WASTING ONE MILLION DOLLARS

Santa Clara County is about to spend ONE MILLION DOLLARS on REBRANDING the county. Worse, they have hired a NEW YORK firm to rebrand a CALIFORNIA county.

May I make some suggestions for spending the million dollars in a way that will automatically rebrand the county.*

ANNOUNCE THAT THE FUTURE REQUIRES JUSTICE FOR ALL.

Equalize the funding of the public defender and the district attorney, so that each public attorney on both sides of a criminal matter can draw on equal resources. Many people get convicted just because they are poor and inarticulate.

Fund the legal services corporation to provide legal services to those too poor to get legal services. In my experience, providing effective legal help for the poor fixes problems that affect us all.

Fund a housing program aimed at helping the poor find, and keep, housing, similar to the Section 8 housing that kept families housed in well maintained apartments, which paid reasonable rents to the landlords. Rents were set as a percentage of income. It is sinful that people are sleeping under bridges in one of the richest areas on earth.

Begin a reforestation project in large county parks. Once, the entire area was covered in redwoods. We can restart a forest, returning the land to how it was before we built all those neat Victorian painted ladies.

If you are set on wasting money on a self congratulatory project, at least hire a West Coast firm that understands the unique points of view held by Silicon Valley.

* I am leaving out fixing pot holes, putting in curb cuts, and other mundane things that need doing. I am aiming at spending the money in a way that will get international reporting on how Santa Clara County progressively represents the best of Silicon Valley.

IT IS A SAD DAY FOR POOR WOMEN

Women with money will always have access to family planning alternatives like birth control. Now we have a new Supreme Court Justice who has ruled that religious people can prevent women from having birth control medication though insurance.

I know many people are focused on the 2018 elections. Getting out the vote will be particularly important.

Do not forget that we can make many changes at the local level. The good news today is that the notorious tent city jail in Phoenix is being closed. Courts failed to close this jail, it took the voters electing a new sheriff to close tent city.

However, it is time to assess the daily annoyance caused by some liberal policies.

Low flow toilets were a brilliant idea to save water. Then someone decided that it would be even better if the toilets took half an hour to refill. Plumbers were told they would lose their plumbing license if they changed the toilet to fill up faster.

If you are a person who does not share a toilet, the slow refill is not a usually a problem.

If you have two people sharing one toilet, then the second user may have to accept a not completely empty toilet bowl. If it is a household with children, a bucket may have to be filed from the bathtub in order to get the toilet to flush out solid wastes so that the children can get to school on time.

The low flow can cause plumbing to back up as there is not enough water to move the waste into the sewer.

It is these little insanities that give liberals a reputation for over regulating things.

I do not want our rivers on fire, and our lakes filled with acid instead of fish.

But it is important for us all to realize that people are part of the environment.

Generally, the long term solution to problems take the middle road. Even though I believe that a woman should be in total control of all her health care decisions, I am willing to accept the principles set out in Roe v Wade. I am not willing to allow Republicans to prevent access to family planning clinics.

RETRIBUTION

If I were a Republican US congressperson, I would want to face the 2018 elections wearing a hard hat. I would want to be photographed putting the first shovel into the ground to upgrade a bridge, to expand a highway, or to bring sports and arts centers to small towns.

There is a long lead time between Congress funding a project and the project being built. For those of you used to the pace of business building, it is necessary to factor in the proposal process, the bidding process, the review process. In order to protect the government from fraud and shoddy work, the system is complex and time consuming.

If you want to be putting a shovel into the ground in 2018, you need to get started NOW.

It is time that you all overcame your desire for petty revenge, and worked together to fix our infrastructure and give small towns hope for the future. I believe that there are projects where everyone agrees that 'something should be done.'

So dust off the 'wish list' for your district. Do not quarrel over whether a project was proposed by Democrats or Republicans. GET THINGS FIXED AND GET THINGS BUILT! START NOW!

I would fund these projects by STOPPING STOCK GAMBLING. I propose a .001% tax on any stock sale completed within 2 seconds. Have the stock exchange collect the tax and transmit the revenue to the IRS.

I believe that rational bankers would welcome a 'brake' on the buying and selling of stock by computer programs basing the computer's decision on stock movement, with no regard to the actual value of this stock.

It is important to remember that farmers need reliable transportation systems into and out of our cities. Railroad beds need to be upgraded no matter where they are located. Some highways need to be expanded, even if the expansion happens to be in California.

Let's make America's infrastructure great again.

THE SUPREME COURT NOMINEE

Some newspapers are saying that the Democrats might oppose the confirmation of Nominee Gorsuch just because no one held a hearing regarding Obama's last nominee.

I oppose the confirmation of Gorsuch, because Gorsuch believes that religious people can deny women access to full health care benefits.

I have no problem with religious people practicing their religion without government interference. I do, however, greatly object to court rulings allowing religious people to make ME obey their religious beliefs.

I believe women's rights are extremely important. Based on his court rulings, I believe that the Democrats should do everything possible to prevent the confirmation of Nominee Gorsuch.

It should be remembered that Gorsuch was nominated by a President who believes that weapons are the only thing worthy of our tax dollars.

Any parent knows that a hungry child is a misbehaving child just waiting to happen. I used to carry healthy snacks with me so that I could avoid the child meltdown which comes with hunger.

But the President's people believe that there is no problem with hungry children learning great things.

I have always found that art is a way to calm my mind. Looking at art, attempting to make art, listening to art, reading art, watching art, has often helped me make better life decisions. Art, in all its forms, is a way to bring communities together. Government support of art makes our world a better place. To take revenge on the arts by failure to fund PBS, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the National Endowment of Humanities, is equivalent to a bully pushing over angel statutes because the bully is upset about something.

Worse, our President is not even planning on fixing our infrastructure.

I have noticed that the brunt of the proposed budget cuts will be against people and things that can not easily defend themselves.

Eagles, rivers, blue sky, the school play, the marching band, the mural project, hungry children, sick people, intercities, our aging transportation infrastructure. Who defends them except the Democrats?

WHY WE NEED REGULATING

33 years ago, car aficionados all purchased car alarms. These alarms went off in piercing decibels until the car was tilted to be towed or the battery ran out. (Batteries would last long enough to blare the noise for 3 - 5 hours.)

At the time, I was living in downtown Berkeley, raising a toddler and a baby. The car alarms in the parking lot across the street would go off and howl for hours, usually during nap time. This was not because of robbers, but because children thought it great fun to set off the alarms.

Every time I heard that a friend was buying a car alarm, I would talk to them about how everyone seemed to just ignore the alarms. I pointed out that if the police were called, they would just order the car be towed so that the alarm would shut off. One and all bought the alarms anyway. Not a single person cared about the social costs of the loud alarms ringing for hours. They just cared about their own car.

Then California required that no car alarm could be installed in a car if the alarm sounded for over 60 seconds. 

We are still woken in the middle of the night by our selfish neighbor's car alarm. But at least the horrible sound only lasts for a minute.

I believe we need a new regulation regarding the word 'milk'. I am particularly concerned with 'almond milk', which is basically flavored water. At least 'soy milk' has protein.

It is an open secret that most children's cereal contains no protein, with REAL MILK (from a cow) providing that necessary ingredient.

It is easy for a mother to think that the supposedly healthy almond 'milk' is good for her children. Instead, the mother may be sending her children to school hungry for the protein necessary to learn and to grow.

I have reached the conclusion that if a movie/TV person recommends any diet, then that diet is almost certainly very bad for your body.

TRUMPERY TWEETING

Anyone who has knowledge of the ability of hackers to get personal data becomes really paranoid about other people learning their darkest secrets. This paranoia often surfaces at 3 in the morning.

I can understand a person new to the spotlight of politics becoming worried about blackmail from hackers.

The latest from Wikileaks is a good/bad thing. It lets the rest of us know just how paranoid a person is power needs to be.

For instance, attorneys with that hackable TV in their conference rooms need to be really certain that they have downloaded all of the patches. Even if all the janitors cleaning the attorney offices are trusted people, it is still way too easy to put a thumb drive into the TV. Now that the problem is known, I do not think the courts are going to by sympathetic to attorneys who did not take security measures and allowed confidential information to be accessed by hackers.

Most of you are WAY too careless regarding your phones. Once a spy gets physical access to your phone, they can hack your phone in various ways.

One of the reasons that US law enforcement is divided into different agencies, is so that each agency can only get information within his jurisdictional area.

We all have to realize that much of WWIII is going to be fought on the internet.

ISIS recruits using the internet. Terrorist make plans and carry out attacks using burner phones and internet communications, rather than dangerously meeting in person.

If we do not have excellent internet spying, we will be unable to stop the bad guys before they blow up innocents.

This means that the intelligence community must be trustworthy like our armed forces are trustworthy. Just like our armed services obey the Commander in Chief, the intelligence community obeys our Commander in Chief.

Just because someone can do something does not mean that they will do something.

All companies need to patch the holes through which hackers hack. Unfortunately, some of them deny they are hackable. An Apple icon called TATSU turned my iPad into a brick, and I had to pay the deductible for a new iPad, while the Apple geniuses informed me that no one can hack Apple.

**** Note: the adjective trumpery means showy but worthless.

STOPPING PUTIN'S NASTY GAMES

Putin enjoys playing a worldwide game of being the 'bad boy'. As we all know, bad boys get WAY too much attention.

Putin believes that attention to Russia makes Russia a more important country.

Because Putin has less money, he needs to get his attention fix at a discount rate.

The easiest way Putin gets attention is to fund 'rebellions', especially if the distraction of violence will slow or stop natural gas and/or oil production.

Not content with the violence in Syria, Putin is now funding violence in Libya.

We used to counter the violence caused by Putin by offering aid to countries to fight insurgencies, to train troops, to feed and educate people. This is so much LESS expensive than building aircraft carriers and fancy new planes.

Giving aid to countries is also more effective in keeping us safe. We may have nuclear weapons, but we wisely hesitate to use those weapons. If providing food can stop violence, then we should provide food. If our embassies are funded, the ambassadors have a chance at negotiating a truce to stop the violence.

Our President is worried about wire-tapping of Trump Towers. He forgets that there are at least two people on a phone conversation. I am fairly certain that we tap the phones of Russian operatives. The Russian operatives know this, and should have been more careful in their conversations, if any, with the Trump election campaign.

Unfortunately, our President is going to allow Putin a free playing field around the world.

Saving money by refusing to adequately fund foreign aid and our embassies, will make the entire world less safe.

WHO KNEW FOREIGN POLICY COULD BE SO COMPLEX?   %<)