Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

City Council member Jan Arbuckle was elected Mayor of Grass Valley by the city council at Tuesday night’s meeting, as expected.

But Dan Miller was elected vice mayor. Based on the typical rotation pattern, you would have expected it to be Yolanda Cookson. The vote was 4-1 for Miller, with Cookson voting no.

“A first that I can remember,” said one long-timer at City Hall, referring to split vote.

The Grass Valley City Council voting pattern is as predictable as a sunrise, with some residents charging it is a thinly veiled “political machine” for the “old guard” of political, civic and business leaders.

Cookson has expressed some independence. She writes an interesting blog, too.

As predicted, the council unanimously approved the Berriman Ranch housing project. It came despite the objection of an adjacent homeowner group. The background is here.

The Council Council faces a lot of challenges going forward, and embracing some fresh ideas is one of them. Can it? The choice of Miller over Cookson showed that it is still clinging to the past.

I think the “old guard” is still quietly reeling from Terry Lamphier’s upset over John Spencer for supervisor. It scared the “you know what” out of some of them.

I predict Terry will do fine on the board, maybe providing some fresh perspectives.

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Last election season, an anonymous creep signed me up for dozens of unwanted magazine subscriptions, as I reported previously.

Some bills were sent to my house, addressed to “Gloria Zane.”

The magazine publishers aren’t amused and have sent me the hard-copy “inserts” that was used to subscribe. This is an act of identity theft and mail fraud, according to the publishers and law enforcement.

A sample of one of the handwritten subscription orders is here: creep. It was time consuming to fill them all out by hand.

I’ll keep you posted as the investigation proceeds.

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The internet has opened new, needed channels of communication in our community, as I’ve written before. A good example is local blogger Don Pelton’s rebuttal to the editor/publisher of The Union’s commentary about reopening the Idaho Maryland Mine. Don’s is labeled “Sour Grapes in Whine Country.”

You won’t read it in The Union, so you can read it here, on Don’s blog or NCVoices.

“Jeff Ackerman, editor/publisher of The Union, today gave us another of his signature anti-government rants (“Mining? Just fuhgeddaboudit“), this time in the form of an entertainingly peevish complaint about the likely failure of Emgold to get permission to re-open the old Idaho-Maryland Mine in the heart of downtown Grass Valley. He quotes and agrees with Mike Miller, manager of the Original Sixteen To One Mine, in blaming the “Bureau of Environmentalists,” which Miller said replaced the Bureau of Mines. . . .

“What interests me most, though, is the resentful style of Ackerman’s writing, a style that has often caused his readers to refer to The Union as the “Tea Party Gazette.”

“Jeff Ackerman’s Op-Ed today, like most of his Op-Eds lately, is an expression of this fundamentally powerless one-size-fits-all-intellects style of peevish thought.”

The enitre article is here.

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This from the Central Valley Business Times: “Melvin Rohs, 64, of Nevada City, pleaded guilty Tuesday to swindling his former employer, Citizens Bank of Northern California, in a series of unauthorized money transfers between commercial accounts.

“The loss associated with Rohs’s criminal conduct totals $2,172,109, says U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner.

“Mr. Rohs, who had been a trusted employee of the bank for more than six years, pleaded guilty to three counts of embezzlement by a bank employee and two counts of making a false statement in connection with a loan application.

“According to court documents, Mr. Rohs was a senior loan officer at the regional bank headquartered in Nevada City until he was fired in May 2009 when the unauthorized money transfers were being investigated.”

The rest of the article is here.

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I increasingly ask myself if we are being swallowed up by right-wing media — much of it extreme — here in the foothills.

It’s hard for any “flatlander” to comprehend, where the popular wisdom is that media outlets tilt to the left.

Ironically, this “old boys” media network comes at a time when we are going “purple” politically — electing our most liberal supervisor in years and ousting the most conservative one, for example.

•The Union. This morning the editor/publisher complains about the bureaucracy and environmentalists (again) — this time when it comes to reopening the Idaho-Maryland Mine. “What a pointless rambling pile of prose,” responded one reader, AKA “customer.”

•KNCO. This radio station still features Rush Limbaugh and other extreme right commentators but provides no balance. It recently sold its Yuba City station to “downsize.”

•Right-wing bloggers. Their ranks are growing: Russ Steele, George Rebane, Barry Pruett and Todd Juvinall. This morning Pruett — whose wife works for Tom McClintock — cites another Rasmussan report to support a hard-line immigration policy — despite a finding by the Pew Institute that the landline-only polls show a GOP bias.

Rebane bashed the Sugarloaf deal this weekend, which provides open space for the picturesque town of Nevada City.

Steele got his scoop from the “nonpartisan” county Contractor’s Association Christmas party, where our new State Senator has launched a webpage “There Ought Not to Be a Law.”

“Jennifer Sailor, State Senator Doug LaMalfa’s Nevada County Field Rep, mentioned this contest at the NCCA Christmas Party, but asked me to wait untill the contest was launched before posting on the contest,” he writes, agreeing to hold off before carrying water for the field rep.

If you challenge this blogging group, you can expect a personal attack that is unrelated to any discussion at hand.

People who comment on the right-wing blogs include “John S,” who are conservative electeds in our county.

In a Democratic state, this onslaught of hard right commentary (with its “my way or the highway” tone) helps isolate us from the rest of the state.

It burns bridges, rather than builds them. It stifles our ability to find innovative solutions to our problems, rather than just defending the status quo.

We need to diversify our economy, not just rely on “old” industries such as mining and logging — or real estate and construction. It is stale thinking.

In addition, from a business perspective, the intended audience of all this like-minded commentary is shrinking. We are an older, declining population.

The way to grow your business is to diversify, form an alliance or target other markets. Winning a government contract might be another, but you can’t do that while you’re bashing government.

Ironically, Fox News — for all the populist fervor — has its own growth problems. FoxNews.com’s web traffic is lagging behind its cable news rivals, including CNN.com.

As Mediaweek’s Mike Shields writes: “Far more people visit websites than watch the television network. The top rated cable news telecasts will attract a couple of million viewers. Meanwhile unique visitors to network websites are counted in the tens of millions.”

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