Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

Here’s what R.L. Crabb, The Union cartoonist, wrote about the county supervisors unanimous decision on Tuesday to reject a resident’s request to rename “Negro Creek” to “Black Miners’ Creek”:

“Poor Jeff,” he wrote in an out-of-the-blue reference on Russ Steele’s blog. “The Board of Supes just rejected his favorite bugaboo, phony racism, by a unanimous vote. Once again, the hick residents of Nevada County have embarrassed him and his ongoing efforts to remake the county in his image.”

It’s a cheap shot, since all I did was report the debate about “Negro Creek”; there was no editorial about it. And we’re a “purple” county politically, no longer just a red one, so it’s not about “me.” But that’s nothing new.

I was interested, however, to read the report in The Union by Matthew Renda, who is the “young whippersnapper” reporter at The Union.

Matthew went to the effort of inserting this information into his article — from an AP report. (This issue attracted significant out-of-town press; the L.A. Times also wrote it).

The insert read: “Leon Jenkins, president of the state’s most active branch of the NAACP, told the Associated Press the county should have changed the name to ‘black’ when it removed the N-word last summer.

“’I don’t know anybody who calls themselves a negro,’ said Jenkins, of the Los Angeles NAACP. ‘If you are willing to change it to negro, how much of a push would it take to change it to black? How much harder would that have been?’

“Jenkins told the AP that the board, which is made up of only white members, might be lacking the cultural sensitivity necessary to make a good decision.”

That doesn’t sound like “phony racism” to me. It’s a practical perspective, because you already decided to change the name from “Nigger.”

It was a good perspective to include in the report — one that I missed in Tuesday’s proceedings.

We’re a conservative family, but raising a child has made us more aware of the generation(s) gap in our largely retirement community. It’s sometimes overbearing.

Whatever your perspective, thanks to Zeke and Gail Smith for being the “rainmaker” when it came to changing “Nigger Creek” to “Negro Creek.” Otherwise who know how long it would have stayed on county assessor documents.

“On behalf of the county I have to apologize,” Supervisor Hank Weston said. “How it got there I have no idea. It appeared around the ’60s.”

In the end, the Smiths saved the county and its residents from real embarrassment.

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“An 8-year-old boy confronted GOP contender Michele Bachmann at a book-signing event in South Carolina, and stood up for his gay mother,” as ABCNews.com reported. “Rep. Bachmann, who supports a Constitutional amendment defining marriage between a man and a woman, initially coaxed the seemingly shy child to speak during the weekend event, only to be left virtually speechless when the boy said his mother was gay.

‘“My mom is gay and she doesn’t need fixing,’ the boy, identified only as Elijah, is heard whispering to Bachmann in a video posted to YouTube. Bachmann initially says nothing to the boy, but as he walks away she responds: ‘Ok. Bye-bye’”

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“Thirteen charitable organizations raised more than $1 million each in California by hiring for-profit fundraisers last year but got back 10 percent of the money or less, according to newly released data from the state attorney general,” California Watch is reporting.

“Some prominent charities – such as Amnesty International, Save the Children Federation and Defenders of Wildlife – actually lost money in the fundraising campaigns run by for-profit companies. Charity watchdogs say many such organizations might have good reason to take an initial loss in cultivating new donors. The charities point out that the numbers don’t show future revenue from donors who continue to give.

“Other organizations, often representing popular causes like support for police, firefighters or veterans, get poor ratings from charity watchdogs for doing little charitable work and hiring fundraisers notorious for taking the vast majority of donors’ money.”

The rest of the article is here.

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The editor/publisher of “The Tea Party Gazette” (AKA The Union) has a column this morning based on the oversimplified notion of what states are “free” and what are not.

It is a thinly masked report based on the “Yosemite Sam,” “get off my land,” “don’t tread (or regulate) on me” mindset that the tea party and other self-appointed “freedom loving people” espouse. The editor/publisher also seems to be carrying water for his new neighbor in the Lake Wildwood area of our county, Assemblyman Dan Logue, who espouses this rhetoric.

The column gleefully points out that California is one of the least free states while Texas is one of the most free. OMG, you might think, we’re losing our freedom.

But “digging deeper” in the report, which is from June, here’s what helps define a free state such as Texas, Indiana and the Dakotas:

•Texas is the only state not to require employers to contribute to workers’-compensation coverage.

•Texas does not authorize sobriety checkpoints and has relatively light restrictions on motorist freedoms. Private and homeschools are almost completely unregulated.

•Indiana has good education laws, with very light regulation of home and private schools, but it has recently expanded the mandatory years of schooling from 9 to 11.

• Indiana has very little campaign-finance regulation, except for corporate PACs

• In North Dakota, motorists also operate with relative freedom, except for sobriety checkpoints and (most notably) the personal-injury-coverage mandate.

And what helps makes California so unfree: California is one of only five states to mandate short-term disability insurance.

So then, what are the authors’ “policy recommendations” for our state? “Relax labor laws to boost employment, such as repealing short-term disability and paid family leave mandates.”

I also found it odd that the authors of the study ranked California low on “personal freedoms,” though the report conceded: “On personal freedoms, California does well on same-sex partnerships and marijuana, but it also has the most restrictive gun laws in the country, a highly restrictive policy regime for motorists, and smoking bans.”

I wonder too if that reflected the personal bias of the report’s authors (downplaying the significance of same-sex partnerships and focusing on gun control instead).

Kris Kristofferson sang: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Here’s what one listener think it meant: “When you’ve got nothing to lose, you can do whatever you damned well please. When I was young, single, and had no career to speak of, I could pack up and move to another city, or go backpacking on a whim, or really whatever I wanted.

“Now I have a mortgage, a kid, a career, and I’m not free at all. I get up every morning, go to work, do what the boss says, pick the kid up from school, etc. And if I decide to chuck the job, I’d lose the house, maybe the marriage, family… So I’m trapped.

“Not that I’d trade it away, but the fact is we give up a lot of freedom when we take on the responsibility of a middle class life. We become slaves to our commitments and to the cost of losing what we’ve taken years to build up.”

I wonder if that’s what’s eating so many some of these so-called “freedom lovin’” people. Whatever the reason, we’re going to have to pay more attention to soundbites such as this during the upcoming election season, digging deeper and asking people what they really mean.

Here’s Kris Kristofferson singing that song:

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