couple declaring a commitment to each other and signing a contract to that effect is a matter of personal choice – the impact is the same; the difference between partners and spouses is, as a civil matter, a moot point.

So at best, the Board's decision (and kudos to Trustees Epstein and Weinberger for opposing it) is unfair. Worse would be if it is an undeclared attempt to impose someone's private morals on others. Worst would be if this is a misguided and covert expression of homophobia. Most egregious, in my view, is Trustee John Bohn's statement that "I just don't think this community supports [this] and we have to represent our constituents." Mr. Bohn is, of course, entitled to think what he wants. What is outrageous is that he then asserts that following his thought, whatever it is based on, is representing the constituency of Incline Village. This is arrogance worthy of Rush Limbaugh.

So there's really only one principle here, I think, and that principle is fairness and equality – two good old American values. By going against the tide of fairness in this area the Board has failed to live up to its vision and has damaged the reputation of our community. What is called for is a reversal of the decision by the Board before further damage is done.