Saturday, December 24, 2016

Greenpeace wishes the Children of the World, "Merry Christmas"

Christmas message from Greenpeace to children everywhere, "Santa may not bring you Christmas this year due to global warming".

 Fortunately, Christmas has come to the world, today as it does every year.  A true Merry Christmas and Glad Tidings to You!


 Joy to the World!

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Save Marinwood awarded "Truthful News"certification from the FCC.



The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) today has certified the People's Cube [Editor's Note: Save Marinwood received the same certification]as a state-approved source of "correct, truthful, authentic, forward-looking and genuine truth" that is safe to read, share, and discuss with neighbors, family, and co-workers. This confirms our leadership position among the progressive mainstream media, as our stories more often than not become reality. For bringing only the best current truth to the toiling masses of American workers, peasants, and the unwashed intelligentsia, the FCC has decorated us with the "Truthful News" seal of authenticity, which henceforth will be proudly displayed in our sidebar. 


Ever since Hillary Clinton and allied media organs alerted us about the harmful effects of "fake news," American news consumers have been dazzled and confused, not knowing what news they are allowed to read and talk about safely, and what news can put them in violation of government policies regulating the proper reading of news. 

Indignant community organizers have been demanding a radical overhaul of all media regulations, as well as a thorough recount of all information ever published since this country's founding, raising concerns that the United States with its current political system itself is a tragic mistake originating in "fake news." 

While federal judges say that the deadline for such a recount has expired more than two centuries ago, many still believe that enemies of democracy may have used "fake news" to drag the country into the Revolutionary War and trick Americans into accepting capitalism and the electoral college.

Some vocal senior activists have compared the current fake-news confusion to the debilitating panic among American food consumers who had no idea what to eat until in 1990 the FDA at last mandated the placement of Nutrition Facts Labels on all packaged products.

In a similar example of caring oversight, the FCC has adopted a new certification system that separates all news into two clear categories: "fake news" and "truthful news." Additionally, a new law will require all media to display FCC labels to identify their classification. This will alert readers in advance whether they are looking at a genuine government-approved source of must-read truthful news, or they're reading some idiotic concoction of a madman with an unhealthy fixation on the so-called rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Obviously, anything based on such a false, backward premise qualifies as "fake news."

Thus, Breitbart.com and similar alt-right media outlets that have been found guilty of misleading the American public into voting for Donald Trump, will be henceforth obligated to display the shameful "Fake News" seal of disapproval. It is only fitting that their false narrative of capitalism and American exceptionalism will be identified with a label similar to the Surgeon General's cancer warnings on cigarette packaging. This is yet another example of caring government oversight that proves critics wrong.




Until all news sources have been properly certified and labeled with FCC badges, readers are advised to follow this helpful chart.



In other news. Hillary Clinton has suggested to counter "fake news" with a government newspaper called "Truth" ("Pravda" for Russian speakers).
See more at www.PeoplesCube.com


The Key to Riches


Wednesday, December 21, 2016

"Racist Zipcodes" need Repair according to HUD


From HUD website


Margery Austin Turner, Vice President for Research at The Urban Institute, recently shared insights on the persistence of neighborhood segregation in a presentation at HUD titled “Racial & Ethnic Equity Gaps – How Do the 100 Biggest Metros Compare?” Ms. Turner’s research centers on changes in neighborhood composition between 1980 and today. Though progress has been incremental, more communities are seeing increased diversity. Much of the change can be attributed to an influx of both Asian and Hispanic families into neighborhoods that had previously been either predominantly black or predominantly white; the racial divide that has traditionally separated black and white populations is eroding, albeit slowly.

The Urban Institute looked at a number of characteristics that describe where people live and often determine the opportunities (or lack thereof) that they’re afforded as a result: residential segregation, neighborhood income, school test scores, employment, and homeownership. The Urban Institute developed an interactive mapping tool, “Grading the Top 100 Metros: Racial Equity,” that compares how different metropolitan areas perform for their African American and Latino residents. Available online at http://datatools.metrotrends.org/charts/metrodata/rankMap_files/EquityMap_files/RankMapBlack.cfm the tool allows users to apply various weights to the factors and rank the country’s top 100 metropolitan statistical areas on how well they’re achieving racial equity based on the following parameters:
  • Residential Segregation
  • Neighborhood Income Gap
  • School Test Score Gap
  • Employment Gap
  • Homeownership Gap
By changing the weighting factors associated with each of these criteria, the user can generate a visual “report card” that maps the Top 100 metros’ performance in terms of achieving racial equity based on whatever parameters are of greatest interest. The resulting map shows the metros graded from A to F with corresponding colored dots representing the best, worst, and those falling somewhere in between. Clicking on a dot calls up specific information for that metro area, and a link allows the user to view or download the data.

“If we care about equity, we need to care about patterns of racial segregation,” Turner observed. She noted that the top scores can be found in small- to medium-sized metros in the South and West; for example, Charleston, SC and El Paso, TX score among the best in terms of overall racial equity. Conversely, the large metros in the Northeast and Midwest did not fare as well; for example, Chicago and New York scored in the bottom tier.

Turner also noted that, when segregation is removed from the scoring and analysis is performed using the remaining four factors — Neighborhood Income Gap, School Test Score Gap, Employment Gap, and Homeownership Gap — most of the ten best areas remained at or near the top. In other words, residential segregation is an important source of inequality in schools, homeownership, and employment. At the bottom of the scale, removing segregation from the scoring again had little effect, with all but one remaining in the “Ten Worst” rankings, and the remainder mostly shifting positions.
Turner believes that residential integration continues to be a worthwhile goal, and opportunities for advancement should be more equitably distributed, regardless of where you live. Though much progress has been made, in many areas, access to good schools and employment opportunities remains very much tied to a person’s zip code. “In 1980, there were a lot of suburban neighborhoods that were almost exclusively white,” Turner noted, “Today, there are almost none.” She added, however, that there’s still tremendous room for improvement, both in terms of investing in distressed neighborhoods where services are often lacking, and in making opportunities for advancement more equitably available, such as through open enrollment policies, charter and magnet schools, and through HUD’s many programs that foster community development and neighborhood revitalization.


The Society for Professional Journalist Ethics code and local reporting in Marin









A common point of concern for Marin Residents is the lack of journalist ethics in local reporting. Here are a few of the provision from the Society of Professional Journalists. More can be found at http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

"Seek Truth and Report It

Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

Journalists should:

– Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible.
– Remember that neither speed nor format excuses inaccuracy.

– Provide context. Take special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story. "

For the full code of ethics see: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp


A vital enterprising local press is essential to Marin. Please support our local media.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Libertarian Gift guide.

The Most Important Graph in the World


The Most Important Graph in the World

There has been a massive increase in wealth throughout the world in the last two centuries.
Marian Tupy | December 13, 2016

Jonathan Haidt, the well-known psychologist from New York University, started as a "typical" liberal intellectual, but came to appreciate the awesome ability of free markets to improve the lives of the poor. Earlier this year, he penned an essay in which he pointed to what he called "the most important graph in the world." The graph reflected Angus Maddison's data showing a massive increase in wealth throughout the world over the last two centuries and which is reproduced, courtesy of Human Progress, below.
The "great enrichment" (Deirdre McCloskey's phrase) elicits different responses in different parts of the world, Haidt noted. "When I show this graph in Asia," Haidt writes, "the audiences love it, and seem to take it as an aspirational road map… But when I show this graph in Europe and North America, I often receive more ambivalent reactions. 'We can't just keep growing forever!' some say. 'We'll destroy the planet!' say others. These objections seem to come entirely from the political left, which has a history, stretching back centuries, of ambivalence or outright hostility to capitalism."



Haidt's experience mirrors my own. When giving talks about the benefits of free markets, audiences in Europe and America invariably note the supposedly finite nature of growth and express worry about the environmental state of the planet. Why? In Haidt's view, capitalist prosperity changes human conscience. In pre-industrial societies, people care about survival. "As societies get wealthier, life generally gets safer, not just due to reductions in disease, starvation, and vulnerability to natural disasters, but also due to reductions in political brutalization. People get rights."
This more prosperous generation, then, starts caring about such things as women's rights, animal rights, gay rights, human rights, and environmental degradation. "They start expecting more out of life than their parents did." All that is fine, of course, so long as the pampered youth in the West and newly empowered youth in the Far East remember that roughly 800 million people in the world, many of them in Africa, still live in absolute poverty and experience the kinds of existential challenges that only free markets can solve. Denying dirt-poor people access to cheap fossil fuel energy, for example, can mean a death sentence to a newborn child on life support in an electric-powered incubator in rural Africa.
Let me conclude with two final thoughts. First, there is no obvious reason why growth should not continue indefinitely—although future growth will likely be more dependent on technological change than in the past. In the West, for example, we cannot replicate the growth boost that resulted from the entry of large number of women (50 percent of the population) into the labor force. Second, let's not fall into the trap of thinking that, because the initial stage of industrialization was bad for the environment, pre-industrial society saw man and nature coexist in harmony. Part of the reason why the Industrial Revolution started in England was that the country had to switch from almost depleted wood to coal as a source of energy. Industrialization, and subsequent enrichment, saved European forests, and it can do so in Africa as well.


    Marian L. Tupy is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and editor of www.humanprogress.org

    Capitalism makes the Poor, Rich.


    Monday, December 19, 2016

    Steve Kinsey and friends threaten our neighbors, the Silveira family,

    Marin to Silveira ranch: Settle or sue

    Cattle roam at the Silveira ranch east of Highway 101 in San Rafael. The family ranch and the St. Vincent’s School for Boys property at rear are the focus of an extended dispute over development rights. (Marin IJ photo/2004)
    Cattle roam at the Silveira ranch east of Highway 101 in San Rafael. The family ranch and the St. Vincent’s School for Boys property at rear are the focus of an extended dispute over development rights. (Marin IJ photo/2004) 
    The fate of one of the largest parcels of undeveloped land left in Marin County, which has been hotly contested for more than a decade, could be determined in coming months.
    Marin County supervisors have decided not to renew a “tolling” agreement with the Silveira family that prevents the statute of limitations from expiring on its right to sue over the Marin Countywide Plan.
    Adopted in 2007, this long-range general plan for the county establishes the development rights for Silveira’s 340-acre ranch, which is located east of Highway 101 in the unincorporated area of the county between San Rafael and Novato. The plan substantially reduced allowable development on the Silveira property and the adjacent 770-acre St. Vincent’s School for Boys property.
    The county entered into the tolling agreement with the Silveira family soon after the Countywide Plan was adopted in 2007 to allow the family additional time to deliberate and had renewed the agreement on a yearly basis since, said Deputy County Counsel Renee Giacomini Brewer.
    “Nine years is long enough to not to get some kind of resolution,” said Supervisor Steve Kinsey. “As a board, we believe that the countywide plan that was adopted is legally defensible.”
    Kinsey said when the county renewed the agreement a year ago, it notified the Silveiras that it would not be doing so again.
    “We created a board subcommittee consisting of Supervisor (Damon) Connolly and myself to explore with the family whether there was any way to amicably resolve the differences,” Kinsey said. “I don’t think we’re there.”
    DEADLINE LOOMING
    Under the law, the Silveira family has until Feb. 1 to file suit; otherwise it relinquishes its right to challenge the plan, Brewer said.
    See article HERE

    Sunday, December 18, 2016

    Amazing Sarah Longfield on 16 string guitar

    Holiday Joy for Needy Family- They won't have to take public transportation

    Antioch auto body shop gives cars to needy families

    By Rowena Coetsee rcoetsee@bayareanewsgroup.com
    POSTED:   12/17/2014 03:54:21 PM PST0 COMMENTS| UPDATED:   ABOUT 5 HOURS AGO
    Myla Wofford, of Oakland, opens the door of a 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee that was repaired and donated to her during Mike Rose Auto Body’s 14th annual
    Myla Wofford, of Oakland, opens the door of a 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee that was repaired and donated to her during Mike Rose Auto Body's 14th annual Benevolence Program in Antioch on Dec. 17, 2014. Wofford, a single mother of two children, has never owned a car before receiving her Jeep Cherokee. (Dan Rosenstrauch/Bay Area News Group)


    ANTIOCH -- Myla Wofford grinned as she slipped behind the wheel of the gleaming white Jeep, the first car the 33-year-old has ever owned.
    The Oakland single mother knows a thing or two about hardship, but for a few hours Wednesday she had a respite from a grinding schedule made even more difficult by the hours she spends every day on BART and public buses.
    But not any more.
    Wofford and her two children were among five needy families who received a set of wheels this week from a Bay Area business that has made the giveaway a holiday tradition for the past 14 years.
    Crowds of onlookers applauded as one by one Mike's Auto Body employees whisked car covers and oversize red bows off the row of restored vehicles at the business' Antioch location, then handed over the keys, along with trunks full of wrapped gifts.
    Myla Wofford, of Oakland, sits in the driver’s seat of a 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee that was repaired and donated to her during Mike Rose Auto
    Myla Wofford, of Oakland, sits in the driver's seat of a 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee that was repaired and donated to her during Mike Rose Auto Body's 14th annual Benevolence Program in Antioch on Dec. 17, 2014. (Dan Rosenstrauch/Bay Area News Group)
    "You are truly angels," Antioch Mayor Wade Harper told the dozens of technicians, insurance agents and vendors who had had a hand in providing the early Christmas presents. "You are giving them freedom."
    The Concord-based company culls used vehicles from among damaged ones that insurance companies and rental car agencies have donated, choosing those that are easiest to repair.
    Mike's Auto Body has repurposed 56 vehicles since it began the outreach; this year's collection featured a Honda Civic, Ford Focus, Hyundai hatchback, Toyota RAV4 and a Jeep. Technicians volunteered nearly all their time to fix bumpers and, in the case of the Toyota, electrical problems under the dashboard.
    The Contra Costa County Fire District showed up to the event with wheels of another sort -- bicycles and helmets for youngsters -- while a rental car company provided children's car seats and vendors pitched in with gift cards for gas and oil changes.In addition, Mike's Auto Body will pick up recipients' liability insurance premiums for one year.
    The business finds potential recipients by putting out feelers in the communities that its shops serve as well as through the offer it runs on its website. Families apply for the help, which requires writing a letter explaining how reliable transportation would improve their lives. They also must have a valid driver's license and be insurable.
    Marketing Director Sal Contreras, who established the giveaway, reads all the applications with an eye for individuals who are trying to better their situations and filters out requests from those with an attitude of entitlement.
    He then shows a handful of the letters to the technicians who worked on the cars and lets them make the final decision.
    Contreras calls the recipients on a speaker phone so employees can share their delight over the good news.
    "Everybody goes crazy -- you get goose bumps," he said.
    This year's winners included a single mother of three who bounced around homeless shelters after ending an abusive relationship before moving into a one-bedroom cottage. She needed a car to take her children to therapy as well as to have a chance of getting her old job back, which would necessitate a commute.
    There was also the former U.S. Marine who's working toward a business degree and hopes to become a police officer; he had been borrowing a relative's vehicle to get around since an inattentive driver totaled his.
    Tito Ramos, left, of Pittsburg, looks over his new 2014 Hyundai Hatchback as his kids Tito Ramos, 8, center, and Angelo Ramos, 2, right, and wife Melissa
    Tito Ramos, left, of Pittsburg, looks over his new 2014 Hyundai Hatchback as his kids Tito Ramos, 8, center, and Angelo Ramos, 2, right, and wife Melissa Ramos, in back, look over all the gifts that were in the trunk after the car that was donated to his family during Mike Rose Auto Body's 14th annual Benevolence Program in Antioch on Dec. 17, 2014. (Dan Rosenstrauch/Bay Area News Group)
    The mother of a 13-year-old boy with kidney disease needs to take him to doctors' appointments out of the area but medical expenses had prevented her from replacing the car that broke down this summer.
    There's the Minnesota family who moved to California so their young daughter could receive a double-organ transplant at Stanford University Medical Center only to have their minivan's transmission fail as they drove back and forth between Clayton and Palo Alto for medical appointments.
    And then there's Wofford.
    Working close to 80 hours a week, she estimates she has been spending an additional four hours a day on public transportation commuting between her jobs in Berkeley and San Francisco and shuttling her daughter to medical appointments.
    "That (was) stealing precious moments, time that (my family) could spend enjoying each other," Wofford said.
    Contact Rowena Coetsee at 925-779-7141. Follow her at Twitter.com/RowenaCoetsee.

    Star Wars the Libertarian Edition