- Wine Jargon Translated
- Chucking USAID
- The Price Of Eggs
- Rhetorical Devolution
- What’s Lost At Point Reyes
- A Monument To Failure
- Bring Back Logging To Reduce Wildfire Risk
WINE JARGON TRANSLATED
Editor:
I read the Press Democrat report on the jargon-filled Wine Industry Network. Listen to the language used by experts to describe the future of the wine business: “navigate coming consolidations,” “innovate and build strong trade partnerships,” “improving consumer sentiment,” “unwinding of pandemic-related distortions,” “change the psychology in the industry,” “decision-making paralysis,” “plan for a more pessimistic scenario,” “innovative marketing to stand out,” “seismic shift,” “embrace challenges as opportunities for innovation and adaptation.”
Whew, ever heard such a pile of bile?
I’m a small vineyard owner, and the shocking truth is that in the past three years every sector, segment and sliver of the wine industry, top to bottom, all tiers — everyone blew it. The job of wineries is simple: buy grapes, make wine, market wine, sell wine. The industry has been an abject failure in every aspect of its responsibilities and obligations.
The industry needs to adopt a new mantra and post it in bold letters all over every winery. It should be: We don’t react to the market. We make the market. Sell wine.
Tom Johnson
Redwood Valley
CHUCKING USAID
Editor:
Right-wing politicians have complained about foreign aid for decades, calling it a wasteful diversion of resources to often-ungrateful foreigners. It isn’t surprising that the new administration is moving to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.
What is ironic about dismantling USAID is that this agency is designed to promote the American way of organizing global production. It was set up to counter radical movements in the third world and has been an effective incubator of capitalist economies around the world.
I remember rows of USAID-branded tractors parked in Cairo, waiting to be shipped to impoverished farmers. Their farms were too small for such machines to turn around in, and they could not afford gasoline. But the U.S.-based manufacturer made a huge sale.
Why aren’t critics of capitalism celebrating USAID’s demise? The cutoff of American equipment and expertise will force desperate people to come up with innovative, noncapitalist solutions to the economic and environmental problems they face — or turn to China for help.
Karl Marx remarked that the function of the state is to protect capitalists from themselves. The current administration’s actions show that Marx had it right.
Fred H. Lawson
Bodega Bay
THE PRICE OF EGGS
Editor,
One of the main reasons people voted for Donald Trump was the price of groceries, specifically eggs.
A slim plurality of voters went Republican for cheaper eggs.
How’s that working for us? Eggs are nearly twice the price they were when Democrats lost the presidential election. Some blame bird influenza; some blame inflation.
Despite inflation being tamed by President Joe Biden, the price of eggs was still a bit higher in November 2024 than before the COVID pandemic, which killed over 300,000 needlessly during Trump’s first presidency.
Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is unlikely to control the bird flu since he is a vaccine skeptic. If the bird flu jumps into the human population, thousands more people will die.
You can thank Republican senators who confirmed RFK Jr.’s nomination along with the other incompetent cabinet secretaries, whose only qualification is to follow Trump into oblivion.
Do you think Republican policies will bring cheaper eggs? You’ve been fooled again.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont
RHETORICAL DEVOLUTION
Editor:
This ‘ridiculous’ war…
As I thought about the Presidents Day holiday, I reread Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. His words on the battlefield at Gettysburg during the Civil War are still very moving. He asked the assembled crowd to remember the men who gave their lives to save the union: “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”
In contrast, President Donald Trump, the leader of the free world, can only write, “It is time to stop this ridiculous war, where there has been massive and totally DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russian and Ukraine.” Is this all he can say about the men and women of Ukraine who died to save their country? A “ridiculous” war? Has Trump so quickly forgotten that there is only one person, one person alone, Vladimir Putin, and only one country, one country alone, Russia, who invaded Ukraine and brutally killed thousands of its citizens? Ask Ukrainians if it has been “ridiculous.”
Greg Jacobs
Sebastopol
WHAT’S LOST AT POINT REYES
Editor:
It was fascinating to read about the group of wealthy investment types who gathered with their private chefs in the Marin enclave of Ross to pool the funds necessary for the Nature Conservancy to drive the historic dairies out of Point Reyes National Seashore. No doubt they are all experts on the dynamics of multigenerational family farms and the rural communities they and their workers inhabit. I wonder if any of them knows which end of a cow the milk comes from.
Asked about future stewardship of the former dairy land, the Nature Conservancy representative expressed confidence that the government will take care of it. Will the government also help support the farmworker families who have lived and worked on these dairies for decades — or the restaurants, retailers, schools and other services in those communities that are losing their primary base of economic sustenance? Perhaps they could schedule another Ross conclave to raise money for those causes? Don’t hold your breath.
Last year another group of brutes masquerading as environmentalists shut down what was the largest family-owned organic dairy in Sonoma County. Perhaps our fancy neighbors to the south will have to adjust to imported milk in their lattes.
Steve Page
Sonoma
A MONUMENT TO FAILURE
Editor:
The California bullet train project just may be the biggest failure our state government has ever taken on. Billions of dollars over budget. Nothing to show for it. No trains filled with passengers rolling down the tracks. Photo ops for a short piece of track being set in place. Politicians wearing construction hats, cheering and patting themselves on the back for their efforts.
Just think about it. If Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom had approached Elon Musk to build a bullet train it would probably have come in on budget, on time and be carrying passengers. A train system reaching from Redding to Oakland, Fresno, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Diego and feeder rail to many smaller cities and towns to the east and west of the main line.
This debacle seems to never end. Maybe it is time to cut our losses. Leave whatever is built as is; don’t touch it. Maybe a few thousand years from now it will stand as a monumental historical landmark along with Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China. Millions will visit it, only to wonder what it meant in 2025.
Anthony Morgan
Cotati
BRING BACK LOGGING TO REDUCE WILDFIRE RISK
Editor,
I think there is a correlation between the catastrophic wildfires and California officials putting heavy restrictions on logging. We need to evaluate how we keep our forest under control.
I know the impacts of climate change cause some of the problems, but there has to be more to it. The threat remains, even as we all try to keep our property cleared. Maybe it is time to start clearing our forests, so fires can be brought under control. Our skyrocketing home insurance costs are unsustainable.
Virginia Kerbs
Woodacre
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