Bonanza Column 238 - It's All About the Brain

The eminent scholar and public policy advisor Jeremy Rifkin makes a compelling case that the history of the history of the human race is characterized by the development of wider and wider circles of empathy – starting in the hunter-gatherer days with the tribe, then affiliated groups (e.g. religions) and progressing toward the nation-state. Hence today, Americans feel closer to Americans than to, say Germans or Saudis, and this feeling extends to some very real material results such as the outpouring of aid to the areas struck by Hurricane Katrina and the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. We’ve even seen what Rifkin calls natural empathy transcend national borders after the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in Southeast Asia, and the more recent earthquake in Japan. For Rifkin, greater levels of civilization are marked by expanding circles of empathy and compassion, and he cites both biological and social data to back up his contention.

On the other hand, we have House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) saying he will block aid money for Missouri tornado victims unless Democrats agree to an equal amount of spending cuts. As Steve Benen points out in the Washington Monthly, “When part of the country is devastated by a deadly natural disaster, federal lawmakers "are expected to put aside politics and ideology" and help, not hold the victims "ransom" to their pet causes,” and I would add particularly in the case of a disaster such as happened in Missouri where the timeliness of aid will make a difference that could save families, properties, and lives.

Cantor and the GOP leadership have interpreted the results of the mid-term elections last year as a wholesale mandate to cut spending and damn the consequences. Republicans gave up "compassionate conservatism" as a Bush-era failure, and their renewed passion for small government essentially means "you're on your own," even in the face of disaster.

So how do we explain this seeming contradiction – as a human race we seem to be evolving in the direction of, as Einstein put it, “widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” On the other hand we have Mr. Cantor and the GOP taking this regressive position, putting a political bargaining ploy ahead of the real need of people, many of whom are presumably in their political base.

Just as Rifkin’s research on empathy and compassion began with neuroscience, and particularly with the discovery of so-called “mirror neurons” in the 1990s, we can begin to look for an answer in the brain. A study was published last month by researchers at University College London that, the researchers say, links personality traits of liberals and conservatives to differences in brain structure and, presumably, function. The study was based on 90 young adults who reported their political views on a five-point scale from very liberal to very conservative, and then submitted themselves to brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a well-established method for studying both brain structure and activity.

The study found that self-described conservatives had a greater development in an area of the brain called the Amygdala, while liberals had greater development in an area called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. The functions of both these brain areas have been well-established. The Amygdala is a brain stem structure that is, essentially, a threat-detection sensor. When the Amygdala is activated, the result is the familiar “fight or flight” response. So people with a highly developed Amygdala will be more sensitive to threat and more likely to respond to threat aggressively.

The Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) is a region that responds to uncertainty and conflicts. The researchers said “it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views.” They go on to say “Our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty.”

It is also well-established that a big part of the fight or flight response is to see the world, temporarily at least, in binary terms – good and bad, black and white, and to avoid uncertainty or shades of grey. Now none of this is my opinion – the London study was published in Current Biology, a peer-reviewed journal, and 90 is a good-size sample; Cantor’s remarks and the support of (and non-repudiation of) his position by other Republicans is a matter of record. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but I’m just sayin’…

Bonanza Column 237 - The End is Here (or It Isn't)

Have you heard? The end of the world began last Saturday. So by the time you are reading this, presumably there are signs of the end – maybe people have started disappearing, or worse yet appearing, maybe the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (not to be confused with the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame) are riding down Tahoe Boulevard right now.

As you probably know Harold Camping, a civil engineer who is a self-taught biblical scholar has been trumpeting this doomsday scenario on his Family Radio network, predicting Judgment Day on May 21^st, a date he arrived at through a series of calculations that assume the world will end exactly 7,000 years after Noah’s flood. Believers (in what I’m not sure – Camping, I guess) are to be transported up to heaven as a worldwide earthquake strikes. Nonbelievers will endure five months of plagues, quakes, wars, famine and general torment before the planet’s total destruction in October. According to the New York Times, Mr. Camping said in 1992 that the rapture would probably be in 1994, but he now says newer evidence makes the prophecy for this year certain.

I don’t expect Camping to be right (it’s Friday night as I write this, so who knows?), and if he is it’s really going to annoy the folks who believe that the supposed Mayan calendar predicts the end in 2012. What is curious to me is how willing some people are to believe something like this. Friday’s New York Times carried a story about a family where the parents are Camping followers (Campingites? Campers?) but the teen-age children are not, and the kids keep trying to make summer plans while the parents say “why bother?” More poignantly, the mother has decided that some of the children will not be saved, and has told them so – not to get them to change their ways, just to let them know what’s coming.

I’m not going to argue the religious or philosophical merits of eschatology. If you believe in an end to the world and a last judgment, that’s your prerogative – religious thinkers are divided on this one right down the middle both within and between various religions. If the thought or fear of judgment keeps you on the straight and narrow, more power to you. But in my understanding, the judgment is supposed to be heavenly in origin, and most of these folks like Camping and his ilk seem to be very interested in judging those around them, particularly those who don’t think as they do. It boggles my mind that a parent could be so caught up in how right someone like Camping is that they will, in effect, reject their own child, but this happens in these doomsday cults, and it happens a lot.

So for me, Camping is in the same camp with Jim Jones, Osama Bin Laden, those crazies that picket servicemen’s funerals because they hate gays, that so-called preacher that finally got to burn his Quran, and all the other religious fanatics who seem to be multiplying these days, and I just don’t see that they’re adding anything useful to the social dialogue.

So I hope this column finds you, on Tuesday or Wednesday, or Thursday happy and healthy and unplagued by plagues, demons, or hellfire. If it doesn’t, well, then I bet on the wrong horse. My bad.

Bonanza Column 236 - Dissent in a Civil Society

All over the world governments that have been entrenched for many years are being challenged. In almost every case, those mounting the challenge have lived under the regime for most or all of their lives and have only recently awakened to possibilities that they had not imagined.

Here in the US the unrest is less dramatic, and yet our government seems to be clear that to ignore all but the fringes of, for example, the Tea Party movement would be a risky business. And the pressure is not one-sided – the protests in Wisconsin were very much in that state’s progressive tradition. All told, these seem to be times of great change, and as Bob Dylan said, it’s probably best not to “speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin.”

And of course here in Incline Village/Crystal Bay we have our own small-scale unrest, though the agenda behind the unrest seems unclear, at least to me. We had the long-running resistance to the Boulder Bay project which hopefully will subside now. We have Mr. Katz and his “organization” The Village People mounting challenge after challenge to the IVGID Board of Trustees, claiming to speak for many people, most of whom have not identified themselves. If such support exists, they seem content to remain in the shadows and let The Village People and a couple of others speak for them. Or, of course, the support doesn’t exist. You can’t prove a negative, so as long as this supposed group remains silent, the issue will remain in doubt.

For about twenty years a lot of (publicly identified) people have advocated a change in IVGID’s structure and governance. There have been attempts to form a county and a town, and other options have been researched, publicly discussed, and deemed unlikely to be better than the GID formed under NRS 318. In all these efforts local residents have made it clear that a majority prefer the GID system, so that’s what we have.

There is a widespread view that NRS 318 restricts GIDs to managing water, sewer, trash, and recreation, and it’s true that these four areas are called out specifically, NRS 318.116 lists 21 separate areas that are available for GIDs to manage, and 318.015 mandates that GIDs “serve a public use and will promote the health, safety, prosperity, security and general welfare of the inhabitants thereof,” which seems to include a great deal of latitude. The IVGID Board, like all GID boards, operates under the Nevada Open Meeting Law, which among other things means meetings are open to the public, include public comment, and agendas are published in advance.

Somehow, for The Village People, this amounts to a “lack of transparency,” which I understand according to the following definition: “Transparency is a general quality. It is implemented by a set of policies, practices and procedures that allow citizens to have accessibility, usability, utility, understandability and auditability of information and process held by centers of authority. Feedback mechanisms are necessary to fulfill the goal of transparency.” It seems to me that both the Nevada Open Meeting Law and the practices of the IVGID Board meet this standard, so I wonder what the so-called Village People want.

More disturbing is the constant imputation of dark, and by implication criminal, motives to the IVGID Trustees and the IVGID Staff. I don’t always agree with the Trustees – as is the case in most areas of politics, I agree with some of them most of the time, some of them some of the time, and some of them never. However, having gone through the process of running for the Board some years ago and knowing many current and former Trustees, I cannot imagine what nefarious motives anyone would have or what they would stand to gain by serving in this largely thankless job. Similarly over the past 15 years I have gotten to know many IVGID staff members and to a person have found them to be hard-working, dedicated, and honest, from the Executive Director to those staff who work “on the line” at facilities, etc.

Every citizen has the right to question their government and to hold officials to account. In a civil society, though, it behooves each of us to do this in a civil manner, and in that the recent activities of The Village People have fallen short.

Two Contrasting Political Cases

As was widely predicted, Governor Sandoval has appointed Dean Heller to the Senate seat vacated by the disgraced John Ensign. While the Nevada law on how to fill Heller’s House seat is notoriously vague in some ways, it clearly mandates a special election. Secretary of State Ross Miller has thrown that election open to all comers rather than having candidates selected by party caucuses, and as noted in an earlier column, we can expect a lively campaign between now and the special election in September, during which time the state’s Congressional delegation of two will be down to one, Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Las Vegas), who has already announced her intention to run against Heller for election to the Senate seat in 2012.

While Sandoval’s appointment of Heller was expected, it was not the only possible way to go. The Governor could, for example, have appointed a respected Nevadan to fill Ensign’s seat until the 2012 election – Bill Raggio comes to mind as someone who would have been an excellent choice. This would have left our Congressional representation intact, but would not have given Heller a leg up in the election, which I suspect was at least a part of the Republican Governor’s motivation for the appointment.

Appointing what is sometimes referred to as a “placeholder” would also have saved the State an estimated one million dollars that could be used, (and is desperately needed) for other purposes in these difficult economic times. At the same time Sandoval is cutting jobs and programs, he seems blithely oblivious to the possibilities of using this money more wisely. To bring it closer to home, the special election will cost Washoe County about $350,000, and we will pay for that one way or another.

Sandoval has not said much about his thinking in appointing Heller, and of course under state law he can do pretty much what he wants in filling the seat. Still, in the absence of anything from him to counter the widespread view that the purpose of his appointing Heller was political, I’m inclined to take that view – that the Governor who was elected on promises of fiscal accountability has put politics ahead of good financial judgment, and that it’s worth a million dollars of our money to him to have his pal and his party get an edge in an election they probably would have won anyhow.

On a more bi-partisan note, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has put ideology second and is making common cause with the Right, including and Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn have joined forces with Tea Party activists in an attempt to kill six billion dollars a year in ethanol subsidies, taking on the corn lobby. Ethanol is made from corn and has been promoted by corn growers as an alternative to dependence on oil. It has also been blamed by environmentalists for contributing to algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico. Most importantly, corn used for ethanol production is corn that is not available to feed cattle, pigs, chickens, and other food sources which then have to be fed more expensively, raising food prices.

Feinstein and Coburn are garnering support from both sides of the political spectrum including the Tea Party Patriots group which noted on its Facebook page “When the Left and the Right agree…amazing things can happen.” Ethanol production accounts for 40 percent of the US corn crop and its value as a fuel is questionable given that fossil fuels are used both to grow corn and to refine it into ethanol and because ethanol yields less energy per gallon than gasoline. To add insult to injury, ethanol not only doesn’t save much energy overall, but may increase greenhouse gas emissions.

So we have two cases in point – a Governor who, for all his piety about cutting spending, is willing to spend much-needed money for political purposes, and two Senators who are willing to put partisan differences aside for the greater good. We can only hope that the latter is a harbinger of a more rational and intelligent political future.

Bonanza Column 234 - Leon Festinger, Obama's Birth Certificate, and Boulder Bay

In the 1950’s, Stanford psychologist Leon Festinger studied a doomsday cult that believed that the world was going to end (and that they would be rescued from the cataclysm by aliens) on a certain date. They sold their possessions, quit their jobs, etc. and gathered on a mountain top to be picked up by UFOs. When the world didn’t end and you would expect them to have changed their beliefs, they were unfazed – the world didn’t end not in spite of their beliefs, but because they believed and therefore the world was spared. Festinger coined the term cognitive dissonance to describe this phenomenon of people becoming more committed to their beliefs in the face of evidence to refute them, and it has since been validated many times.

The past week has given us two great examples of the cognitive dissonance mechanism at work. First, President Obama released the long form of his Hawai’i birth certificate with all the requisite signatures and seals, which should have put the whole “birther” nonsense to rest, right? Not so much. Some birthers questioned the authenticity of the certificate (where does that one end?), some accepted it, but said he must be hiding something, and others just changed “birth certificate” to “diploma” and suggested that this Summa cum Laude graduate of Harvard was faking his educational credentials.

Closer to home, we saw the long approval process for the Boulder Bay project culminate in a twelve-hour meeting of the TRPA Governing Board, at the end of which the project was overwhelmingly (12-2) approved along with the EIS and an amendment to the height restrictions. The public comment at that meeting took four hours, during which some 80 people spoke, with about 80% of the comments solidly in favor of the project. A couple of things struck me about the 10 or 15 comments that questioned or opposed the project. One was the theme of “I don’t really oppose it, but I want it to be smaller.” Given how much the Boulder Bay team has reduced the size over the past four years, one wonders if it could be small enough to satisfy them.

But the other thing that struck me and brought Festinger to mind was some of the opponents’ responses to the traffic studies. There were three studies and a fourth memo clarifying the studies. These studies were done by experts, engineering consultants whose reputation and livelihood rests on the scientific validity of their work. Granted, no forecast can be said to be “the truth” – all forecasting is, in the end, a guess, but these people’s job is to make guesses that are grounded in and can be defended by data, and so it would be reasonable to expect that if someone were to disagree with their conclusions, that disagreement would be based on data as well. Not here – the predominant theme of the objections to the traffic studies could be summarized as “it doesn’t make sense to me that this project won’t increase traffic, so the studies must be wrong.” A couple of the objectors had the credentials to make them worth listening to and challenged the baselines used in the studies, but again failed to give any coherent, data-based objection to the baselines – they just didn’t think they were right.

It would be nice to think we have heard the last of the controversy and that the Boulder Bay project could proceed on schedule – design work this summer and break ground next May – but given the cognitive dissonance mechanism I'm not holding out much hope. As Festinger said: “A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.” As a result, the general expectation in the community as reflected in the online poll conducted during the Bonanza’s live coverage of the hearings, is that there will be lawsuits from one or more of the groups who have been intransigent in their opposition to the project. I'm referring here to the local version of the Sierra Club, the League to Save Lake Tahoe, and the North Tahoe Preservation Alliance.

Now this is America, where anyone can sue anyone over everything and we let the courts sort it out. Given the exhaustive work and hearings by TRPA over the past four years, I suggest that any suit brought at this point will be groundless and simply a tactic to delay and harass the Boulder Bay group and will be held as such by the courts. These groups, as Wednesday’s hearing showed, represent a very small minority of the community, if that. The NTPA has consistently inflated its membership figures -  many people who spoke Wednesday objected to being listed on NTPA’s rolls of those opposed when all they had done was ask for information – and the rest of us should not stand for their throwing sands into the gears of progress.

Bonanza Column 233 – Tearing the Tattered Ensign Down

With apologies to Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Ay, tear tattered Ensign down!
Long has he waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;

After several years of agony, denials, and disingenuous statements, Senator John Ensign has announced he will resign from the Senate on May 3. According to Jon Ralston, who follows Nevada politics for the Las Vegas Sun, the Senate Ethics Committee was about to launch a full-scale investigation into Ensign’s activities, which investigation will be forestalled by Ensign’s resignation.

As we’ve said before in this column, Ensign’s resignation is long overdue. He can insist that he’s violated no ethical standards until he’s blue in the face, but the facts speak for themselves – the married Senator had an affair with a staffer who was married to another staffer. When the affair came to light, he dismissed both of them and his parents gave the couple $96,000 dollars as a “gift,” after which the husband took a lobbying job that Ensign got him, ignoring the requirement that Congressional staffers cannot take a lobbying position for a year after leaving their post and cannot in any case lobby the person they worked for, both of which he did.

Ensign may be right that he broke no laws, but he did violate the trust of the Nevadans who voted him into office and all of Nevada which he was supposed to be representing. He is also arguably a hypocrite given his public statements on family values and his membership in the Family, an ostensibly Christian organization.

Oh, better that his shattered bulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
His thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be his grave;

Now the fun begins. In a game of Nevada GOP dominoes, Governor Sandoval will almost certainly appoint his friend and ally Rep. Dean Heller to Ensign’s seat. Heller has already announced for election to the seat in 2012, and being a sitting (albeit appointed) senator should give him a leg up on his only announced opponent, Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley of Las Vegas. A number of people including the perennial Sharron Angle have already announced they will run for Heller’s district (which includes Incline), and it will be up to the Governor to call a special election once he appoints Heller; naturally, whoever wins this special election will have an advantage in the race for that seat in 2012.

How far the dominoes will fall beyond that is hard to predict and depends on how many people who already hold office decide to enter the fray, but what is predictable is that there will be a circus to rival the 2010 Senate race and that we will see the national media struggling with the Nev-a-da/Nev-ah-da quandary. It will be interesting to see how much damage Angle did to herself in the 2010 race and how much of her supposed support in that race was really anti-Reid efforts that will not necessarily stick to her when she runs against other (rational) Republicans. For me as a Democrat, I’d love to see Angle run against almost anyone.

A lot depends on Secretary of State Ross Miller. The procedure for filling Heller’s seat is unclear and it will be up to Miller to decide how it will go. The most likely possibilities include either appointment of candidates by party caucuses or open primaries. If Heller is appointed and Miller decides that the primary is open, the large number of Republican candidates who have already announced bids to replace Heller could divide the party vote. Angle and former Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold have already launched campaigns. State Sen. Greg Brower told Jon Ralston Friday that he would enter a special election . State GOP Chairman Mark Amodei and Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki are also mulling bids. It’s hard to imagine that a party caucus would nominate Angle – they would probably favor party insiders Amodei and Krolicki – but an open primary sounds like a lot of fun.

At any rate, this off-year just got considerably more interesting in Nevada.

Bonanza Column 232 - Who's Carrying Whom?

As I’ve mentioned, my recent columns taking issue with economic policies advocated particularly by the right wing of the GOP have garnered a great deal of criticism from those on the other side of the political spectrum, which is to be expected. This criticism divides into two not particularly equal parts – the greater portion of the responses takes me to task, sometimes with great heat, for employing tactics that the Right has used for years – characterization, insults, and, according to them, presenting only one side of the picture. It may be that characterizing my detractors as troglodytes and favoring the rich is inelegant, but no more so than their characterizations of the Left as bleeding hearts, and profligate spenders – I'm not saying either is right, just that for them to take such umbrage when their own tactics are turned against them is disingenuous at best, and hypocritical would not, in my view, be too strong a term.

The minority of the responses, and the more thoughtful of them, take the case that, since those at the top of the economic ladder pay the most taxes and are, in effect, carrying those at the bottom, they (and most of the writers include themselves in this group) deserve extra breaks. I'm not sure of the merits of that argument, but I am sure the facts behind it are flawed.

A recent post on the New York Times Economix blog cites statistics from two reputable sources – a book published by Oxford University Press studying income and wage inequality in the US from 1913 to 2002 and an analysis of the Federal Reserve Board Survey of Consumer Finances and the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds that was prepared for the Economic Policy Institute.

The first study shows that as of 2008, about 21% of income in the US was received by just 1% of earners. The second looks at disparities in wealth (how much people have rather than how much they make) and shows that wealth distribution is even more skewed than income distribution. The top 1% of earners receive about a fifth of all US income, but the top 1% of Americans by net worth hold about a third of US wealth. Wealth-related inequality, the studies show, has been stable for decades, while income-related inequality has been growing since the 1970’s.

As income grows, however, so does wealth – the highest earners can save more of what they make, accumulating more wealth over time, and have more opportunities to pay less taxes, both because they can afford better tax advice and because the more money you have, the more you can put into vehicles that are taxed as capital gains rather than income. This means that while those in the working and middle classes pay more in taxes ass their income grows, those in the highest income bracket pay less, calling my correspondents’ argument into question. It’s possible that the very wealthy pay more in absolute amounts, but it’s been documented over and over that they pay a smaller proportion of their net worth toward taxes than do the lower 67%.

The Census Bureau reported in September that the poverty rate for 2009 was 14.3%, the highest since 1994, with the number of uninsured reaching a record high. So, as Charles Blow said in another Times blog, who “should be expected to sacrifice a bit for the benefit of the other and the overall health and prosperity of the nation…? The poor, of course. At least that seems to be the Republican answer.”

The GOP are proposing to make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent and to reduce their taxes even more, ostensibly to promote growth and job creation, despite the incontrovertible evidence that cutting taxes for the wealthy does not create economic growth. For example, the average tax rate for the top 1% of households dropped by 20% from 1979 to 2007 (the overall average dropped by only 8%) and the GDP has shown no correlation with the level of top tax rates. Currently the average tax rate ofr those with an average annual income of about $350 million is lower than the tax rate for average Americans.

And that’s just individuals – while many of the very wealthy manage to minimize their tax exposure, the richest Americans are corporations, which the Supreme Court in the Citizens United ruling says are, in effect, people –some of the richest corporations in America including GE last year pay no taxes at all.

So who’s carrying whom?

Bonanza Column 231 – Pots and Kettles

I just bought a t-shirt that says “Annoy a Conservative: Use Facts and Logic,” and I seem to have been doing a pretty good job of that even without the shirt. There is a strong trend in Conservative responses to these columns and Conservative discourse in general to (a) accuse Progressives of ignoring or not having the facts of a given situation, (b) stating at most one fact and then (c) going on to state opinions and interpretations of the facts as if they were the truth and anyone who does not see it that way must be crazy, agenda-driven, or both. I.e., the pot calling the kettle black.

Case  in point: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis) keeps pointing to a graph he made charting US debt as a percentage of GDP from 1940 to the present and extrapolated to 2080. The first 70 years of this chart are fact – they show that debt was as high as 100% of GDP during World War II, has hovered around 50% since 1990 or so and is now about 70% (you can find Ryan’s plan at http://paulryan.house.gov/). Ryan then goes on to extrapolate a “current path” leading to debt being 900% of GDP in 2080 – a classic “hockey stick” curve, and a “path to prosperity leading to zero in 2050. Both are pure guesswork, and neither can be said to be right or wrong, though extrapolating a very weak trend into a straight, high-slope curve is a statistical stretch.

Here’s the problem, though – in pushing his “path to prosperity, Ryan is only telling part of the facts. Under his plan (which is unlikely to be enacted), the cost of Medicare does follow a hockey stick curve while Social Security income continues at an almost flat rate of growth. Under the current system, that slow growth roughly matches the cost of living (or lags behind it), and includes Medicare; under Ryan’s plan, a greater and greater portion of retiree’s income would go to pay for health care, or they would go without. By 2030 or so, most older Americans will face a Hobson’s Choice of bankruptcy or no medical care.

Now I don’t know about you, but I was taught that there are three ways to lie: falsify the truth, omit relevant facts, or only tell part of the truth as if it were the whole. Ryan’s argument and that of the right wing of the GOP fits the last two criteria at least. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO),  under the GOP plan, people entering the program in 2030 can expect to pay $20,000 out of their own pockets for health care. At the current rate of adjustment, the average person on Social Security will receive about $21,000 that year. Those are facts. Good luck living on that other thousand, and heaven help you if you enter the program after 2030.

There’s more to the Ryan/GOP proposal than this, but none of it is any better. Conservatives seem to be banking on scare slogans like “Road to Ruin” to panic people into supporting proposals that benefit large corporations that have given millions to the GOP and to the Tea Party while leaving ordinary people in the dust. Call me naïve, but I don’t believe the average American is quite that stupid. Notwithstanding that, in the post-Citizens United world, the influence of the average American on his or her government is quickly diminishing and that of the likes of the Koch Brothers, the NRA, and lobbies for industries like health insurance is on the rise.

Both here in the Tahoe Basin and nationally, those who have amassed enough wealth that they don’t need to worry about Social Security and health care are all to ready to dismantle these and other programs in service of keeping their own coffers intact. It’s an “I’ve got mine, too bad about you” mentality reminiscent of the 19^th Century robber barons, and even those rapacious individuals were socially conscious (or guilty) enough to endow various public institutions – what have the Koch Brothers done for you lately?

So our local version of the Tea Party (hmm… Tea Party=TP, We the People = WTP…I'm just sayin’) will come screaming back with name-calling and slogans and precious few facts while accusing those who oppose them of doing exactly what they themselves are doing – substituting opinion and agenda for facts and distorting the evidence. Don’t be fooled.

Bonanza Column 230 - We Can't Afford to Lose TRPA

There are certain things that, if they’re not examined too closely, seem to make people look smart. Go up to a stranger and say something like “I don’t know what it is, but I have a sense you are troubled about money” and you’ll be right better than 4 times out of 5. Around here, bashing TRPA will have the same result – everyone will have a good laugh, and you’ll be considered pretty smart, if no one thinks about it too much.

In better than 15 years that I’ve lived here, TRPA has been a consistent whipping boy. People who willingly sign agreements with their HOA that restrict everything from where they put their trash to what kind of fence they can have bristle when TRPA has the temerity to suggest that a bright red roof or a bright blue house might detract from the scenic quality of the area.

Don’t get me wrong – TRPA has, historically, done some really dumb things. I really don’t think the color of the guard rails on Route 267 over Brockway Summit have much impact on scenic quality, and there have been other bonehead moves. From time to time any agency can get a bit intoxicated with its own authority and have to be reined in, but the “I don’t want any government except where I say they should be” types – the ones who say they want the government to stay out of their Medicare (sic) pick up on the occasional gaffe and use those to try to discredit all the work the agency does.

During the tenure of John Singlaub and particularly under the tenure of the current Executive Director Joanne Marchetta, the TRPA staff and Governing Board have worked very hard to keep the agency focused on its primary mission of protecting the environment and the scenic quality of the Basin. Reasonable minds can differ on the interpretation of the scope of this mission, but most of the foolishness of past administrations has been stopped. The Agency has been particularly effective in holding the line against Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS), to the point where they have been able, through aggressive boat inspection and anti-AIS programs in the water, to keep Tahoe from being overrun by these  the way, for example, Lake Mead has been. A study by the Army Corps of Engineers put the potential economic impact of AIS in the region at $22 million a year in lost recreation, tourism, property values, and increased maintenance costs.

Now a group of these knee-jerk anti-regulation types are trying to get the Nevada Senate to pass a bill, SB 271, that would pull the state out of the TRPA compact, leaving the environment of the lake and the basin at the mercy of California and the Federal Government. Their rationale for this is that the agency has gone beyond its mandate and interferes with decisions people make on their property.

As I said, TRPA has, from time to time, gone overboard in its interpretation of its mission. Director Marchetta has been forthcoming in taking responsibility for past errors and has been clear about her intention to prevent what could be seen as abuses. At the same time, what about all the good the Agency does – who will inspect boats this summer if SB 271 passes? Predictably Tahoe will go the way of Lake Mead and we will all be hurt.

To the best of its ability, TRPA makes decisions and choices based on what will benefit the whole region. Inevitably these decisions will, from time to time, tread on the toes of what some individual wants to do. It looks to me like there are a couple of things the people advocating SB 271 don’t seem to get. First, no one’s home, property, or business is isolated from the rest of us – in any community, in any environmental system, decisions the good of the many may need to outweigh the wishes of a few. If you don’t like that, you should find someplace where you are can live apart from everyone else – and good luck with that. Secondly, there is such a thing as genuine scientific expertise that my conflict with what you think you know and with what you want. I'm told that, counter-intuitive as it might be, leaving a certain amount of pine needles on the ground, because they absorb and hold water, is a better fire preventive than getting rid of all of them. OK, assuming that there is some scientific authority behind that, that’s a better thing than what I would do.

We can’t afford to let a group of people who think their political ideology and short-sighted opinions and interests are more important than the good of the rest of us and the health of a lake that belongs to us all. Let your State Senator know.

Bonanza Column 229 - Time to Take a Stand

A couple of weeks ago the Bonanza reported on the results of the 2010 U.S. Census as it applies to Incline Village – Crystal Bay and the Tahoe Basin as a whole. In case you missed it, the population of IV/CB has declined some 12% since the 2000 Census, and there are currently more vacant housing units than occupied. The Census does not measure second home ownership versus primary residences, but IVGID figures indicate that the former has increased at the expense of the latter, and the schools have shown a decrease of some 400 kids from ten years ago.

These figures will no doubt be very good news for the vocal minority who want to see Incline decline. The ones who would strip IVGID of all be the most basic powers and those whose misguided form of environmentalism boils down to having as few people in the environment as possible. For those of us who are concerned with the quality of life here and with a future for this community (and that group includes both full-timers and second home owners), it is bad news indeed.

In the same article, Kathy Carter, Washoe County Community Relations Director is quoted as saying that the decline in building due to the economy, along with the population decline, the community planning that was done several years ago is “not as urgent as it was.” I disagree and I suggest that Ms Carter’s view is both short-sighted and wrong.

In my view the economic situation of the past couple of years, while in many ways devastating, is a correction to an overheated economy that began in the ‘90’s and was based on a combination of greed and self-delusion – the first created a series of bubbles and the second allowed most of us to believe they would never burst. When they did, sanity returned with painful consequences to a great many people. I believe these consequences, while difficult in the short run, will return us to a more rational economy that, if we can remember the lessons learned, will give us much greater stability and sanity in the long haul.

If that view is correct, it means that planning for a community that is sustainable – economically, socially, environmentally – the “triple bottom line” – is more, not less important. If those of us who care about the future of the community as more than a retirement community allow a nebulous group of malcontents led by an outsider who has a very troublesome history of disrupting communities for reasons that are unclear to take advantage of the population decline and current economic situation to hijack that future, then we will have done a great disservice to a community we love and that they will leave. Similarly, if we allow eco-fundamentalists to block business efforts that are valuable and sustainable while environmental damage from current structures continue, then we are naïve indeed.

Since I began this series of columns on the subject of “vocal minorities” I have received the usual attacks – no matter how many facts I cite, I am accused of not having any facts by people who then cite none in rebuttal. I am told that I and those who agree with my views are the real minority, and the troglodytes are the majority, yet these accusations come from the same people over and over again, and they have yet to reveal who they count in their supposed majority. Typical demagogic tactics when you have no arguments that hold water and no people to pose them.

More importantly,, I have heard from many people who agree and who want to know what to do . My answer is simple: speak up – often and loudly. Make it clear that the so-called Village People and the eco-fundamentalists (and I'm distinguishing them from those of us who have a real concern for the environment, one that includes that people and businesses are part of it) are NOT the majority. Research and reveal their real agendas, and let the entities involved – the IVGID Board, the TRPA Governing Board, the Washoe County Board of Commissioners – that they have allies in holding the line against the forces of regression. There have started to be letters and guest columns in the Bonanza along these lines – we need more. It’s time to end the foolishness and take our community back from those who would throw sand in the gears of progress just for their own amusement or their own agendas.

Bonanza Column 228: Boulder Bay - Will Reason Prevail?

Continuing our theme of the past couple of weeks, we have another example of a vocal minority trying to advance its agenda regardless of anyone else’s view.

This week the TRPA Governing Board will take what should be the final action to allow the Boulder Bay Project to proceed and actually start building. Since it was first proposed in 2007, the Boulder Bay plan has made change after change in response to concerns from “interested public parties.” In the end, the plan that will go before TRPA on Wednesday will be a huge improvement over the current sight which is both an esthetic and environmental blight, will reduce energy use on the site by 38%, provide alternative-fuel transportation and walkable spaces for guests, transportation and housing for employees, and create an additional 225 jobs. Four traffic studies, each taking a more conservative look than the last, concluded that traffic would decrease.

So everybody wins, right? The objectors got a lot of what they asked for, the project will be built, and all’s well. Not so much. According to last week’s paper, the League to Save Lake continues its vocal opposition as does the so-called North Tahoe Preservation Alliance. It seems that no matter what Boulder Bay does, no matter what study after study says, these groups or at least their putative leaderships will continue to insist that it be done their way or not at all. They’ve blocked progress for four years and one would hope that the TRPA’s passage of the final approval on Wednesday would put the issue to bed and these worthies will move on to other matters.

It’s worth noting that, as usual, it’s the opposition that has been most vocal and has received the most attention in the media. From that you might think that public opinion on the pro side has been weak or non-existent. On the contrary most of the public comment at TRPA hearings has been unabashedly positive as have written comments submitted by people who could not attend the hearings.

There has been a cost to the delays – every day that the current structure exists has environmentally negative effects. For example, a UC Davis study indicated that in a wet year (like this year) some 30,000 pounds of sediment runoff from the site goes into the lake, including fine sediment, nitrogen, and phosphorus. This will be reduced by about 90% when Boulder Bay is built.

You understood correctly. These groups, in the name of the environment and their view of what the scenery should be, have been willing to tolerate this kind of environmental damage. If they refuse to accept defeat as seems likely on Wednesday, (there’s a reason detractors call it “The League to Sue Lake Tahoe”), this damage will be prolonged. In what environmental universe does this make sense?

But that’s the problem with our local vocal minorities – whether they’re suing IVGID over the beaches, accusing hard-working IVGID staff of being corrupt, blocking intelligent community planning, or demanding that their view of what’s good for the environment prevail, they always insist that their take on things is so right that it should prevail even in the face of widespread disagreement. Even if they have the best of intentions, and I believe that some (though not all) of them do, their insistence on imposing their will on the community regardless of the public will or of evidence that they are, if not entirely wrong, certainly not entirely right invalidates those intentions.

One respondent to my column last week said “TVP [The Village People] live here TOO!” True, but they’re not the only ones and not the majority by far. It’s interesting to me that while a number of people respond negatively to these columns, none of them seem to have anything to offer except ad hominem attacks and name-calling, but no rational argument except that they’re right and I'm not. Maybe so, but it seems a whole lot more people agree with me than with them. If you do, get out to the TRPA Governing Board meeting at the Chateau on Wednesday afternoon and make yourself heard; if you can’t make it, send them a written comment and let rational heads prevail.

Follow this blog

Bonanza Column 227 – Will We Change or Will Change Change Us?

In a recent article Daniel Burrus, one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and business strategists, made a strong case for what he calls a “hard trend.” A trend is something that may happen; a hard trend is something that WILL happen – it’s a prediction, not a probability. The trend Burrus was positing was that the accelerating rate at which things are changing will continue indefinitely.

In the past, Burrus points out, stability and change were two contrasting states: when you achieved stability, you did so despite change. Today you can achieve stability only by embracing change as a continuous and permanent state. It used to be, you could find something you do well, learn how to do it, and just keep on doing it. Not anymore.

There are two kinds of change: change from the outside in, and change from the inside out. The first happens to you. The second is an initiative that you take through conscious intention. Burrus asserts that today there is an urgent need to anticipate and take the initiative to change from the inside out, even as all these transformations are coming at us from the outside in. The highway is littered with the corpses of companies that failed to see this, and governments, from nations to municipalities, are not immune from the impact of this trend.

As a consultant to companies ranging from Fortune 100 to middle-size businesses, the truth of Burrus’ analysis has been apparent to me for some years now, but I find that when I work with governments and non-profits, their resistance to this truth is at the level of the resistance of businesses like IBM and Kodak twenty years ago (both these companies famously lagged behind revolutions in their industries; IBM recovered, Kodak did not).

The current tempest in a teapot that the organization called the Village People is trying to stir up regarding IVGID is a close-to-home case in point. A vocal minority of residents in Incline Village and Crystal Bay has been trying for years to stem the tide of change like Horatius at the bridge. It seems they would strip IVGID of all but the most necessary powers, roll back taxes (good luck with that one), and shut down most of what makes IV/CB unique, and based on the response by IVGID to the VP’s advertisement in the Bonanza a few weeks ago, it would seem they are not above the very crimes they accuse IVGID of – distorting the facts, lying, and obfuscating. I guess they think their “cause” is so just that they can use any means necessary.

In past years this vocal minority has tied IVGID up in lawsuits, claiming to represent a constituency they don’t identify, they have managed to get out enough votes to defeat the perhaps less passionate voices that favored becoming a town or a county, and have managed to block any substantive results from some very good conversations in Incline Vision and TRPA Place-Based Planning – conversations that had the potential to initiate the kind of change from within that would get us as a community out ahead of economic and social changes that could overwhelm us.

The sad thing is that the Indian Chief, the biker, the cop, the cowboy, the construction worker, and the GI – oh, sorry, wrong Village People – could get their way. It’s hard to gin up the passion for embracing change than for trying to keep anything from changing, and in the not too distant future we may find ourselves ill-equipped to meet the change that will, inevitably, be forced on us. If the imperative is “change or die,” this community as it’s developed over 40 years or so could die. We could become one more Sun City – a community of retirees and second home owners who are here part of the time – no young people, no children, no life.

One last thing – a couple of people pointed out to me that something I said in last week’s column lent itself to misinterpretation. I did not mean to imply that all part-time residents didn’t care about the community. On the contrary, a great many do care a great deal – Chuck Otto and others in the golf community, Jim Peterson and the Veterans Club come to mind and there are a lot more. Still it is undeniable that there are part-timers and absentee owners who don’t really care much about the quality of life here for those who are here year-round, and there are a few who make noise out of proportion to their numbers, who just want to stir up controversy. I wish they would do it somewhere else. Absent that, it’s time for those of us who give a damn to start making our voices heard.

The IVGID Cutbacks – Once Again it’s Whose Ox is Being Gored

Governments all over the country, at every level from Federal to local are struggling with financial issues. Like almost everyone else, during the boom years of the ‘90’s and part of the first decade of this century, governments took in record revenues and spent in record amounts. Like almost everyone else, governments naively acted like the boom would never end, and like almost everyone else, they are now paying the price for that naivete in the form of shortfalls, debts coming due, and cutbacks.

Naturally, IVGID is no exception to this overdue adjustment. I don’t think that blaming is particularly useful, but if we are to apportion responsibility for the current situation, then the Boards of Trustees from, say, 1995 – 2005 certainly come in for some serious consideration. The IVGID staff and the District Manager don’t make major decisions on their own – everything comes to the Board in the form of recommendations, and it is the Board that makes the call and that sets the budget.

Yet some IV/CB residents seem to be taking the opportunity of the current situation to call (once again) for Bill Horn’s head on a platter and to vilify the honest efforts of the IVGID staff, particularly department heads, to carry out the Board’s mandates. This is both ridiculous and wrong.

IVGID, like any municipal entity, has a large and complex budget. I took a course some years ago called “Finance for Non-Financial Managers” and was astonished to discover that the whole business of finance and accounting was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. Oh sure, it can be complex, and like any discipline you have to learn the basic rules (called GAAP – Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), some of which seem arbitrary or made up, but once you accept those rules it’s relatively easy to follow the game – not at an expert level, but enough to know if something doesn’t make sense. On that level anyone can sit down with the IVGID budget and see what’s going on.

Then there are experts – in this case called Auditors – whose job it is to look at financial matters on a much deeper level and whose expertise allows them to see disconnects or discrepancies that we lay people would miss. The IVGID budget is audited every year and with the exception of one minor mistake has received full marks for its integrity every time.

Given all that, it makes no sense for people to suggest (and not show any evidence to back it up) that Mr. Horn, Ms Cruz, or anyone else whose job it is to properly manage the budget the Board gives them are mismanaging or mishandling the District’s finances.

The Board spends months each year formulating the District Budget. In this process they hold workshops and public hearings and hear both staff recommendations and the views of those of the public who have the commitment and what my mother used to call the sitzfleisch (not really translatable, but sitz is “seat” and fleisch is “meat”) to sit through the hours of mind-numbing number crunching, and they then adopt the budget they come up with in an open meeting with plenty of public comment, so while you may not agree with their decisions or their priorities, it’s disingenuous of critics to accuse the Board of not being transparent.

In all likelihood this year’s budget brouhaha will come down to whose ox is being gored. It’s possible that a coalition of second-home owners and others who are interested only in reducing their expenses will succeed in intimidating the IVGID Board into cutting programs and cutting back overall until all IVGID does is water, sewer, garbage, and minimal recreation. It’s even possible that, now that we’ve lost an excellent golf manager, they will succeed in driving away the General Manager and his senior staff. If they do, those of us who care about this village being more than a retirement community of second-home owners will be the poorer for it. It’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen.

And a note to my loyal detractors – telling me I don’t know what I'm talking about without offering anything to factually contradict what I say is really not an argument that’s likely to gain traction.

 

Bonanza Column 225 – Be Careful What You Wish For

As the controversy and demonstrations in Wisconsin continue, it occurs to me that the Tea Party and the Right in this country might be well advised to be careful what they wish for.

It's hard for me to believe that anyone would be naïve enough to think that if we could get rid of the unions, give tax breaks to the rich and to big business, allow corporations and lobbying groups to contribute to political campaigns without limit and without any public accountability, and restrict health care to those the insurance companies could profit by, we would find ourselves in some Eden of free enterprise, good (i.e. severely limited) government, and general national well-being, but that is what those behind the Tea Party, the NRA, and the rest of the vast right-wing conspiracy would have us believe.

Don't get me wrong – I believe conservatism is a legitimate economic and social philosophy that can genuinely be held by people of good will. I don't agree with it for a minute, but I also don't think that liberalism has all the answers. I'm a firm believer that when there is the opportunity for constructive conflict and respectful debate over differences, we all get smarter and we come out with better ideas than either side of the debate would have come out with on their own.

And so I have two problems with the current political debate. First of all, as I've said before, it's not respectful of honest, sincerely held differences. And let me be clear here, I'm not talking only about the Right. I have no more use for posters showing the Governor of Wisconsin in crosshairs or calling him a Nazi or a dictator than I have for the comparable rhetoric about the President. And unlike some of those who reflexively respond "the Left does it too" when I criticize these excesses on the Right, I don't think much of "an eye for an eye" as a tactic. As someone said, all it will lead to is both of us being blind.

But the bigger problem I have is with honest, sincere people on the Right seeming oblivious to the unquestionable fact that they are being led by a small number of interests in directions that seem to have much more to do with benefitting the interests of the leaders than of those being led. The Koch brothers are not humanitarians – they are clearly out to advance the interests of their own business and those of their business allies. The NRA is out to make sure that arms manufacturers are profitable and they don't care who gets killed, just as the tobacco companies before their excesses cost them all their credibility, were out to sell cigarettes and were willing to lie and fabricate claims about the health effects of smoking.

And in Wisconsin, these same forces see the opportunity to kill the labor movement, particularly in the public sector once and for all. Why? Not because unions are so bad or are corrupt, or whatever else they say, but because the public employees' unions are the only force big enough to compete with them on their own turf. If you look at the figures on campaign contributions since the Supreme Court's disastrous decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, you will see that of the top 20 contributors to campaigns, all but two were private corporations and lobbying groups, and those two were public employees' unions. If the misguided governor of Wisconsin succeeds in crippling the public unions in that state, other states will follow and the one force that can provide some counterbalance to the private interests, however small and outnumbered, will be eliminated.

So, to my friends on the Right I have to ask: do you really think a government of big business and the rich, by big business and the rich, and particularly FOR big business and the rich is in your interests? And even if it is in your individual interests, do you think it's in the interests of the country? What should the working class, the poor, and the steadily disappearing middle class do? Move? And do you think this is what the Founders had in mind when they wrote a Constitution that, to a degree unsurpassed by any document before or since, protected the rights of all against the tyranny of a few? Think about it, and be careful what you wish for – you just might get it.

Bonanza Column 224 – The People United

"Something's happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear"

Recent events make those old Buffalo Springfield lyrics from the '70's seem to spring to mind. It's probably too soon to make any solid conclusions, but events in North Africa and the Middle East suggest that something very real may be afoot. Beginning in Tunisia, then spreading to Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, and Bahrain, ordinary people in "the Arab Street" seem to be saying they've had enough of dictatorship, and they aren't going to take it anymore. And, encouragingly, freedom and self-determination seem to be the core of their agenda – not Islamism, not Sharia law, not Socialism, but simply democracy.

As I said, it's too soon to tell how this is going to turn out – maybe the militaries will impose a new dictatorship, maybe militant Islamists will hijack the revolutions, but so far none of that seems to be happening, so maybe, in the words of the old protest chant, "the people united cannot be defeated," and maybe, just maybe, there's a valuable lesson in this for the US – maybe democracy and freedom really are "inalienable rights" and maybe oppression is its own worst enemy in the long run. Maybe the same spirit that impelled the American colonists to rise up in 1776 is inherent in all people and will eventually lead to the demise of dictators, and maybe we can count on that rather than try to impose democracy in countries where there is not yet sufficient pent-up demand for it, resulting in our becoming occupiers instead of liberators.

I'm not saying that we should never intervene – when a dictatorial government becomes aggressive and attempts to spread its rule beyond its own borders, we should defend those who cannot effectively defend themselves – both World Wars, the Korean Conflict, and the first Gulf War come to mind as examples – but there's a big difference between being defenders of freedom where it's endangered and being the self-appointed distributors of democracy where we think it should go, whether those peoples are ready for it or not.

I, for one, am very encouraged by the events in the Arab world. They suggest to me that the drive toward freedom and self-determination is, in fact, something that lives in all people and will eventually win out. Thirty years of Mubarak is a long run, but it ended at a time of the Egyptian people's choosing, and Mubarak's plan to pass on his rule to his son in a dynastic fashion was thwarted. I'm sad that it had to take thirty years, but as is noted in the US Declaration of Independence, "all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." Still, as the Declaration goes on, "when a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." I guess how long people are "disposed to suffer" will vary from culture to culture, but it's worth bearing in mind that the American Colonies were under British rule for the better part of 200 years before they rose up.

What's really interesting to me in light of the events overseas is the current struggle in Wisconsin between the Governor and many people there. At this writing an Egypt-style demonstration (minus the violence) has been going on for days in Madison, teachers are calling in sick and are being supported by parents and students in their resistance to cuts by a governor who took a state with a substantial budget surplus and, through tax cuts to businesses, created a deficit which he now proposes to meet by cutting services such as education and by breaking the state's unions. The people of Wisconsin seem to be uniting, and something is happening there – what it is isn't exactly clear – but maybe, just maybe, the people united won't be defeated – after all, the sixth-seed Packers won the Super Bowl, so anything's possible.

Bonanza Column 223 – TOCCATA Wins Hearts

Each time I've gone to a TOCCATA concert I write about it and each time I promise myself that it will be the last time I do. After all, how many times can readers stand to hear me wax poetic about the incredible contribution that this ensemble of local musical talent provides? And each time I break my promise because the experience just demands the expression of appreciation and acknowledgement.

As I've said before, that TOCCATA brings together so much talent, many if not most of whom have "day jobs" and still give huge amounts of time to rehearsing and learning to play together is in itself a remarkable accomplishment. That James and Nancy Rawie have made the commitment to share their time and efforts and (considerable) talents between Puerto Rico and Tahoe and bring with them world-class talent makes the difference between what could be just one more community orchestra and chorus and what TOCCATA is – a world-class ensemble that breeds talent and performances that go way beyond what you would expect here in the hinterlands of the Sierra Nevada, and that they give so much back to the community makes this a truly great organization in the best tradition of the fine arts.

Last week's TOCCATA offering included the incomparable Elizabeth Pitcairn returning to Tahoe for the third time with her "Red Stradivarius" violin. Through the efforts of the Rawies, Donna Axton, Joy Strotz, Paul Guttman, and others, Ms Pitcairn has formed a bond with the Tahoe community that goes way beyond "one more gig" for her and for us. In addition to five performances with the TOCCATA Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (about which more in a bit), she did two intimate "soirées musicales" in local homes to raise funds for TOCCATA, did two performances/classes in local schools, and gave a master class at UNR. Understand, this is a top young musician who plays all over the world with the best orchestras and who plays a legendary instrument worth millions of dollars, giving her time to school children and university students and, unless she is one heckuvan actress, having a great time doing it.

And the performances – OMG!!! If you have any taste for classical music at all and you haven't been to a TOCCATA performance you are cheating yourself. To be present for this level of performance in venues that are at once intimate and acoustically superb is not an opportunity one gets almost anywhere else. There is a world of difference between hearing the music in, say, Davies Symphony Hall or Lincoln Center in an audience of thousands and being in St. Francis Church or St. Thomas Aquinas Cathedral with hundreds can't be described.

Last week's performances were all Vivaldi pieces – for orchestra, for Chorus, and the familiar "Four Seasons." The Concerto for Two Trumpets complete with baroque trumpets by Paul Lenz, Mark Hoke, and Josh Dunlap was outstanding, the Chorus, with soloists including Anna Helwing, Joy Strotz, Katherine DeBoer, and the redoubtable Stuart Duke brought the Gloria to new heights and then, after the intermission, the centerpiece of the evening – the beautiful and incredibly talented Ms Pitcairn playing the Four Seasons, each "season" preceded by poetry in Italian and English and highlighted by four different gowns each representative of the season in the music. And what music! Playing completely without a score in front of her, her playing was flawless as was that of a chamber orchestra drawn from the TOCCATA strings (and an oboe) along with continuo by David Brock.

And as if all that weren't enough, for an encore Ms Pitcairn performed a piece rarely performed in a concert venue, the Moto Perpetuo (Perpetual Motion) by Nicolo Paganini. This piece, played in about four minutes, includes some 3150 notes – that's an incredible 13 notes per second – is not just an exercise in speed, but also includes melody, phrasing, and everything else that makes great music. Ms Pitcairn shared that she has spent three years learning to play it, in part to overcome a fear of fast pieces. I think she can safely say she's over that fear.

The point of all this adulation is to point out again how incredibly fortunate we in the IV/CB community are to have the kind of talent and opportunities we have here. As much as I love the intimate venues in churches and chapels, it's time we took seriously the possibility of creating a performing arts venue that matches the talent that comes here. In the meantime, if you aren't taking advantage of the opportunities, you should. TOCCATA needs and deserves all our support both in terms of donation and attendance.

Bonanza Column 222 – Olympics in Tahoe? Hmm…

Last Friday there was a presentation at SNC regarding the efforts of the Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition (RTWGC) to bring the 2022 Winter Olympics to our area. I won't say I went into the meeting with an open mind – more like slightly ajar – it seemed to me that this was likely to be yet another instance of Reno interests foisting something on the Lake without regard to what Basin residents want or what is important to us. While not 100% sold, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

Jon Killoran is the CEO of RTWGC and he gives a heckuva presentation. He anticipated most of the concerns of his audience and was open to listening and learning – while clearly committed to his cause, he didn't seem to me to be there to convince, so much as to converse – to have a give and take in which he came across as genuinely eager to learn and to include the concerns of everyone who will be affected by the Games if RTWGC's bid is successful.

The process is a long and complicated one – unlike other countries where bids are government-sponsored and funded, in the US bids are generated by non-profits like RTWGC and these groups compete before the USOC to be the one venue offered by the USOC to the IOC, who make the final decision. Killoran makes a compelling case for having the games here and for the potential long-lasting benefits to our area.

Reno-Tahoe was the runner-up to Salt Lake City in 1998 and in 2002 when Salt Lake made the winning bid. Unlike the Summer Games, there are relatively few areas that can host the Winter competition – basically North America, Europe, and parts of Asia. 2022 seems a long way off, but it is the first bid that is available now, and the process takes quite a while – the USOC will make its selection in 2013 and the IOC will make the final choice in the Summer of 2015, so RTWGC is not starting any too early.

Here's the part that didn't quite sell me: Killoran made extensive use of the results of the games in Salt Lake City in 2002 and Vancouver in 2010 as being most comparable to RTWGC's plans. Both these games had effects on the areas where they were held that were clearly beneficial – the Salt Lake City Airport, for example, is one of the best in the country and was extensively renovated for the games. Other improvements include light rail, highways and other infrastructure, and, of course, increased business before, during, and after the games. I don't question these results – what does bother me, and what I think the Coalition needs to pay close attention to is the differences between the three areas. The Vancouver Metropolitan Area has a population of about 2.25 million people. Salt Lake City Metro is about 1.1 million. Reno is about 420,000 – that's a big difference, so let's take the Vancouver comparison with a grain of salt. Salt Lake is still over twice our size and closer to its mountain venues. I'm not saying this invalidates the comparison, just that it's something we need to take into account.

The big issue, of course, is impact. Killoran showed me impressive awareness and concern for the potential environmental effects of the Games at the Lake. Unlike the Squaw Valley Games in 1960, when all 17 events were held at Squaw, only about 20% of the 87 events in 2022 would be held around the Basin – the rest presumably in and around Reno. Killoran stated an unequivocal commitment that there will be "no white elephants left behind" in the form of overbuilt and unusable venues – whether he and RTWGC can keep that commitment remains to be seen, but at least the commitment is there.

There are those here in the Basin whose first response to any potential large impact, whether it's the Olympics or Boulder Bay, to start from "no" and to demand to be convinced. I'd suggest they reconsider this stance where RTWGC is concerned. If the Coalition's intentions come to fruition, much of what environmentalists around the lake have been advocating will come to pass more quickly and less expensively than they might otherwise – improved infrastructure, better public transportation, lake ferries, all figure in the plans, and would all happen in the next 11 years. New "green" public buildings are almost a certainty, and based on current figures we already have more accommodations than Salt Lake had by a factor of two, so no new tourist venues would be needed. For those concerned about jobs, while not all of the projected 50,000 or so jobs would remain after the games, many would and the run-up to the games would provide extensive employment during a period of economic recovery.

As I said, I'm not 100% sold, but I'm way more positive than I was going into the meeting. I recommend you begin to look into this effort for yourself – start at www.renotahoewintergames.org and go from there; it's worth serious consideration.

Bonanza Column 221 – Let’s Put the Civility Back

I'll start with a clean-up. In my column two weeks ago on the Tucson shootings I had a number of my facts wrong and several readers pointed this out including in a letter to the editor last week. The weapon used was not an automatic, it was a standard hand gun, and the ammunition was not special ammo – it was a normal load. The only thing unusual about the weapon was that it had a clip that held 30 rounds rather than 8 or 9. In my reaction to the shooting I relied on early reports which are hardly ever accurate and I did not further check the facts. I appreciate the readers pointing this out, and apologize – as I've said, I try to keep as close to the facts in these columns as I can, and in this case fell far short.

What did bother me about some of the responses was that the writers seemed to think that the incorrect facts somehow negated or nullified my argument. A 30-round clip is only necessary for self-defense if you are holding off numbers of attackers – it's as aberrant in my opinion as an automatic weapon or special loads. Loughner in Tucson was able to do far more damage with 30 rounds than if he had to stop after 8 or 9 and reload, and a 9-year old girl is dead.

I have no problem with advocacy for any position. The beauty of a free society is that anyone is free to advocate for any cause no matter how outlandish. In the heat of argument it's likely that things will be taken as fact that turn out not to be so – in that case, I believe it is incumbent on the advocate to clear up the discrepancy and to say how the actual facts affect the validity of his or her argument. In this case I think they don't, but I've given you the facts and you can judge for yourself.

I do have a problem when facts are willfully distorted with no accountability on the speaker's part – when Michelle Bachman says that the Founding Fathers abolished slavery and it's not in the Constitution or when Sarah Palin says that the USSR's space program led to the demise of their economic system decades later, that's an attempt to rewrite history and it's both disingenuous and wrong.

I have an even bigger problem when NO facts are presented and demeaning, insulting rhetoric is used to advocate a position. I think most Americans have issues with the government of China and its economic and social policies. Nevertheless, China is a major actor on the world stage. They have one fourth of the world's population, a fast-growing economy, and they hold a great deal of America's debt. For these reasons it makes sense to try to keep the relationship and the lines of communication between our two countries open. That noted liberal Richard Nixon knew that and opened the relationship during his administration and through thick and thin US Presidents since Nixon have done the same. It was in that spirit that President Obama hosted Chinese President Hu Jintao as he would any visiting head of state.

Rush Limbaugh who, whatever you think of him, has a large listening audience, derided the meeting and Hu Jintao personally and then launched into a long string of fake Chinese. Making fun of how another language sounds and using that to imply that the speaker is spouting gibberish is about as boorish and racist as it gets, and a California State Senator of Chinese descent, Leland Yee, demanded an apology. Limbaugh was unrepentant and truculent in his response and within hours Senator Yee's office began receiving death threats.

Responsible advocacy is the right, some would say the duty, of citizens of a free country. Responsible advocacy includes having one's facts straight, cleaning it up when one gets facts wrong, and respecting the dignity and humanity of others, even those with whom we disagree strongly. Ad hominem attacks, racial slurs, demeaning humor have no place in civilized discourse. We can manage the national polity without the input of Limbaugh, Beck, and their ilk, and the American public is smarter than Bachman and Palin seem to think. It's time to put civility back into the debate; if the merits of your argument aren't sufficient to sway your listeners it demeans you, your argument, and your cause to resort to willful distortion, demeaning attacks, and appeals to racism.

Bonanza Column 220 – No One Hears

It's been exactly 50 years since John F. Kennedy gave his first State of the Union address, the speech in which he announced an American commitment to putting a man on the moon and bringing him back safely by the end of the decade of the '60's. It was not an announcement anyone expected – the Soviet Union had recently launched Sputnik, shocking America out of a complacent haze where no one questioned that we were the world leader in science and technology.

It was also not a commitment that anyone thought was reasonable or prudent. There was no real American technology that could be predicted to get us to the moon. There is a story (probably apocryphal, but instructive nonetheless) that Kennedy told that when he got back to his office after the speech there was a line of scientists outside his door. The first one to come in said "it can't be done;" the President asked him why not and was told "we don't have the fuel." So, JFK said, he put that guy in charge of finding the right fuel. The second scientist in said "we don't have the right metals," so he was put in charge of the metals and so on down the line until the last scientist in line who just said "it can't be done."
"So," said Kennedy, "I put him in charge of the whole thing."

That spirit of possibility that sees objections and obstacles as simply means to revealing what is needed to get the job done seems to have waned in the past 50 years. In the '60's it was a direct outgrowth of the technological creativity it took to win World War II. In the early 1940s a group of brilliant physicists and other scientists were brought together to form the Manhattan Project, the object of which was to design a nuclear weapon. Almost all of the scientists had already been working for several years on the problem, with very little progress. In 1941 they were united under the co-direction of General Leslie Groves and Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, and placed under extreme time pressure lest Germany develop the weapon first. These were, for the most part, senior scientists of considerable reputation and in some cases with egos to match. To further complicate matters they were not all in the same place; there were 14 project sites. Groves and Oppenheimer had the task of coordinating this widespread and disparate group, and how they did this remains a case study in managing a diverse group to accomplish an impossible task..

A parallel project was underway at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany under Werner Heisenberg. The German project had personnel who were arguably as brilliant as those in the Manhattan Project, a leader in Heisenberg who was at least Oppenheimer's equal, and the same time pressure, and it took place largely under one roof, yet the Manhattan Project succeeded and the German effort did not. The reason lies in large part in a fundamental difference in how the projects were managed. The German project was run along classical scientific lines—scientists worked alone or in small groups, shared their work in colloquia, and went back to work in their separate labs. In the American project free exchange of information, thinking, and speaking across disciplinary boundaries, brainstorming, and creativity were encouraged, particularly by Oppenheimer who sponsored an environment where ideas could come together and interact. Failure was not only tolerated but encouraged as creative approaches were tried. Learning and rate of adjustment were key values as those failures were turned into discoveries and accelerated execution.

This spirit of free collaboration was carried forward into the Moon project that began under Kennedy and culminated in 1967 when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon's surface. It was only possible because all those involved – civilians, military, Congressional committees, universities – did more than put aside their differences – they used their differences as fuel for creativity, innovation, and high performance.

Today, it seems, it's the differences that matter, not any common values, goals, or objectives we can find. It's not "we're both out for the same goals in service of the same purposes, so let's see how we can find common ground on methods," it's "my methods are the only ones that will work – if we don't do it MY way, even if we reach the objectives, I won't support it. As W.H. Auden said, "each ear is listening to its own hearing, so no one hears.

Bonanza Column 219 – A Little Girl, a Federal Judge, and a Congresswoman

Let's start with full disclosure: I own guns, a rifle, several shotguns, and a hand gun. I am not anti-gun, and I am pro-gun control. By that I mean that I favor restricting gun ownership to weapons and ammunition that can legitimately be used for sport, hunting, or self-defense. I see no reason why anyone would need an automatic weapon or ammunition that can punch a fist-sized hole in an armored glass window.

That's what the Tucson shooter was using – what I would consider a legitimate weapon to have (a Glock 9mm) and ammunition way beyond anything anyone would need for self-protection. I try not to picture the effect of that ammunition on a 9-year old girl or a Congresswoman's head. I try not to, but I'm not succeeding.

I know, I know – he could have done damage with a .22 loaded with target rounds, but not as much damage and not as easily. That's not the point. By caving in consistently to the NRA's loony obsession with having absolutely no restrictions on ownership of guns and ammo, Congress has sent a message that anything goes. Not that murder is OK per se, but that even if you're certifiably nuts, you can freely own enough firepower to do as much damage as your twisted mind desires. That's just wrong.

In case you think that I'm exaggerating the influence of the NRA on our weak-kneed legislators, there has not been a full-time Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and (wait for it) Firearms since George W. Bush was in office. The NRA blocked his attempt at appointing one and has successfully kept the Bureau disempowered ever since. Nobody wants the job because of the unrelenting opposition they will experience from the NRA. Democrat, Republican, it doesn't matter – for the NRA, unrestricted freedom to own weapons of mass destruction (OK, not mass – just 9-year old girl and Federal Judge destruction) supersedes politics, party and, apparently, any rationality at all. Why?

Don't cite the sacred (to the NRA) Second Amendment to me – the Second Amendment is not about gun ownership. It says ""A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." I don't know about you, but I was taught in school that taking a part of a sentence out of the context of the sentence as a whole was dirty pool. The sentence in question says that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" is in the context of the necessity of "a well regulated militia," not that the right to keep and bear arms is sacred, whatever the NRA says.

Now as I said, I'm not quite that strict a constructionist – I believe that people should be allowed to keep and bear arms for reasonable purposes like hunting and protection of their home and family. I believe that the armed forces, including the National Guard (read "militia") should keep and bear whatever arms are deemed necessary for protecting the "security of a free state" including automatic weapons, hand grenades, and flame throwers, but let's not mix up the two. I say again: there is no reason other than a confusion between (as they say in the army) "my rifle and my gun" to keep an AK-47 or armor-piercing ammunition at home. My .38 police special with standard rounds will dispatch any human threat just fine, and my rifle and shotguns are sufficient to deal with any animal threats, rare as they are. If not, the weapon I should be using is 911, not .38 or 30.06.

Get it: A little girl is dead. Her only mistake was wanting to see a Congresswoman who might be a role model for her to enter a career of public service. A distinguished Federal Judge is dead – his only mistake was being in the wrong place at a horribly wrong time. An elected representative of the majority of the people in her district lies in the hospital with brain injuries the extent and effect of which are unknown as yet. Her only mistake was wanting to give her constituents an opportunity to talk with her face to face. And a crazy SOB will plead insanity, and maybe rightly so, but speaking of insanity, how does the NRA plead?