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It is with deep honor and respect for my community that I am formally announcing my candidacy for City Council in American Canyon. I will work to bring back our farmers market, to make sure our tax dollars are being spent responsibly and to end the ban on cannabis dispensaries.
If you can pitch in a few bucks to help get our campaign off the ground, it will be greatly appreciated. Every dollar counts. As always, this campaign is 100% grassroots.
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Local business owner and social justice advocate, David Campbell, will be running in the November election for a seat on the Napa City Council to represent District 2 – west of Highway 29 with Redwood Road as its northern border.
David has been active in numerous social causes, most notably immigrant rights, through his continued participation on the steering committee of Napa Valley Rapid Response, and the quest for universal single-payer healthcare at the state and federal levels, currently serving as chair of Health Care for All – Napa County. He is also a telephone counselor for the North Bay Suicide Prevention Hotline.
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For my Pinole friends, please vote for Devin Murphy for City Council."At 26, he would be one of the youngest LGBT people elected to political office in the Bay Area. 'It is important we have folks who represent our democratic values," Murphy had told the Bay Area Reporter earlier this spring when he was mulling whether to run.
In announcing his candidacy Monday Murphy stated, 'These are incredibly challenging times, and we need strong, effective leadership to push for action to address the tough recovery ahead for our city. I will fight to ensure Pinole's families and our local businesses, especially in Old Town Pinole and along San Pablo Avenue, receive strong support so they can thrive."
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Vallejo friends, Mina Loera - Diaz is running for City Council this November in District 3. I hope you'll give her your vote.
"There are two types of people in this world. Those who do things for money and those who do things for a cause. When the money runs out, those who were there just for the money will disappear. Those who do the work with their heart and stay true to their cause, will find their purpose in life."
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This is just a little something I'd like to share with you.
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Anatomy of a fake news story.
There are very few things I agree with Donald Trump about, but one of those things is the way mainstream national news has been willing to go with unproven stories, even smears, with little to no evidence at all. If you weren't questioning, these stories might pass you by. And they coincidentally seem to always favor the mainstream view of corporate Democrats' or Republicans' partisan attacks or supporting war, at least in the larger outlets. Let's take a look at what those stories tend to look like, and hopefully I can give you some things to look for when you read your next news story.
So it starts with an alarming headline, like the one in the image (which is not true, Hall Wines have not been contaminated by rabbit poop). Most Americans don't read any farther than the headline, so even if the next line were "April Fools!" or "That's what Sen. Dodd thought until he learned the truth" most people would only take away the headline.
Next, a story usually tells you that "unnamed sources", or "our source, which wishes to remain anonymous" or even "sources close to Hall Winery" tells us that they found something, which may be rabbit poop IN the grapes as they were being crushed. What a disgusting thought! Can you feel it in your stomach? But it didn't say it was poop, it said it might have BEEN poop. Furthermore, if the unnamed source is a competitor who wishes to hurt the business of the winery, we may look upon this a little differently, but we aren't told that.
Next the author really stokes the flames of fear to their fullest extent. What would happen if it were true? "If rabbit poop were being crushed into the wines, it would cause people to get really sick, food poisoning, maybe requiring hospitalization, and we know how bad that could be in a pandemic. Maybe there's a new strain of flu to throw in here. You do NOT want rabbit poop flu! And then, to make it worse, let's mention that Hall Wines get shipped all over the world, and that we don't even know how long the hypothetical poop had been getting into the wine for. We could all have latent rabbit poop zombie flu!
It doesn't really matter how it ends now. Most people are already spinning. "What brand of wine did we drink at dinner last night, Honey? I don't think I feel well. There's rabbit poop in Hall Wines." But how it actually ends is probably something resembling "We were unable to get confirmation from Hall Wines" or maybe "To date, Hall Wines has not started any program to clean the poop out of the wine."
Now stories like this (yes, I made it all up. No such incident ever occurred, to my knowledge) are disproved all the time. But while the original story, with it's shocking headline, ran on the front page, the retraction will run on page 22C, in small print, near the bottom, so that every reader saw that headline, but only a small percent ever learned that it was retracted as false, with an apology to Hall Wines. The damage is done.
It is my sincere hope that everyone who reads this will consume their news with their eyes open, will question whether they are being fed a story with no evidence, and whether it defies common sense.
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Most of you know that wages in the United States have remained stagnant since 1980, when adjusted for inflation. Do you realize, however, that the US is a global empire and that we are likely witnessing the fall of that empire?
That's right, the US has political or military control of much of the world. That comes from military support of dictatorships and right wing leaders throughout Central and South America, throughout Africa and in parts of Asia, such as India and the Philippines. But that also includes economic control, and economically, we also have a huge amount of control (although not total) over most of Europe and some of the countries in Asia where we don't have political/military control.
Our "capitalist" system has been corrupted and subverted by the forces of greed. Our once capitalist system is out of whack. Where once a CEO would make 200 times their lowest paid employee, but it was possible, through hard work, to buy a house and support a family through 1 family member working full time; we now have CEOs making several thousand times what their lowest paid employees earn, and now 2 family members working full time still struggle just to pay the bills.
Capitalism eats itself. Our economic crashes have come more frequently. The current crash was predicted, by economists, for about two years before the corona virus hit. 40 million people were put out of work. Some of those jobs returned, but a lot of those jobs will never return. Many of the small business loans were given out to large corporations like the Los Angeles Lakers or to the private businesses of Senators who earn $174,000 per year, many of whom have been in Congress for decades. Many people didn't get a stimulus check at all, and those that did only got $1200. No rent freeze, no mortgage freeze.
When the economy opens up again, we are going to see a massive number of evictions, as something like a third of America hasn't paid rent or mortgage for 3 months. But we're also going to see some unemployment numbers that are going to actually drive wages DOWN, as employers realize they have so many choices, they have economic problems of their own and hard choices to make. More and more employers will say to prospective employees "I'd like to pay you what you deserve, but I just can't afford to pay more than minimum wage."
You're thinking, aren't you, of a job interview at a fast food restaurant or a retail store? But what happens when it's dental hygienists or the receptionist at a law firm or a pharmacy technician at Costco (Costco is non-union) or even your mechanic? These workers have skills that they went to school and trained for, and deserve to be compensated for.
So what happens when these jobs become minimum wage jobs? People stop going to school and learning to do them. Not only that, but how can you expect a student or low wage worker to be responsible for certifications and licensing fees? Some of that will go away, too. After all, why pay hundreds of dollars out-of-pocket so you can have a job that pays the same as 7-11?
Now we're having people with far less training working on our cars or our teeth or maybe our civil law suits. And to make matters even worse, when people, on a large scale, have less money to spend INTO the economy, the economy shrinks even more. And as the economy shrinks, who do government officials usually turn to, when they need to come up with money? The rich? Not likely! They turn to the middle class for tax increases or they cut social security or food stamps. And the cycle continues.
Now, if the powers that be had the wisdom and the foresight, and the motivation (they don't want to do anything that will be seen as taking money from the wealthy) they could do something about this right now. The government will continue to crash until it takes on some more aspects of socialism.
Don't forget that we already have aspects of socialism in our system, such as social security, fire departments and public libraries. We NEED to ensure, however we do that, that everyone has what they need to survive. When we do THAT, we ensure that millions of people are able to pay into the economy. When tens of millions of people, or a hundred million people, suddenly become unable to pay into the economy, CRASH!
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