I TAKE YOU NOW TO THE MIDDLE of a conversation I had in my living room with this weird guy who showed up and wanted to ask a bunch of questions. He had a long white beard and a Greek accent. Me: C’mon, Soc — you’re talking about The Republicans’ deluded base, here. You know, […]

IT IS DIFFICULT, ALMOST PAINFUL, to shift from last week’s warm memories of Easter in my youth to the harsh political realities of our present day. In doing so, I face the enormous difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of sustaining contact, however tenuous, with conservatives, while confronting what I regard as the demands of a just society […]

TUESDAY, APRIL 19 IS EQUAL PAY DAY. It is observed in April to indicate how far into each year a woman must work to earn as much as a man earned in the previous year. As mayor I have an affirmative duty to ensure equal employment opportunity in Benicia, and I have pledged to ensure […]

IN A SPLIT VOTE — 3-2, with Vice Mayor Tom Campbell and Councilmember Mark Hughes voting no — City Council on Tuesday voted to continue the effort to extend all elected officials’ terms by one year without voter approval. In Benicia and the rest of America, government is the people, not the politicians. We elect […]

ONE OF MY CORE BELIEFS AS A NEW DEAL DEMOCRAT is that an important role of government is to act as a counterbalance to the power of big business. History provides ample evidence that, absent some mechanism to prevent it, corporate enterprises will create a civilization divided between Capital, which will get ever-richer, and Labor, […]

DURING THE WHITE HOUSE NEWS CONFERENCE following Obama’s re-election, one of the first people the president called on was veteran Chicago Tribune reporter Christi Parsons. Parsons did not ask a question. She simply wanted to congratulate the president on his recent victory. Here, in brief, is what they said. Obama: “Christi and I go back […]

THE FRONT-PAGE OF THE MARCH 19 WALL STREET JOURNAL featured an above-the-fold photo of a bunch of angry-faced Cyprus citizens showing the palms of their hands with the word “NO” printed on them. These people were very angry because their government had just levied a 6.75-percent tax on all their savings accounts to help pay […]

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, THERE WAS A well-publicized incident in which the brother of then-presidential candidate John McCain called 9-1-1 in the Washington, D.C. area to complain about some construction on a bridge that was taking place during rush hour. The call was played during reports on the incident in the news media. McCain’s brother was […]

THE FOLLOWING QUOTE IS FROM “The More Things Change” by Linda Greenhouse in the New York Times Opinionator, Feb. 20, regarding the challenge to the Voting Rights Act, Section 5, by Shelby County, Ala. “Section 5 is the Voting Rights Act’s ‘pre-clearance’ provision, which applies in all or part of 16 states, mostly in the […]

THE STATE OF THE UNION MAY BE STRONG; clearly it is healthier than the condition of this country’s unions, which grow increasingly imperiled. All considered, though, the state of the United States is ragged and schizophrenic, as are most nations today. Our situation mirrors that of the European Union fairly closely, where a similar struggle […]