You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 8, 2008.
Is he admitting we’re headed for a police state?
A few weeks back I posted about a poll which suggested Proposition 8 was down significantly. Well, the opponents of equality of marriage raised a big chunk of change and bombarded the airwaves with ads aimed particularly at working class and minority communities. The amendment to the Constitution which would exempt marriage from privacy rights is ahead in the most recent poll.
I’m wondering if the proposition opponents got a little complacent. Some donations and volunteer time might be in order. I also think the “no” campaign needs some fresh ads. The one they’ve been showing is nice, but I think they need to attack some of their opponents claims a little bit. Here are five things you can do to help.
It would really break some very good peoples’ hearts to let this slip away.
Photo comes from Bradblog.
The Times Standard has the numbers for July 1 to September 30. Obviously it doesn’t account for any holdover money from before, or any fund raising this last weekend.
During the three months period, Rodoni’s campaign contributions totaled $42,048, with Clendenen at $32,063, which includes $5,000 that the candidate loaned to his campaign.Former KMUD News Director Estelle Fennell tallied $8,542 in cash contributions.
The biggest difference comes in the amount of individual contributions. Rodoni’s campaign reports 10 donations at or above $1,000.
Some of the top donors are named in the article. Clif and Estelle have both pledged to honor the Measure T limits even though a federal court has issued a stay of the law. I don’t know if any of Johanna’s business donations would be disqualified under the ordinance.
There is a big turnaround for this cycle of the election between Clif and Estelle. Estelle had been second in fund raising for the June election, in my opinion largely because many people had written off Clif as a serious contender early on. I suspect the June results account for the present status, whether it’s fair or not. And Clif has held several very successful fundraising events.
Nomination by the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council and Local Tribes to Memorialize the Bear Gulch Bridge
The purpose of this email is to clarify the position of the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council (“the Council”) and local Tribes of the region as regards memorializing the Bear Gulch Bridge located on the road between Garberville and Redway. There seems to be some confusion about our nomination and whether local Tribes should be “allowed” to participate in this process. This email explains our nomination and why local Tribes feel they are entitled to participate in this process.
The Council is a nonprofit Tribal organization comprised of 10 federally recognized Tribes that retain important cultural, ancestral, and historic ties to southern Humboldt and northern Mendocino Counties. Tribal families who are enrolled with the Council’s member Tribes trace their lineages to specific villages and other geographic locations in and around the Garberville area and continue to use the region for gathering basketmaking materials and traditional foods and medicines, as well as to conduct ceremonies within the ancestral home of their ancestors. The land’s original Tribal peoples suffered many severe injustices, but the survivors and their descendants never relinquished their heritage and their connections to their ancestral lands.
The Council has been engaged in cultural conservation and education work since its founding in 1986, has completed numerous projects in Mendocino and Humboldt, and has employed over 100 Indian and non-Indian residents in forestry, watershed rehabilitation, fisheries restoration, and cultural resource monitoring. More than 60 of these employees are Wailaki Indian people. In 1997, the Council established the first InterTribal Wilderness area in the U.S. when it acquired 3,845 acres of land adjacent to the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park. This land is permanently protected by unique conservation easements that protect this land in perpetuity. Soon, the Council will be opening three public hiking trails and campgrounds on the InterTribal Sinkyone land that will connect Usal Road with various points along the Lost Coast Trail.
In 2004, local residents of Southern Humboldt who are aware of local Tribes’ connections to this area contacted the Council and requested us to participate in the nomination of the bridge, which had recently been reconstructed. At that time we began contacting Tribal members and researching the history of Native peoples in this area to see whether we could offer a nomination that would serve to honor indigenous peoples. Initially, we proposed that the bridge be named Shaashkok, which in the Sinkyone language means “Grizzly Bear Creek”.
As this issue continued to be discussed and more research was conducted, we expanded our initial idea so that it would honor more than just the Sinkyone people. Several distinct Tribal peoples inhabited and interacted with each other for thousands of years in the area in and around the bridge. After the arrival of the first white settlers, most surviving members of these Tribal groups were relocated to nearby reservations.
Because of these and other reasons, we changed our initial nomination to a new nomination that would honor all these groups equally and impartially. Our nomination proposes to:
1) Formally and permanently recognize “Bear Gulch Bridge” as the official name of the bridge.
2) Formally and permanently memorialize the bridge with a plaque on a nearby boulder that lists the words for “Bear Creek” in the Native languages of this region’s original Tribal peoples who historically lived, traveled through, or traded in the vicinity of the bridge. These Tribal peoples include Bear River, Cahto, Coast Yuki, Lassik, Mattole, Nongatl, Sinkyone, Wailaki, Wiyot, and Yuki.
After considerable research, Humboldt County’s Department of Public Works is now recommending to the Board of Supervisors that the Council’s nomination of a multi-Tribal plaque be approved as an all-inclusive and legitimate way to honor the Indian Tribes and peoples of this region. Public Works has found that the Council’s nomination meets 5 out of the 6 County criteria that are used for evaluating proposed bridge names. The matter will be heard on Tuesday morning October 7 around 9:15 at the Board of Supervisors chambers at the County Courthouse.
While another nomination has been proposed (“Wailaki Pass”), there is far from unanimous support for that proposal. None of the local Tribes support this nomination, largely for the reason that it excludes the Sinkyone and other Tribal peoples that have historic connections to the area immediately surrounding the bridge. A number of individuals who signed the original petition are now supporting our multi-Tribal plaque nomination instead, as they believe it is fair and impartial in that it includes the Wailaki, the Sinkyone, and their immediate neighbors.
It is important for people to understand that the Council’s proposal is not the idea of just a single person, as recent emails and blogs incorrectly and unfairly suggest. Also, it is highly inaccurate to characterize our nomination as being somehow denigrating to the Wailaki people. Many Wailaki Tribal members work closely with us and stand in support of our nomination. Many non-Native residents of the Garberville-Redway area also support our nomination. We emphasize that this nomination is being proposed by a Tribal consortium, as well as by individual local Tribes retaining valid and longstanding ties to Southern Humboldt. Together, we are proposing this nomination as a way to include all Tribal peoples peoples in the area surrounding the bridge equally so that none are left out.
This intertribal nomination is a way to respectfully commemorate the cultural history of the Tribes and Native peoples of this region. The multi-Tribal plaque provides a positive expression, from the Tribal perspective, of local Native peoples’ cultural and linguistic diversity and is a reasonable way of resolving the longstanding controversy surrounding the Bear Gulch Bridge.
Thank you,
InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council
P.O. Box 1523
Ukiah, CA 95482
(707) 468-9500
Boring. Brokaw performed like an idiot. The question about whether Russia is still an “evil empire” was about the most stupid question this season.
I thought this format was supposed to allow for free exchange.
I guess Obama wins the push. But it almost put me to sleep. And I’m easy to please when it comes to this stuff.
Addendum: Yep. Obama won. Yay.
Second addendum: The “that one” remark is making the news.
The Republicans want more:
The most memorable line of the night belonged to John McCain. McCain pointed out that “That One” vote for the 05 energy bill. Look for Republicans to note in coming days that “That One” also voted for higher taxes at least 94 times; “That One” has associations with unrepentant terrorists, etc…
Third addendum: Lots of conservatives unhappy with McCain tonight. Another one.
And more.
Is it over?
Fourth addendum: Robert Gibbs vs. Sean Hannity on guilt by association. Ayers. The anti-Semite Hannity had on his show the other night. Quite the exchange.
Note also the “text message” poll results of Fox watchers at the bottom of the screen. The conservative pundits may think it’s over, but the rank and file of their movement are still holding on.
Fifth addendum: Obama’s moment – what many of his supporters were aching for him to do in the first debate.
But not many of these conservatives think McCain lost.
Sixth addendum: About that “three million dollar projector” -
I am an Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Chicago (the University that today has added yet another Nobel Prize winner in the sciences for the US). I would like to comment on Sen. McCain’s statement during the today’s debate that Sen. Obama has earmarked “$3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Ill. My friends, do we need to spend that kind of money?”
The way Sen. McCain has phrased it suggests that Sen. Obama approved spending $3 million on an old-fashioned piece of office equipment (overhead projector).
The 3 million is actually for an upgrade of the SkyTheater – a full dome projection system, which is probably the main attraction of the Adler Planetarium and is quite sophisticated and impressive piece of equipment.I find it appalling that Sen. McCain would call a science education tool for public (largely children) for a historic planetarium with millions of visitors a year a wasteful earmark. The planetarium’s focus, as stated on their website (http://adlerplanetarium.org) is “on inspiring young people, particularly women and minorities, to pursue careers in science.” Is an investment in such public facility at the time when US competitiveness in math and sciences is a constant source of alarm a waste?
“American’s ability to compete in a 21st Century economy rests on our continued investments in math and science education,” said Rep. Brian Baird, Chairman of the Research and Science Education Subcommittee in Congress, after the passage of The 21st Century Competitiveness Act of 2007.
Considering such investments “wasteful earmarks” today, even in the face of the financial crisis, will severely cripple US economic competitiveness in the increasingly high-tech world down the road.
— Andrey Kravtsov, Chicago, IL
Eighth addendum: By the way, the money never came through. Here’s a lot more info.
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