Humboldtian

A new Field Poll reveals that George W. Bush's approval ratings among voters in the Golden State continue to plunge. Only 28 percent of us think that Bush is doing a good job, while 64 percent believe Bush is doing a bad job in the White House.

Eight percent of voters polled had no opinion....how is that possible?

Bush's approval ratings here in California have been under 30 percent for nearly 15 months (since September 2006). Not even Richard Nixon acheived this low in California. Nixon's approval rating nose-dived to 24 percent just before he resigned from the presidency in 1974, after being caught-up in the Watergate scandal. But not even Nixon rated such low approval for the length of time Bush has achieved in California.

California GOP spokesman Hector Barajas told the Sacramento Bee he blames negative politicking by the Democrats for Bush's woeful image in California.

Is the California Republican Party really that out of touch with voters in this state? Perhaps that explains why Republican party membership is on the decline statewide....and here in Humboldt also I suspect. I know a couple of local residents who have changed their voter registration from Republican to "decline to state." Members of my extended family who have been registered Republicans for decades are bailing on the GOP also.

The California Republican Party faces some tough times if its message doesn't change. It stands to lose even more ground to the Democrats in the Legislature (when I first typed that word it came out Leftistlature) and in Congress. Last year an unknown Democrat defeated Republican Richard Pombo for the 11th Congressional District (Tracy, near Stockton) seat in Congress. That defeat sent shockwaves through the California Republican establishment. Just a few years earlier, Pombo held a hammerlock on that seat, in a district that has always voted Republican.

But apparently the GOP prefers to live the State of Denial. Because it appears the party has no plan to change. It is increasingly at odds with Republican Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger, who is more aligned with the Democrats in the Legislature than members of his own party in the Legislature.

The California GOP should be listening to Republican faithfuls such as George Sauerbier, a 59-year-old Republican who lives in Truckee (the High Sierra). "I feel that the war (in Iraq) is nothing more than a show to enhance the profits of big corporations," Sauerbier, who at first supported the war as a crusade against Islam, told the Bee. Sauerbrier lives in the 4th Congressional District, once a lock for the Republicans, like the 1st District (Humboldt's congressional district) is a lock for the Democrats.

Now the 4th District is tottering, on the verge of falling to the Democrats because the incumbent, John Doolittle (never has a name been so fitting), is caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Last year (before the probe into his Abramoff connections began) Abramoff narrowly fought off a challenge by Democrat Charlie Brown. Brown's credentials as a retired Air Force colonel overshadow his caricature name, and in 2008 he is likley to oust Doolittle, if Doolittle runs again.

Doolittle is under pressure from the GOP not to run again so the Republicans can put up another candidate without Doolittle's baggage. So far Doolittle has been defiant, refusing his party's request. But even if another Republican defeats Doolittle in the primary, my bet is still on Brown in the November general election. Losing this seat to the Democrats was unthinkable just a few years ago.

It will be worth watching how the California Republican Party conducts itself in the coming election year.

Posted by Andy Bird at 06:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

In one of the more curious storylines emerging from the Palco bankruptcy drama, the billionaire Fisher family of San Francisco, founders of the hip-clothing-super-chain-store, the Gap, wants to invest $200 million into Palco, but only if the judge removes the company from the control of Maxxam's Charles Hurwitz, and puts it under the control of the Fishers' company, Mendocino Redwood Co., based in Ukiah.

The proposal emerged late Thursday in a last-minute court filing before a Friday hearing in federal court in Texas, where the Palco bankruptcy case is being heard. The Times-Standard's John Driscoll touches on the Fisher family proposal in his story this morning about the Friday hearing. The San Francisco Chronicle's Tom Abate, a former Arcata resident and one of the co-founders of the North Coast Journal (I believe), has more information about the Fisher family proposal in today's Chronicle.

The Fisher family proposes to restore Palco's heavily logged forests, in contrast to Palco's proposal to sell of huge tracts of its forest to developers to build exclusive estates that would be marketed to the mega wealthy. All of Palco's creditors have scorned this proposal.

The Garberville-based Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) supports the plan to consolidate Palco with Mendocino Redwood, which the Sierra Club has praised for its forest management practices. Mendocino Redwood has also been "accredited" by the Forest Stewardship Council, a group that audits timber companies' logging practices.

However, Palco is apparently not impressed with all this praise for Mendocino Redwood Co.

"I would say that we are both good stewards of the land," Palco general counsel Frank Bacik told Abate.

Posted by Andy Bird at 06:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This may not be news in local real estate circles, but a Eureka Realtor has launched a FSBO website: eurekafsbo.com. FSBO, pronounced "fizzbow," of course stands for "for sale by owner," the four words Realtors hate the most. And it does surprise me this is the work of a Realtor, Dean Kessler of RMK Realty, an active member of the Humboldt Association of Realtors. Why did he do it? Well being that there are no listings on the site, which offers to list FSBOs for free, I didn't bother to call and ask.

Home sellers who go the FSBO route do so to avoid paying a commission to a real estate professional. FSBO websites serve as an alternative to the Realtor-controlled Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The nation's most successful local FSBO is in Madison, Wisconsin, which claims homes marketed on its website (for a flat fee) sold for a higher price on average than homes sold through the local MLS. It claims that more than 2,000 homes have been marketed through FSBO Madison each of the past two years, and that the sales rate is 72 percent. Impressive.

A close friend who is a local Realtor, one of the few busy ones in this market, didn't know about eurekafsbo.com and doesn't seem concerned.

"I can see how successful it is with the number of properties on the site," he said.

Posted by Andy Bird at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was walking through the parking lot of the Times-Standard yesterday morning on my way to a meeting, when I bumped into a T-S executive who had read my diatribes in the local blogosphere about Dean Singleton, CEO of the parent company that owns the Times-Standard, Media News Group (MNG). My blogosphere rants were about working conditions in the Times-Standard newsroom, where I used to toil, and Dean Singleton's reputation of running his newspapers like sweatshops.

Marcy Burstiner, an HSU assistant professor of journalism and veteran Bay Area journalist, also knows Singleton by reputation. Burstiner writes a column on the local media for the North Coast Journal. In her latest piece, Pray for the Reporter, Burstiner writes:

I avoided working for Singleton, not because of politics but because of his disregard for quality, his focus on newspapers as product and his tendency to pay reporters little, work them hard and bust their unions.

Though MNG and Singleton are based in Denver, the company owns something like 25 percent of California's daily newspapers. And that was before Singleton bought two of the Bay Area's largest dailies last year: The San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times. Singleton dominates the Bay Area market now.

Back to the conversation I had with the Times-Standard executive yesterday. He took issue with what I had written about Singleton, going so far as to say he considered Singleton a "visionary."

Well, now comes the revelation that Singleton is trying to bust the union that represents newsroom employees at the cluster of East Bay newspapers his company has owned for decades, known as the Alameda Newspaper Group (ANG).

So tell me, how is union-busting visionary?

Times-Standard Editor Rich Somerville has also tried to convince me that Singleton has turned a corner, that as he ages he is concerned about his legacy and is working to improve the journalism product of this newspapers.

So I ask Rich the same question: How does union-busting improve the journalism product at MNG?

More to come....the rest of the story.

Here is the rest of the story, as I see it:

The SF Weekly story relates how the Northern California Media Workers Guild is taking on Singleton, with help from a $500,000 endowment from the national Newspaper Guild, which views this a test battle between newsrooms and management in the daily newspaper industry, which is in sad decline across the nation in the Infotainment Age.

In typical fashion for an alternative weekly, the writer portrays the union as the virtuous warrior up against the omnipotent and evil empire that is MNG, with Singleton as its reviled head. I was once a member of that union, (when it was called the “newspaper” guild) while working at a sizeable NorCal daily. While I do support the guild in what is a fight to the death with Singleton, I feel it's too little too late.

The truth is that the guild has not been very strong or very motivated for the past generation. And its past will hurt it in this battle, while the daily newspaper industry as a whole is fighting for its future.

When I entered journalism almost 20 years ago to this day, newspapers were already under assault from broadcast media – television and radio, which was eating away at advertising revenue that was the dominion of the once-almighty dailies. In my opinion, chains such as Knight-Ridder, which owned the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times until Singleton bought them last year, and McClatchy, which owns the three Bees in the Central Valley (Sacramento, Modesto and Fresno), could have busted the union any time they wanted.

But, in contrast to Singleton and MNG, these two chains invested in their core product: journalism. Having their newsrooms unionized fit their philosophy, the image they wanted to portray. These companies had happy newsrooms with well-paid staffers. These were the jobs that NorCal journalists coveted. (McClatchy acquired Knight-Ridder last year, in the deal that sent the Mercury News and the CoCo Times to Singleton’s ownership.)

Case in point: The CoCo Times, which was a family owned newspaper until Knight Ridder bought it some time in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, has never had a unionized newsroom. The Guild failed to organize the Times' newsroom, even when owned by a union-friendly corporation. That's because Times newsroom staffers earned significantly more, and enjoyed more pleasant working conditions, than the unionized staffers who toiled in Singleton’s slave shop East Bay dailies, which included once-great Oakland Tribune. But it was a mistake.

And this is why I have a beef with the Guild, which in my opinion has been guilty of short-sighted leadership and complacency for decades. If the Guild had organized the CoCo Times newsroom years ago, Singleton would not be in a position today to bust the union at ANG.

Most of my journalism career was spent at smaller-market, nonunion shops. My impression of the Guild in NorCal is a union run by those who worked at the Bay Area’s largest newspapers, who earned good livings, and did not do enough to help those in nonunion shops. Case in point: the Times-Standard. Here’s a fact: The Times-Standard, under MNG's mandate, pays its newsroom employees poorly (bring it, newsroom!). Here’s another fact: The Times-Standard earns a nice profit, in part because it gets away with substandard pay. More fact: The Times-Standard sends those profits to MNG.

I suspect MNG's two new Bay Area newspapers, where most of the staffers work under a union contract (the Mercury News), are still not profitable.

If so, the reporters and editors here in Eureka earn less while their newspaper earns a profit, only to see that profit get funneled to their Bay Area colleagues who earn substantially more under union contracts but produce unprofitable newspapers.

This is not just a Dean Singletonism. It’s a failure of the Guild, for having ignored small-market newspapers like the Times-Standard for decades, in addition to failing to organize the CoCo Times. And I know T-S newsroom staffers have looked to the Guild for help in the past, but were politely refused. If the Guild had undertaken to organize more newspapers and other journalism outlets (such as Bay City News Service in San Francisco) over the past several decades, it would be a much more powerful entity today, in a much better position to take on Singleton.

I wish the Guild nothing but success in this fight. Many of my San Jose State journalism school classmates work at the Mercury News, CoCo Times and ANG newspapers. But I am skeptical. And I am disappointed that once again the Times-Standard is being ignored.

The SF Weekly story puffs up the union’s campaign, "One Big BANG: A One-Guild Universe," which is an effort to organize 11 of Singleton’s ANG newspapers. Hello! Look up here on the North Coast. The Times-Standard, I believe, is a part of ANG under MNG’s structure. It is Singleton’s largest California daily north of the Bay Area. Why is it being left out in the cold? Again.

Posted by Andy Bird at 05:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Starting Jan. 1 HIV screening will become a routine part of medical exams in California, under a new law authored by North Coast Assemblywoman Patty Berg. Currently, patients have to consent to the test in writing. But the new law will lump HIV testing in with screens for maladies such as diabetes or high cholesterol. The new law does not force anybody to be screened for HIV, however. It will be added to routine health exams for patients from 13 to 64, unless they are their guardian specifically declines the screen. Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that HIV screening be added to routine exams, such as a patient’s annual physical.

Assembly Bill 682, which Berg, a Democrat from Eureka, coauthored with Bonnie Garcia, a Republican from Cathedral City, in rural Riverside County, received a near-unanimous vote in both houses of the Legislature. The only legislator to vote against the bill was Dennis Hollingsworth, a Republican state senator from Temecula, also in Riverside County.

Posted by Andy Bird at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have a question for Fortuna City Councilman Dean Glaser. Glaser reportedly said at last night's Council meeting in the Friendly City that he intends to cancel his subscription to the Times-Standard because the T-S had the audacity to suggest that Fortuna Mayor John Campbell, embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal with Palco that is being investigated by state authorities, should resign.

Dean: If the FPPC finds Campbell in violation of state law and issues sanctions against him, are you going to restart your subscription to the T-S, and announce it at a City Council meeting?

The Dean Glaser I remember from my days as a newsman covering Fortuna politics was a good man. A bit eccentric, yes. But not petty and knee-jerk.

We'd better not catch you reading the T-S online.

Posted by Andy Bird at 07:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

For the third time in the past year and a half I had to visit the DMV office in Eureka. Each time, they took care of my business, including renewing my drivers license on one visit, in under 20 minutes. I'm outraged that I'm being deprived of my birthright to grouse about the DMV being the rudest, most-inefficient bureaucracy in government. Yesterday's visit, I only got to sit next to the urine-reeking guy for three minutes max before my number was called. Getting in and out of the DMV in under three hours is un-Californian! Next time I'm going to do my DMV business at the AAA office down the street from me, where they haven't forgotten my right to stand in line.

Posted by Andy Bird at 05:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The Democratically controlled California State Assembly approved Republican Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger’s $14.4 billion healthcare reform bill today, over the objections of Republicans in the Legislature. The vote was split down party lines, 46-31. No Republican voted for the bill. North Coast Assemblywoman Patty Berg, a Democrat, spoke on behalf of the bill on the Assembly floor. The bill goes to the state Senate, and if approved there, to voters in November.

Don Perata, President Pro Tem of the state Senate, also controlled by Democrats, was noncommittal in his comments about the bill during the governor’s press conference about an hour ago. Perata has expressed skepticism about the cost of the bill because the state is projected to have a $14 billion budget deficit in the next fiscal year.

The bill has support from some major labor unions and large California corporations. And while Republicans in the Assembly and Senate are firing off press releases charging the governor and the Assembly Democrats with fiscal irresponsibility, the bill does have the backing of some other high-profile members of the California GOP.

Fresno Mayor Alan Autry, an ultraconservative Republican and like the governor a former actor, made a moving speech in favor of the bill during the press conference, recalling how his father died from poor after-surgery care in a hospital because he didn’t have health insurance.

The bill would require everybody in California to have health insurance, through employment, government programs, or private plans.

The system would be financed by a new tax on hospitals, an increase in the tobacco tax, billions of dollars in federal matching funds and a payroll tax on employers.

More here.

Posted by Andy Bird at 05:40 PM | Permalink

Rio Dellan Don Ziperstein complains in a letter to the Times-Standard this morning that Caltrans’ installation of a center median divider on the freeway between Fortuna and Eureka is inconveniencing drivers. Ziperstein notes that miles and miles of freeway are shut down to one lane in each direction while Caltrans works on only one short section at a time.

I don’t mind the inconvenience. I’m worried about somebody getting killed. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a major or fatal accident yet on this stretch of freeway because of this project. Ziperstein notes that everybody is forced to drive 55 mph for some 14 miles. We know what happens when motorists who want to drive 75 are forced to drive 55 behind a long line of cars in a single lane.

I, too, am surprised at the number of miles Caltrans has shut down while crews appear to work on the project piecemeal. But what’s even more perplexing is the amount of time Caltrans has had these traffic controls in place. Much of this stretch has been down to one lane for at least six months.

The center median is supposed to make the freeway safer. I don’t know. It appears to me to be a colossal waste of money. Is this project really a priority? The traffic volume behind the Redwood Curtain isn’t that high. Aren't there other stretches of California highway where the funding for this project is better spent? How about repairing the Ferndale-Mattole road?

Most of all, I wonder if Caltrans is creating far more of a hazard for the months it’s spending installing this median than this median will ever protect drivers from.

Posted by Andy Bird at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Buzz around the community says the subprime-loan fiasco has struck at the heart of Security National, the mega-successful, family-owned, Eureka-based corporation of Rob and Cherie Arkley that specializes in acquiring, servicing and reselling underperforming real estate loans.

This may explain the recent rather substantial cutbacks at SN’s biggest money drain: The Eureka Reporter.

The way I hear it, the subprime meltdown has flooded the market with the loans that Security National trades in, deflating the product’s value. And credit for those who invest in this commodity has dried up.

Please, if anybody can help explain this complex industry, and SN’s role in it, by all means enlighten us in the comment section. Thank you.

I just hope this doesn’t mean the Eureka Co-op has to move out of its bon ton new digs.

I also wonder how this affects SN’s attempt to muscle a Home Depot onto the Balloon Track. Why is it taking so long for SN’s people to bring the proposal to the City for a vote?

I had intended to post a lengthy entry on this blog on why I believe Rob Arkley is scaling back the Eureka Reporter now. But what is the point, really? It’s already been blogged and discussed.

Posted by Andy Bird at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (23)

North Coast Journal Editor Hank Sims, in his weekly column The Town Dandy, takes the county health department to task for the way it disseminated information, or failed to, in the recent norovirus outbreak at Baywood golf and country club. The health department issued a press release but failed to identify Baywood as the location where the outbreak was traced to.

When Sims asked why, Public Health Director Alexandra Wineland responded in an e-mail: “Revealing the name of the facility may give a false impression that there is something wrong with the facility, and that is not necessarily the case. We would only reveal the name of the facility if it was necessary to inform people that they should seek treatment. There is no treatment for the suspected norovirus.”

What? Wasn’t county health trying to locate everyone who became sick after eating at Baywood to aid its investigation into how the norovirus was introduced to the country club? Doesn’t keeping the public in the dark about the location of the outbreak hinder county health’s efforts? Why even bother with a press release then? If I am not getting something here, people please let me know.

Baywood’s president Jim Hoff (I so wanted to add an “a”) apparently saw it differently. He made no attempt to cover up his club as the source of the outbreak, and he’s been quite open to the media.

When the press release went to the media, the Times-Standard did some reporting and identified Baywood in its story the following day. The Eureka Reporter just rewrote the press release, and didn’t even try to identify the source of the outbreak.

“In the aftermath, some people assumed that the county was simply covering up for Baywood. As it turns out, those people are more or less right,” Sims writes.

I don’t know if anyone at county health was trying to protect Baywood. But it does have a bad odor to it.

County health is cracking down hard on an Arcata “cafeteria,” the Sai Om Shree at 11th & K , filing a criminal complaint charging the proprietor with eight misdemeanor counts. The Sai Om Shree is a mysterious place. Nobody but the proprietor, Steven Gasparas, knows exactly where the Indian food served there is prepared. It’s not cooked on site. What’s in the food is apparently as mysterious, according to the Arcata Eye. And it’s not entirely clear what, or if, the Sai Om Shree charges for its food. But if you peruse the local blogosphere, well, apparently a lot of poor people eat there.

Brian Cox, director of environmental health, charges the Sai Om Shree is violating health codes. I’m sure he’s right. However nobody has gotten sick eating at Sai Om Shree, that we know of. But at least 166 people, at last count, and probably many more than that, got sick eating at Humboldt’s most swank country club.

Apples and oranges? Yes. But it still has the stench of classism to many in Humboldt County. Failing to identify Baywood in a press release but going after Sai Om Shree in a very public way reinforces this perception.

Posted by Andy Bird at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

As the Times-Standard reported, the North Coast Co-op has hired David Lippman, long-time advertising director and one-time publisher for the T-S, to become its new GM. Lippman will assume command from Howard Julien, who has been filling in as GM since the departure of Len Mayer in March.

I know David Lippman slightly from working at the Times-Standard several years ago, and can report he's a pretty good guy....for an advertising man. He's mellow, easy to talk to and has a sense of humor. This probably explains why he didn't last long as the Times-Standard's publisher, a job he was tapped to fill a few years ago after Gerry Adolph left. I don't recall precisely how long he lasted in that job, but suddenly one day about a year ago the T-S announced it was hiring a new publisher and that Lippman would remain with the company in a newly created position, which they titled "Vice President of advertising for Eureka Humboldt Publishing Group." Whew. I don't know how you fit all that on a business card. I have always suspected that Lippman just didn't like being a newspaper publisher. You have to be somewhat cold-hearted, especially working for Dean Singleton, and there's a certain amount of pretentiousness associated with the position, in addition to the required membership at the Ingomar Club.

I didn't know Lippman had a background in co-ops. The T-S reports Lippman "grew up in a New York City co-op community," and that his first job in Humboldt County some 30 years ago was at the co-op here, stocking produce I'm told.

He will take over a co-op that is experiencing some tension between the current board and some long-time members. There are hard feelings about the Co-op doing business with Evil Empire in order to get a gleaming new building in Eureka. Reportedly, while it was negotiating to get the building, the board quashed membership input on the deal.

Then there is the Coca-Cola conflict. The progressive element of the Co-op's membership has a long list of grievances with Coca-Cola the corporation, from the use of GMOs to alleged human rights violations, and wants the Co-op to drop Coke's entire line, which includes Odwalla products by the way (thanks Chris!). In compromise, the Co-op has signs up advising people of 10 reasons why they might want to boycott Coca-Cola.

The complaint I hear most often is the Co-op has become a high-end health food store, its prices way out of reach for a large segment of the community, especially families with moderate or low incomes.

This I can say with confidence: The Co-op has a much better softball team than the Times-Standard. I've played for the latter and against the former.

I'm told Lippman won't start his new job until February. He's given the T-S a month's notice, then wants to burn some vacation time before taking over in Arcata. He's going to need it.

Posted by Andy Bird at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Richard Marks, (Samoa Softball), reports that his former campaign manager, Richard Mostranski, is going to run for Humboldt County Supervisor, District 3. John Woolley currently holds that seat, which represents Arcata, Freshwater, Kneeland and Manila and is up for election in 2008.

Mostranski managed two losing campaigns in the 2006 elections: those of Richard Marks and Nancy Flemming, both of whom sought to unseat District 4 Supervisor Bonnie Neely. Marks, with Mostranski co-managing his campaign with Shane Brinton, finished third behind Neely and Flemming in the June 2006 primary election – out of the running. Then Mostranski managed Flemming’s campaign in the runoff against Neely, a race that Neely won by 191 votes to retain her seat.

Mostranski went extremely negative toward Neely in the latter campaign. Presuming Woolley will run again, it will be worth watching how Mostranski approaches this campaign, if indeed it comes to be.

Some consider Woolley vulnerable because of his connection to the North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA), which has received bad press lately from lawsuits and local trail advocates pushing to have the rail right-of-way abandoned in favor of a bayside trail. Last month Pat Higgins trounced incumbent Charles Olliver in the race for the Harbor Commission’s Division 5 seat. Olliver, an advocate for the railroad, had held that seat for 16 years.

Higgins campaigned on a platform skeptical to the return of the railroad and the development of Humboldt Bay as a container ship port. Some political observers see Higgins stunning victory as a shift in public opinion about the future of the bay, away from commercial development associated with the railroad and toward development as a conservation and recreation destination.

Woolley, who has sat on the NCRA's board for years, is a staunch advocate for the railroad and container port development.

While campaigning for Flemming last year, Mostranski tried, but failed, to pin a mega-controversial county redevelopment proposal that eventually bombed on Neely. The most vehement opposition to that plan, however, came from Manila, where Woolley lives. But Woolley opportunely declared himself ineligible for discussion of the plan, citing a conflict of interest because Manila was prominently featured in the proposed redevelopment areas. He left the Supes chambers whenever it was discussed. That tells me Woolley has every intention of running again.

Posted by Andy Bird at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

It’s worse than we thought. The growing disaffection within the Republican Party caused by the Bush presidency threatens to split the GOP like an atom in a nuclear reactor, if that hasn’t been accomplished already. It’s especially true here in California, evidenced by a recent dust-up in San Francisco between mainstream Republicans (MSRs) and supporters of GOP renegade Ron Paul. The SF Chronicle’s Matier and Ross (scroll down) wrote about it earlier this week. The free-for-all occurred about a week ago at a straw poll dinner that was rigged for GOP presidential hopeful Fred Thompson.

The Paul People, indignant they weren’t invited, crashed the dinner then taped the quarrel-fest they incited. The video is hard to watch and long, but you can hear a number of “Paultards” (so-dubbed by Wonkette) screaming about the downfall of the Republican Party.

It will be interesting to see how much of a force Ron Paul and his people will be in the presidential election. I don’t think Paul has a chance to win the Republican nomination. Not with the attitude of some of his people, who one MSR I’m close to compares to the Nazis' Sturmabteilung. Will Ron Paul be Ross Perot redux? Or will his web-fueled campaign crash and burn like Howard Dean’s in 2004?

I plan to blog more about the Ron Paul phenomenon in the coming week.

Posted by Andy Bird at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Friday, Dec. 14, 5 a.m. The first thing you need to know about this blog is that it is still under construction. We’re all still bungling our way through this, learning how to use the platform, “Moveable Type.” The layout is rather plain right now. But as we figure out the program, this blog’s appearance will change substantially; it will boast more attitude.

I like politics. I like history. Thus, the Wasp. The Wasp was a popular Victorian age political mag that entertained the masses in San Francisco with biting, irreverent political and social commentary and outraged the barons of the elite who were often the Wasp’s victims. Among the Wasp’s many editors was fabled writer Ambrose Bierce, author of the Devil’s Dictionary, whose acid-dipped pen helped bring down railroad tyrant Colis P. Huntington and defang his reviled Southern Pacific monopoly, which maintained a chokehold on California politics for much of the 19th century.

“The Wasp buzzed about the powerful and the pretentious, stinging both with relish,” reads the Bancroft cameo of the Wasp. We are blessed in Humboldt with no shortage of the powerful and the pretentious. But at the Wasp, we will also take on politics on the state, national, and international level.

Topics coming in the next week include: The great divide in the Republican Party, the Marina Center proposal and its perplexing lack of housing, an exposé of GOP renegade Ron Paul, how courting those who vote by mail decided the outcome of Eureka’s last election, my take on why the Eureka Reporter is scaling down after it served its owner’s political purpose, and voter disgust over mixing presidential campaigning with the holiday season.

Comments will be allowed. I would like for commenters to at least use a blogonym. But anonymous comments will be allowed. The usual rules apply. If you disagree with what is said here, attack the argument, not the person making the argument. Name-calling only serves to undermine your credibility and dissuades others from your point of view. Times-Standard Web Editor James Faulk will serve as bouncer for T-S blogs. If a row gets out of hand on this blog, you will have to deal with Mr. Faulk.

You can format comments with these html tags (thanks Heraldo!)

I am a 50-year-old white male who lives in Eureka. After a long career in journalism, including a stint as a Times-Standard reporter, I dabbled in lobbying/government relations and in political campaign consulting. I now make my primary living as a technical writer.

Enjoy the Wasp. I know I will.

-Andrew Bird

Posted by Andy Bird at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)