Columnists

If you have a severe mental disability and you are reading these words, I owe you the following word: "Congratulations!" If gyou've made it this far, it is likely that you are one of the strong and the few mental health consumers who can weather the severe conditions that our country and our Earth have been enduring. -more-

Each year Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan gives awards to individuals, companies and governments that make reading the news a daily adventure. These are the awards for the past year

The Golden Lemon Award goes to Lockheed Martin for its F-35 fifth generation stealth fighter, at $1.5 trillion the most expensive weapons system in history. The plane currently has 883 “design flaws,” including nine “category 1” flaws. The latter “may cause death, severe injury, or severe occupational illness” to pilots and “major damage” to weapons systems and combat readiness ( which sounds like those TV ads for drugs that may or may not treat your disease, but could also kill your first born and turn you into a ferret).

But the company got right to work on those flaws, not by fixing them, mind you, but by reclassifying them as less serious. As for the rest of the problems, Lockheed Martin says it will fix them if it gets paid more.The company currently receives $2 billion a year to keep some 400 F-35s flying, a cost of $50 million a plane. It costs $28, 455 an hour to fly an F-35. -more-

The Loser in the White House

Back in November 2020—two months before his second impeachment—Donald Trump became the target for an astonishing blast of verbal vitriol from Down Under. An Aussie writer who goes by the name "Grumpy Geezer" produced a beyond-scathing, bum-whupping, verbal take-down of Trump, using "the language of Shakespeare" to roast King Don on the griddle of adjectival excoriation.

As Trump reluctantly prepares for his last day in the White House, this flamboyant grilling of the Orange Lobster of Mar-a-Lago begs to be read aloud. Here's a sampling. The full article can be read here. -more-

On January 13, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached Donald J. Trump by a vote of 232-197. Ten Republicans voted to impeach. -more-

If all the newspapers I subscribe to arrived as paper editions, my house might look like the one I entered as a nurse years ago with newspapers in a mound filling the living room to the ceiling and the bedroom where I found my patient so full of papers and magazines that I couldn’t see the size of the bed or the rest of the room. I miss daily newspapers in hand, but limit myself to just the Sunday paper to read and set aside for my parrot Zorro. It is interesting how older articles take on a different meaning and that is what happened when I pulled out Joe Matthews’ editorial on why City Councils should be bigger.

Now that we are giving our Mayor and City Council members pay raises, enlarging the Council has little appeal and less justification with one Councilmember per 15,000 residents. Besides, we have a readymade city structure with commissions to foster city engagement and new ideas. As I wrote last week Berkeley commissions provide significant contributions. They could still use a review of their mission statements, broader diversity, more complete minutes and encouragement to dispense with meeting rules when engagement of attendees is of benefit. The Agenda and Rules Committee announced on Monday that a special meeting will be called to discuss the Councilmember Droste’s proposal to reorganize and eliminate not quite half of the commissions. If saving money in the city budget was really the issue, there are a lot more places to look starting with consultants. Police overtime is supposed to be getting a hard look. -more-