Noting the drift and consensus of last Sunday's governance meeting, and noting the agenda for this Sunday's reconvening, it seems that the ad hoc movers and shakers are in agreement that there is only one issue, and that issue is which comes first, the County or Vashon.  Poor, misguided, naive me, I thought Vashon had a soul. I guess it's just another UAC.

Bernie O’Malley provided a framed forum last Sunday on island governance, while the Beachcomber has been providing a somewhat more loosely framed forum. In consequence Sunday produced a consensus while the Beachcomber has provided insight. Compare for example Craig Beles top notch history of the Council with Emma Amiad’s succinct take on the nature of the Council (see Letters). On balance I find the Beachcomber far more useful than the O Space production, primarily because print blows away speech. Bite my tongue, the consensus reached Sunday is a solid step forward. But how do I get to again hear & understand some of those remarks? Onward now, chastened somewhat in my backhanded support for Bangassser by Carl Sells’ thoughtful letter, onward into this one-way forum which has yet failed to entice comment, onward to epiphany. What went wrong? Did an individual throw a monkey wrench into a working machine, or was a failed system outed? A review of Sunday and the Beachcomber shows the predominant answer to be that...

  The meeting was a success. Facilitator John Runyan, a rumpled presence is sweats, tended to mumble but in action had iron control. It was Bernie O’Malley’s meeting, a fact he often had to re-establish with Bill Moyer.  Bill kept trying to spin what Runyan said. This was so friendly it could have been an act. The program: Craig Beles dug out the history of the Council before and after unincorporated area status with special attention to the issue of public disclosure. Then Runyun broke us up into groups of four with instructions to find three things of interest, Then we reassembled to hear a spokesmanwoman report from each foursome. There were thirteen of which several had up to six due to latecomers. Then Runyan opened the meeting to individual beatings of the breast. The presentation by Craig Beles was utterly fascinating. Dan Schueler has it on tape. Two grabbers: As to the need for total disclosure of memos, it is an opinion not a ruling; and Beles’ tacit view is that the Board could wiggle out of the corner...

The Beachcomber online has been discovered thanks somewhat to he who publicly shall not be thanked. But Roger is to be thanked since it was he who posted the link to the online article on the council breaking up. Of course, without he who, etc, having caused the breakup, that article would not have been. Discovered, TBC online is updated almost daily with comments on the print edition, and thanks therefore are given. It is too bad that most of the comments contribute nothing useful. The uproar is being confined to the narrow issue of public disclosure. That issue is an artifact of the Council being an arm of the County which is bad and, yes, therefore should be addressed. But of far greater importance there is the issue of what the council was not doing nor intended to do, the issue of Vashon’s economic, social, and moral survival. While the tempest in the pee pot over the plight of the Council continues to rage there has been only one constructive voice, the combined voice of Margot Boyer and Bob Powell. Even...

Two articles caught my ire, uh eye, the credit union and new governance.

Giving up on making a new credit union makes a lot of sense and dashes a lot of hope. I believe I have let it be known that the primary merit of a local CU was the high degree of cooperation it would engender. Point being that the strictly dollar merit of our very own CU would  likely evaporate when the shock waves of assorted disasters reach the Pacific  Northwest. Hyperinflation for example. Point being that we-all  would have learned how to cooperate, specifically how to trade without dollars. I could point out that any one of us could already be in a CU if they chose.

Margot Boyer and Bob Powell with clarity and grace have laid out the case for a new governance. I wish they had included the word survival. Implicit in their case is an immediate future of stability. Ferry rates will continue to rise gradually, but without catastrophe. Groceries, same. Energy, same. This is dreamland. We are a bedroom community bereft of all...

The Beachcomber in printing thin pieces on the Council and Credit Union has this critic at its beck and call. Chris Beck should criticize the Council instead of criticizing our civic lack. And the Beachcomber should have delved into the nuts and bolts of that $200,000 instead of just providing an excellent progress report. While noting the good work of the council, Chris neglects mention of what it did not do when K2 went on the market. It did not entertain ideas from the public on how to convert this plant to making things for island use. Not to mention profound disinterest in the Council taking a stand on health care. What’s the essential difference between a credit union and a bank? Knowing that banks don’t lend money, they create it, what’s the capital for? Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, but there is serious ignorance here about money, and it has the nation over a barrel. Fresh breeze needed, please. The Beachcomber has inadvertently beckoned, and I have innocently answered the call.

In case the last two posts read like a Chicken Little act, Last week:

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a new feature on their website called "Find Insurance Options". You just provide certain information about your family size, your age, your employment situation, your financial situation, whether you have certain disabilities or diseases, whether you now have Medicare or some other health insurance, or how long you have not had health insurance, whether you have been denied insurance, whether you are someone's dependent, a veteran? an American Indian? an Alaskan Native? etc., etc., etc. ... and the site gives you suggestions as to where and how you might find health insurance that might suit your particular needs. The head of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, tells us "This is an incredibly impressive consumer tool," (Linda Jansen)

US: Felony charges, big fines for reporting within Gulf oil spill zone: ...

There is a limit to hearing of wrongs. Of private prisons operating for profit. Of Homeland Security breaking up Latino families. Of driving blacks out of New Orleans. Of giant firms poisoning the public with bad food and dangerous packaging, endangering coal miners, and contaminating our aquifers. Of bad health care at exorbitant cost. Of collusion of the elite to steal from the rest of us. Of continued funding of the torture school at Ft. Benning, Of supporting criminal takeover of Haiti and Honduras. Of the CIA murdering people. Of police brutalizing dissidents. Of ocean drilling. Of the whole rotten stinking, stupid, meaningless wasting of our precious blue dot. At first there was awakening, then came astonishment at the pervasiveness, and finally there has come realization that the root cause is a public so hooked on technology it will not depose the criminals who control it. Now the wrongs hit me like Chinese water torture, wrong, wrong, wrong, because there is no more hope. Only one event could win some...

The question was provoked this morning by Patsy Cline singing "Dear God" in hope He would help her stop sinning. I've heard it dozens of times because it's on my 30Gigabyte iPod and never has it provoked in me a serious thought.  This time it unlatched a lifetime load of remembered old time gospel music, not literally remembered, for I never paid attention to the silly old words, but just the repetition of sin, sinners & sinning. Sin is bad. Sinners are bad people. Everybody's a sinner. People are bad. Get saved! Okay, Dear God, what are you doing to a congressman who votes to fund an egregiously immoral war, or to fund the torture school at Ft. Benning? Okay, Dear God, why to you bless judges and prosecutors who put black men in jail for a little grass stashed? Enough crass grandstanding, what is the fate of a country that cannot distinguish between good and bad?

I'll answer that. Our fate is to be blessed with technology.

The genocide in Palestine and the biocide in the Gulf of Mexico cap what we have known for a long time but have not been able to stomach, that bad money is in charge of the US. And that is not all. As an earthquake instantly vaporizes faith in solid ground the enormity of our support for the cornered wolverine of Zion and for criminal negligence in ocean drilling wipes clean the cluttered landscape of rule by law in America. The underlying rock is rule by money. It’s been money since the first pilgrim stepped on Plymouth Rock and we’ve been lied to ever since. To this day our finest protesters, ANSWER, Code Pink, Public Citizen, Planned Parenthood, you pick, send out bulletins “Tell Congress to XYZ”, “Tell Congress no more money for war”. It’s over, menwomen, put the apple pie back in the Major Brands box. The time has come to admit that we have willingly supported a government we know has been lying to us for the simple reason that capitalism has given us a season ticket to Disneyland. An opossum said it best,...