"The merger will make cities weak and counties strong"

Novato City Council person,  Pam Drew addresses the Association of Bay Area Governments General Assembly on May 19, 2016.

"The merger will make cities weak and counties strong"

Petty Marinwood CSD Politics

May 10, 2016,  Marinwood CSD President Justin Kai corrects the official record to include the comment that he was called "little man" so it will show up in the official record of business.  
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According to government convention, meeting minutes follows Roberts Rules.  

What to Include. As a rule, minutes should record what was done at a meeting, not what was said. (Robert's Rules, 11th ed., p. 468.) Even so, the motion should include the rationale for the board's action. Following is a list of essential information that should be found in every set of minutes:

Name of the Association.

Type of Meeting. Regular, special, emergency, executive session.\

Date/Time/Location. Date, time and location of meeting.

Attendees. Directors who were present and who was absent, along with their titles (President, Treasurer, etc.). The minutes should also list guests who were invited to speak to the board, such as the association's CPA, contractors bidding on projects, the association's attorney, etc. Members who attended the board meeting should not be listed.

Approval of Minutes. Prior meeting minutes should be read and approved. (Robert's Rules, 11th ed., p. 473-474.)

Treasurer's Report. A verbal report is sufficient.

Committee Reports. The fact that an officer and committee report, if any, was given. When a committee report is of great importance it can be entered in full in the minutes. (Robert's Rules, 11th ed., p. 471.)

Guest Speakers. "The name and subject of a guest speaker can be given, but no effort should be made to summarize his remarks. (Robert's Rules, 11th ed., p. 471.)

Motions. Motions and how directors voted.

Executive Session. General description of matters discussed in executive session.

Next Meeting. Date of the next meeting.

Adjournment. Time the meeting was adjourned.
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The Marinwood CSD must takes its obligation to uphold the law and follow established convention of providing the public accurate meeting minutes.  It is not the place for the Marinwood CSD to provide political spin or omitting important detail that obscures or embellishes the truth. It is definitely not a place for settling petty grievances.    

What to do about Trolls and Bullies on Nextdoor and Elsewhere in our Life. An Open Letter to my Neighbor

Dear  (neighbor)

I have been watching the dispute on Nextdoor and yes I am offended by (nextdoor.com troll)'s ridiculous accusations.  I think you can take comfort that he is making himself to be a bully and an idiot. This is usually the case, when he gets worked up.  I get daily anonymous emails from him which I delete. 

I have learned something about these internet bullies or trolls.  First,  any interaction you have with them will invite a harsh reaction.  Second, they usually accuse you of the exact same thing they are themselves guilty of doing.  Third, they like to operate under the cloak of anonymity and de- personalize their target so they feel they escape culpability i.e. they are cowards.  Fourth, no amount of reason will make them reasonable.  The purpose of their conflict is not to persuade others but an ego match to defeat others.  Fifth, they will always have the last word.  Let them have it.

When I encounter a troll, I do not feel obligated to respond.  I merely ask myself if I have successfully articulated my position and addressed the weaknesses in my argument.  If the answer is "yes" ,  then I don't feel obligated to continue dialog. I trust that intelligent people can distinguish a bully from a genuine critic.

I have been accused of being a troll.  This is because I am unafraid to take a public stand on controversial issues.  I try never to fall into the trap of personalizing my arguments and thereby taking the focus off the object of controversy.  Frustrated by my refusal to back down, they have called for the illegal censure and my removal from public meetings.

Bare truth is tough to bear.  

I will not cower from my public engagement. I am invigorated by what I see conformism as a reaction to a time of great change in our community.  "If everyone shuts up and trusts our government" these people tell us, "everything is going to be okay".    I don't believe this for a second.  My "natural non conformist personality" helps me as an activist to speak out against injustice.  

I will film the truth. I will participate in free speech as I see fit.  Damn the torpedoes!

Your friend 

S.

The Katie Rice "Special Favor" Machine

For over forty years, voters in District Two have been represented by political appointees. Rices donors include politicians, contractors, consultants, developers, NGOs, government lobbyists, unions and many more. For over forty years, the people of District Two have been lead by a political appointees. Katie Rice has never seen a campaign contribution "too generous" to turn away. Is it little wonder that she is the darling of special interests?

Otis Bruce for Marin Superior Court Judge

I am voting for Otis Bruce for Marin Superior Court Judge

Otis Bruce, Jr.: Trials of Change

Merritt College alumnus and Marin County Deputy District Attorney Otis Bruce Jr. has seen a lot change since his childhood days working on his grandfather's farm in Mississippi.

Much of what has changed in Bruce's life can be attributed to the many firsts he has taken part in. In 1989, he became one of the few African-American legal assistants to work in Marin County; in 1995 he became the county's first black prosecutor; and in 2011 the first African-American or ethnic minority president of the Marin County Bar Association. His efforts have radically reshaped and influenced the opportunities available to black lawyers, legal assistants and law clerks, opening doors of possibility for other firsts and definitive change within the legal system.

When Bruce accepted his position as the first African-American president of the Marin County Bar Association, he asked his fellow lawyers to become "an agent of real change. You're the true harbingers," said Bruce, "the guardians of what is supposed to be right, righteously defending those who don't have rights and defending those who are underprivileged."

Those weren't just empty words from Bruce, who has been the epitome of change in an era marked by transition.
In addition to his grandfather's wisdom, Bruce learned the value of hard work and the benefits of networking by watching his grandfather conduct business with other farmers. Bruce worked in the fields in many capacities, hauling hay, picking cotton, watermelons, butterbeans, corn and black-eyed peas on several of the neighboring farms to help provide food and money for his family. Everyday before school, he made sure his grandfather's

A message to Marin District Four Voters from Al Dugan

Al Dugan makes closing remarks at the May 18, 2016 Marin Supervisor Candidate Forum held in Corte Madera

Marin needs Al Dugan   visit www.aldugan4supervisor.org

Is Kate Sears right for Marin?

EXCERPT

05.06.16 9:01 PM ET

How to Make Cities Livable Again

In his new book, The Human City, Daily Beast columnist Joel Kotkin looks at the ways cities succeed or fail in terms of how their residents are best served. Here’s a tour of some past models.

Throughout history, urban areas have taken on many functions, which have often changed over time. Today, this trend continues as technology, globalization, and information technology both undermine and transform the nature of urban life. Developing a new urban paradigm requires, first and foremost, integrating the traditional roles of cities—religious, political, economic—with the new realities and possibilities of the age. Most importantly, we need to see how we can preserve the best, and most critical, aspects of urbanism. Cities should not be made to serve some ideological or aesthetic principle, but they should make life better for the vast majority of citizens.

In building a new approach to urbanism, I propose starting at the ground level. “Everyday life,” observed the French historian Fernand Braudel, “consists of the little things one hardly notices in time and space.” Braudel’s work focused on people who lived largely mundane lives, worried about feeding and housing their families, and concerned with their place in local society. Towns may differ in their form, noted Braudel, but ultimately, they all “speak the same basic language” that has persisted throughout history.

Contemporary urban students can adopt Braudel’s approach to the modern day by focusing on how people live every day and understanding the pragmatic choices they make that determine where and how they live. By focusing on these mundane aspects of life, particularly those of families and middle-class households, we can move beyond the dominant contemporary narrative about cities, which concentrates mostly on the young “creative” population and the global wealthy. This is not a break with the urban tradition but a validation of older and more venerable ideals of what city life should be about. Cities, in a word, are about people, and to survive as sustainable entities they need to focus on helping residents achieve the material and spiritual rewards that have come with urban life throughout history.

Cities have thrived most when they have attracted newcomers hoping to find better conditions for themselves and their families and when they have improved conditions for already settled residents. Critical here are not only schools, roads, and basic forms of transport, which depend on the government, but also a host of other benefits—special events, sports leagues, church festivals—that can be experienced at the neighborhood, community, and family levels.

This urban terroir—the soil upon which cities and communities thrive—has far less to do with actions taken from above than is commonly assumed by students of urban life. Instead, it is part of what New York folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls, “everyday urbanism,” which “take[s] shape outside planning, design, zoning, regulation, and covenants, if not in spite of them.”

The Solution to California's Drought: A Free Market in Water

"If you're going to be serious about using markets to allocate water, the first thing you have to do is let the market determine the price," says Reed Watson, the executive director at the Property and Environment Research Center, or PERC, a nonprofit think tank is based in Bozeman, Montana.

AFFH Has No Basis in the Fair Housing Act

AFFH Has No Basis in the Fair Housing Act

By Stanley Kurtz — May 17, 2016

The Fair Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 was a great achievement, rightly prohibiting discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. President Obama claims that his wildly overreaching Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation, finalized almost fifty years later in July of 2015, is simply fulfilling the purposes of the original Fair Housing Act. That is nonsense. It’s also a classic case of left-leaning politicians achieving their ends by reading radically new meanings into well-established laws.

This week the Senate will go on record for the first time on an amendment to a THUD (Transportation and Housing and Urban Development) appropriations bill defunding AFFH. Since the House has twice passed such an amendment and is likely to do so again, the Senate vote has turned into a major showdown over Obama’s radically transformative new housing regulation.
If the Senate passes Sen. Mike Lee’s amendment defunding AFFH, President Obama will have to either accept the end of AFFH or veto the THUD bill. He will also have to decide whether to do something he has deliberately and successfully avoided for years: publicly defend his radical and sure-to-be-unpopular housing agenda.
To prevent all this, defenders of AFFH are aggressively taking the line that defunding Obama’s revolutionary new rule, which federalizes the core functions of local government and turns suburbs, towns, and even mid-sized cities into helpless satellites of nearby megacities, is nothing but a bit of new guidance showing localities how to fulfill their existing obligations under the Fair Housing Act of 1968. This is simply wrong.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 says nothing whatever about withholding HUD grants from localities unless they nullify classic suburban zoning patterns to build high-density low-income housing. FHA is strictly about preventing overt discrimination in housing transactions. The Obama administration and its activist allies have sought to read new meanings into a few brief phrases in FHA requiring HUD to administer its programs in such a way as to “affirmatively further” the purposes of the act. Yet it’s perfectly clear that this was simply an instruction to HUD to aggressively monitor its programs to make sure that no overt discrimination was taking place.
But don’t take my work for it. Consider this account of the Fair Housing Act by Charles M. Lamb, author of a 2005 book on federal housing policy. Lamb was a fair housing specialist with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and has taught constitutional law and civil liberties at the University of Buffalo, SUNY. More importantly, Lamb is an enthusiastic advocate of precisely the kind of housing policy favored by President Obama. In his book, however, based on extensive archival study of the intentions behind the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Lamb makes it clear that a housing policy of the kind now favored by President Obama would have to move well beyond the intentions of the FHA itself. Here is Lamb on what he calls the “weakness” of the original FHA:
“…nothing in the Fair Housing Act expressly requires the federal government to encourage suburban racial integration through the use of subsidized housing. Nor does the Fair Housing Act forbid economic discrimination of any kind or require government to promote suburban economic integration in any way. The act certainly prohibits various forms of discrimination based on race and provides that the secretary of HUD shall affirmatively promote the goal of fair housing. Still, the Secretary’s stated duties do not include promoting suburban racial or economic integration by linking HUD funding to a requirement that low-income suburban housing also be built.” (p. 47)
Again, Lamb strongly favors aggressive attempts to control suburban housing of exactly the type now adopted by President Obama. Yet Lamb is honest enough to admit that FHA in no way authorizes such policies. I wonder if Lamb would have been so honest had he written in the wake of Obama’s attempt to radically reinterpret the plain meaning of the FHA.
Lamb also makes a point that turns out to be essential to understanding the overreach of Obama’s AFFH. The Fair Housing Act does nothing whatever to promote “economic integration.” And as Lamb also notes, “No federal court has ever declared that the Fair Housing Act requires economic integration in housing.” Yet AFFH is precisely an attempt to create a de facto legal requirement for economic integration under the cover of the FHA.
Public commenters on the first draft of AFFH recognized this. They challenged AFFH on the ground that poverty is not a “protected class” under the Fair Housing Act. Here is how HUD replied to that challenge in the finalized AFFH regulation:
“ The focus and purpose of the AFH [Assessment of Fair Housing required under AFFH] is to identify, and to begin to overcome, the causes and contributing factors that deny or impede housing choice and access to opportunity based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability. In addition, a large body of research has consistently found that the problems associated with segregation are greatly exacerbated when combined with concentrated poverty. That is the legal basis and context for the examination of RCAPs/ECAPs [Racially and Ethnically Concentrated Areas of Poverty].”
This is an extraordinarily weak argument. First, it implicitly concedes that economic integration is not in fact mandated by FHA, but needs instead to be attached to the legally protected classes by academic studies showing that poverty is an aggravating factor in housing issues. But by that reasoning, Congress’s refusal to mandate a radical new policy of government-imposed economic integration becomes meaningless. By the reasoning adopted in AFFH, any law could be indefinitely extended to suit the tastes of scholars and bureaucrats, rather than democratically elected legislators.
The spurious claim by AFFH that the federal government is now legally obligated to impose economic integration on every locality in America leads to nonsensical results. In a 2015 Rasmussen poll, 83 percent of respondents said it was not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods by income level, while only 8 percent said that this was an appropriate task for government. Yet now, the Obama administration has promulgated a rule that effectively adds the radical new principle of government-imposed economic integration to law, when nothing of the sort appeared in the original FHA, and the public to this day overwhelmingly opposes the idea. AFFH effectively nullifies the very idea of legislative democracy.
Advocates who falsely read a policy of racial and ethnic quotas and forced economic integration back into FHA also like to quote FHA co-sponsor Sen. Walter Mondale, who said that the reach of the proposed law was to replace “ghettos by truly integrated and balanced living patterns.”
This proves nothing. Public debate over the original FHA was driven above all by the bill’s main advocate, President Lyndon Johnson. And Johnson continually made clear his belief that it was overt housing discrimination that had bottled up America’s minorities in sub-standard housing. Johnson wanted “integrated and balanced living patterns” too, but his point was that the right way to get there was by banning discrimination. Lamb’s study makes it clear that, “Johnson’s entire effort focused on nondiscrimination in urban housing,” and was not at all about pressing suburbs to take high-density low-income housing (even though Lamb himself strongly favors imposing such policies on suburbia).
In short, the claim that President Obama’s AFFH does nothing more than elaborate on obligations already implicit in the Fair Housing Act of 1968 is false. On the contrary, AFFH is an attempt to radically reinterpret FHA by creating a basis for de facto federal control of suburban zoning and planning, and a mandate for economic integration that exists nowhere in the original Fair Housing Act. AFFH is federal overreach on steroids, and deserves to be repealed and repudiated, not only on policy grounds but out of basic respect for the democratic process. Our constitutional system depends on the integrity of our laws. Once executive regulations effectively usurp the legislative power, Congress itself is rendered powerless, and our constitutional republic is lost.
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He can be reached at comments.kurtz@nationalreview.com.

The Handpicked "Representatives" for Marin by Gary Giacomini and the Marin IJ

Dominic Grossi was a Republican according to Governor Brown before this election:
https://www.gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=19045









Breath deep.  Gary Giacomini and the Marin IJ endorses these folks for our "representatives" to serve you in Marin.

It is time for corrupt insider politics to end.

It is time for change! 
 
Vote for Al Dugan,  Kevin Haroff and Susan Kirsch

Meaning of Hand Gestures Around the World- Context is EVERYTHING

Recently the Marinwood CSD claimed that I was making rude hand gestures and "creating a disturbance" in the April 2016 meeting.  I was making a point about censorship and the range of speech that is considered "protected" under the law.

They called the Sheriff to remove me claiming that I was disturbing the meeting.  In fact, they were annoyed that I had objected to the new Orwellian Speech code they enacted which limits public commentary to be made BEFORE the issue before the board is discussed.  

The public objected since it is often impossible to know what will be said since the staff does not produce detailed reports but only vague summaries in the agenda.  For example, a change in the dog leash law was only described as "changes to park policy".   

The board cleverly wants to conceal what they are doing and do not want public scrutiny.  In fact most of the business is conducted in "ad hoc committees" which do not have a Brown Act reporting requirement.  

The second point that this video illustrates, is that "context" and "cultural relevance" is critical to understand meaning.  So when the Marinwood CSD secretary writes a narrative summary of what people say, she is putting her own context to the speaker's words unfairly.  This is nothing more than political spin.   This is why legal reporters and professional government agencies limit reporting to agenda items and actions taken. They do not attempt to "narrate" the meeting with their own bias.