The presidential campaign plummeted into imbecilic tedium last night in Nashville as Barack Obama and John McCain faced off in the second debate. The encounter took place against the vivid backdrop of economic catastrophe, the…
Posts published in “Essays”
Last Tuesday's Supervisors Board combined discussion of a fresh set of catastrophes with a discussion of catastrophes carried over from the August 26th meeting. The morning began with a discussion of the derelicts, the next…
Three years ago the County's budget had already grown to $187 million. There was the usual ritualistic rhetoric about belt-tightening, cut-backs and general austerity, but spending increased, fueled in large part by borrowing from sources…
“Change” and “hope” are not words one associates with Senator Joe Biden, a man so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our political system that a computer simulation of the corporate-political…
STATE SENATOR PAT WIGGINS, whose increasingly erratic public behavior was recently noted by the AVA, startled a public hearing last week when she suddenly and inexplicably swore at committee witness Pastor Robert Jones. Sen. Pat…
Days turn to weeks, weeks to months and I think back to when I was first arrested by Border Patrol agents in Texas and told that this would take, at maximum, a few weeks. That…
They glide silently through the Golden Gate, ships so large they briefly obscure great swathes of Marin as they move deep into the San Francisco Bay. The seagoing dirigibles with the faraway names are stacked…