CHARLES GAINES, noted nutritionist and exercise guru, recently described the physical condition of the typical American child as “scary.” Gaines said that “most ’yuppie’ parents are in terrific shape but their children are fatter and flabbier than ever.” Gaines claims that the typical teenager cannot keep pace with the average middleaged jogger.
THE STATE HEALTH DEPARTMENT has warned children and pregnant women not to eat fish from Clear Lake as the level of mercury contamination in Clear Lake has reached poisonous levels. The warning is identical to one issued annually to people fishing in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta where anglers are advised to eat only one fish per week due to the mercury contamination of the catch.
LESHER COMMUNICATIONS, a newspaper chain owned by right wing millionaire, Dean Lesher, lately an appointee to the board of trustees of the state university system, has added the Healdsburg Tribune and the Healdsburg Printing Co. to its list of recent acquisitions. Last year, Lesher scooped up the Mendocino Grapevine and the Ukiah Shopper’s Gazette. The Fort Bragg Advocate, The Mendocino Beacon and the Ukiah Daily Journal are owned by the Arkansas Travelers, a group of Little Rock hustlers who have glommed onto nearly fifty mediocre, but lucrative, American newspapers in various areas of the country.
MUCH TO THE CHAGRIN OF THE MCA (Mendocino County Associates) a secret organization of crypto-fascist hippie haters, the State Court of Appeals has ruled that County housing code enforcement is swell. The MCA, aided by an assortment of “contractors” who think no home is complete without a carport, sued the County, claiming the County was not requiring hippies to play by the same rules the whining “contractors” play by.
ACCORDING TO COMMON CAUSE, House and Senate incumbents received more than 100 million dollars from various special interest groups. Senator Paul Simon of Illinois, one of the few truly principled men in the Senate, said, “what the donations mean is that Congress is responding to the whims of the rich and the powerful. The people who contribute are not unemployed, or handicapped, or on welfare -- they are not the people who really need help.”
VERNON RUSSEL, AN OFFICER of the International Woodworkers Association said last week that the large timber companies “are deliberately shutting down mills to pressure workers to accept cut wages and benefits.” Mill workers throughout the Pacific Northwest have been forced to accept radical wage and fringe cuts to keep their jobs as the companies threaten workers with plant closure if the workers do not accept them.
90 PERCENT OF TEACHERS surveyed by Parade Magazine said parents no longer instill discipline and other desirable qualities in their children that would enable children to do better in the classroom. One teacher is quoted as saying, “Before we can get down to reading and writing we must teach self-discipline, concentration, honesty, integrity -- values that should have been brought from home, but aren’t.”
LOCAL LEGISLATORS, Barry Keene and Dan Hauser, received consumer protection ratings of 69 percent and 90 percent respectively from the California Public Interest Research Group. The scores represent the percentage of votes Keene and Hauser cast in the public interest rather than in the interests of the greed and death people. The same research outfit revealed that 17 legislators, including Keene, had no campaign contributions of less than 100 dollars. 8 percent of Hauser’s contributions were in small amounts. These figures confirm what most of us know, that the wealthy dominate political giving while the rest of us scuffle around giving five bucks here, five bucks there, to organizations that really go to bat for those who need pinch hitters.
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