Fri
12
Feb '10
A nice king size bed in the master bedroom — didn’t even notice Curt on the other side of the bed.
Sunsets and rainbows never look as good in the picture as they are in person.
Wave two and three arrive today for the weekend. Wave two is Rich, Spencer and David, in time for dinner — arriving at about 5:30pm.
Dinner was pork cutlets (a little thin for my taste, but tasty), a nice mixed salad, several bottles of wine and lots of good conversation.
Wave three was Ross about 8pm to clean up the rest of dinner.
Woke up at 4am on the couch and went to bed.
[? ? ?]
Once again, thanks Uncle Markie, for providing the “space” that I needed to synthesize the information below during Discovery Bay Poker weekend, and which I apparently couldn’t find in my usual 168-hour week in my own home !
–Published February 24, 2010 – The Olympian–
Letters to the Editor
Limit corporate meddling in civic affairs
It’s time for us all to focus on the fundamentals of our democracy. Not on the parties or the personalities, but the system itself.
Since the reform era of the Civil Rights Act, Vietnam War and Watergate, we’ve squandered our civic interaction on partisan “horse races” while structural shifts have been implemented largely without meaningful public review.
No coherent national debate accompanied the evolution of corporations from publicly chartered business entities into transnational faux-humans.
Even as the information-rich Internet blossomed, our most-watched or most-read news sources were assimilated into just a few national media conglomerates, thus limiting the expression of diverse views.
And in a drive toward some mythical, poll-tested political center, both major parties pushed candidates and public officials to the muddling middle, discouraging creative action.
Even worse, they cultivate divisive, emotional topics to exploit voters.
Is it time to guarantee meaningful access to the ballot for all candidates through instant runoff voting? Can we agree to provide some minimal yet sufficient level of campaign funding for all serious parties to blunt the effect of money on our elected officials?
Shall we recapture the public charter to limit corporate meddling in civic affairs?
Our politics is stunted, cash-ridden and servile to organized lobbies. Let’s re-read the Declaration of Independence and commit to a period of national civic reform.
CURT PAVOLA, Olympia