The editorial that spoke for itself

Oct 21, minor edits...

In my view, this was one of The Union's more obvious attempts to manipulate its readers.

This is a recap and close reading of The Union's editorial that appeared just before last spring's election; to anyone who was paying attention at the time, it won't be new. However, it's more terse (than NCFocus coverage back in Feb and March) and has the benefit of perhaps greater understanding.

I'm bringing it up again for two reasons:
1. The same two candidates are facing off again next month (because there was a third candidate in the race last spring, neither got a majority); the more prolific candidate's writing is extremely revealing, when juxtaposed with what he's responding to.
2. The Union's treatment of this case may shed some light on its recent "North Star Controversy" coverage.

If you want to skip the background, go here.

Background:

• First candidate for the election presents himself as moderate, which is very much at odds with his pre-candidacy writings.
  
  
• Newspaper soft-pedals the discrepancy*.
  
  
• Second candidate points out the discrepancy.
  
  
• Newspaper castigates second candidate for having done so, in an editorial whose logical justification the editor refuses to discuss*, saying "the editorial speaks for itself".

Let's call the two sparring candidates [B] and [D].
(To help you keep them straight - [B] as in "boy", [D] as in "daughter".)

[Recap from this Feb. post:]
On July 4 2002, before becoming a candidate, [B] writes: (Please compare with the pieces he refers to)

Citizen H and Citizen L took us to a new low of mean-spiritedness in these pages with their recent fairy tales attacking the character of Supervisor [DB]. Their effluvium-laden columns, utterly barren of responsible commentary...

This writing was not out of character for [B] the pre-candidate*

Fast-forward 1 1/2 years:
In spring of 2004, when running for office, [B] was interviewed by newspaper:

[candidate says that it is] his ability to build consensus that makes him the best candidate...
he was disappointed by the polarization and divisiveness among the board [in Fall 2002]. 'It was so hateful'...

This [self-presentation as a moderate] was typical for [B] as candidate.

In The Union's Q&A, the editorial board questioned him gently on the disparity of tone:

[B]: "...I don’t think the atmosphere of the county is as healthy as it could be in terms of mutual respect, civility and trust."
...
The Union: You were writing opinion columns for The Union during the NH 2020 controversy. Were you trying to be a voice of reason then?

[B]: I wrote a column debunking another guy’s column about a different issue, and I think the second column I wrote was about NH 2020 -that was a kind of a vehicle. I was saying it was a matter of trust, and it was a matter of our being able to get along. I don’t know if I used the word consensus or not, but that’s where it started.

The Union: Looking through some of your columns, you did throw around terms, labels - "environmentalists," "left wing."

[B]: I don’t think they are inconsistent at all. If you go back and look at what I was writing in that column - that was pretty hard-hitting language, I admit. But there was a motivation for it by a certain two or three parties, and I think it was accurate.

[Recap from Feb 29 post]
The week before the election, [D]'s campaign (Unnecessarily bad timing**, D - looked sleazy.) sent out a mailer with quotes from [B], taken from columns, debates, interviews, illustrating the difference in tone. Some were weak; some (like "effluvium-laden") were strong.

The Union, in their final editorial before the election, said roughly "All the candidates are qualified and we're not going to endorse any but we were sadly disappointed in [D]'s conduct in sending the mailer because it...

...misuses partial quotes by her opponent, [B]. Some are blurbs from columns written for The Union two years ago, which, by design, were point-counterpoint comments about opposing columnists' views, not about [D] or issues relevant to 2004. Others are taken from [B]'s recent interview with the Editorial Board which, when read in context, offer a different meaning. No doubt the same results could be achieved by selecting 'sound bites' from [D]'s transcript."

How can this be? What planet do they live on? [D] does not write (anything) remotely resembling [B]'s pre-candidate rants; is editorial board lying through its teeth?

No, it is not.


Go back, and read the excerpt closely.
Note that "Others...offer a different meaning in context..." and "No doubt the same results could be achieved..." refer to the quotes gleaned from the interview only; not to the mailer as a whole, or to either candidate's writings.

They're writing about the weak quotes only; they're marginalizing the strong ones ("not relevant to issues in this campaign", they say, although one might think that the future direction of the county would be considered an issue in this campaign), and ignoring the valid overarching message that the mailer conveys, namely that candidate [B] is misrepresenting himself.

To recycle a quote from Nate over at Dan Gillmor's -

It's a common [less than completely straightforward] argumentative technique, used by all sides in all contexts when you don't have an answer for the key issues, to pick on small errors on the edges while ignoring the elephant in the middle.

I believe The Union's editorial board misled those readers who expected the paper to take seriously its journalistic responsibility to improve the map of reality each of us uses for our own decisionmaking***: what readers needed was serious judgement as to whether [D]'s mailer contained legitimate evidence that her opponent was not the moderate he presented himself to be, but they didn't get it from The Union.


----------------------

Oct 21: Fafblog weighs in:

Q: Is there an elephant in this room?
A: Of course not! How could we miss an elephant in the room? That's so crazy! You've been listening to crazy rumors about crazy elephants on the crazy internet, that's what we think.
Q: Then what's that huge gray animal in the corner with the large flappy ears and prehensile trunk surrounded by heaps of elephant feed, elephant dung, and a sign reading "Do Not Touch The Elephant"?
A: That is an armadillo...

*(Added Oct 18:)
Howard Kurtz in Wash Post:

Whatever their orientation, journalists are the last line of defense against public deception. If they fail to challenge distortions by politicians, they might as well join the stenography pool.

*In fairness, Editor's unwillingness to justify the editorial was expressed generally, as policy for _all_ editorials; i.e., this one wasn't getting special treatment.

**Thanks to Stephen Waters for the most excellent "improve the map of reality" expression.

**On the general topic of last-minute hit pieces, I have to agree with Andrew Greenberg (somewhere in here)

the trick here is in the timing -- proving that they have no faith in their arguments, foisting the piece upon an unknowing public at the 11th hour of the election. An honest broker of ideas would do so in the light of day, where the idea can truly win the election if proper, and where it can be amplified, diminished, contradicted or buttressed as a matter of public discourse.

It's pretty disappointing when someone with a valid message resorts to the last-minute approach anyway.

------------------------

*Here are [B]'s "pre-candidacy" columns: (if I've missed any, please let me know)

• Oct 26 2002: All have right to be heard, if not taken seriously
  
• Sept 28 2002: Public has opportunity to call officials to account
• Aug 04 2002; Antonson risks honor, dignity in race
• July 27 2002; Alive and well in a 'bat's nest of wackodom'
  
• July 4 2002: Attacks on Bedwell say much about his critics

What would Margaret Wade think?

Chris Satullo paraphrased from inside PressThink:

[The real job of journalism is] helping the public life of this nation work well...

and, later on:

Public life goes well when people have multiple, useful forums to identify the problems that affect their lives together in community, when their dialogue is civil and robust, and leads to the hope of solutions. Public life goes well when people know about and know how to use the instititions that are civic glue of the community. Public life goes well when elections are about the issues most on the mind of the electorate, when the voters voice helps frame the choices and the debate, and the candidates are required to respond to that voice.

Jeff Jarvis could be writing about us.

The Union needs a mom at the helm. We had one, once; we miss her.

How should you form your mental map of reality?

Feel free to skip the plodding generalities and jump to the local content of this post.


This question has been coming up a lot lately - with the CBS News-Dan Rather letters, with Iraq, with Swiftboats, with The Union.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have a simple answer. If you rely solely on your own experiences and perceptions, your reality map might end up being extremely accurate, but it will take form extremely slowly - this is like insisting on building the house yourself before you move in, cutting the trees for the logs for the beams yourself, forging your own tools...In short, it's neither desirable nor attainable. We need others to provide us with the parts we need - we need to outsource much of our decisionmaking, we need others to inform us.

When we put the job of "Information provider" out for bid, we'll have plenty of takers: we can hire consultants, ask friends, get told by busybodies, read weblogs, read newspapers...but then we're faced with a new problem - who will do the best job? Some of them aren't competent, and can't do as good a job as well as we would (if we had the time) (of these, some can hide it well, some can't); some - perhaps serving two masters - might have their own reasons for not doing it properly; on the other end the spectrum, many are experts, who know the lay of the land far better than we and who can effortlessly produce top quality results.

How do we judge who to hire? We want the ones who are honest and have a good track record, who are sharp, who use good tools, who are dedicated, who are straight with us about what they can and can't provide. While they might not be able to provide exactly what we want, they shouldn't engage in deliberate omissions or misinformation.
[Obvious disclaimer: this is an ideal, nobody's perfect, everything's relative, etc.]

How can we judge whether they have these qualities?

One way is to listen to how they say they'll inform us, and see if it sounds like what we want. This method has two drawbacks - first, what they may mean might not be what we hear, and second, they may have the words down but be less strong on the execution, i.e. inflate their qualities beyond what's real. (in the absence of an objective metric for evaluation - or a good referee - this is bound to happen, like grade inflation in universities.)

So the words are good, but they're not enough. We need to look at how they do, not just how they talk.

But how can we know how they do? they're the experts, we're not.

Here are three methods:

• Outsource the judging - in effect, hire a widely acknowledged (or at least disinterested) expert - perhaps an ombudsman, or a book reviewer, or an accredited institution - to judge the performance of our expert.
  
• Back-seat driving - try, through reading, to learn about what our expert's results should look like, and try to judge based on that. But here, we don't know if we've learned enough to judge properly.
  
• Calibrate - see what the expert says about, and how s/he handles, a case that you understand well. Here you can measure how well they perform, and extrapolate from this measurement to infer how well they're likely to do on cases that you don't understand well.

---

The problem I had with the North Star Controversy involved judging the experts - I didn't know who to believe.

On the one hand, Richard Somerville and Jeff Ackerman, editor and publisher of The Union respectively, appear steadfast in their conviction that Conklin behaved wrongly, and - I infer, since I haven't seen them retract it - in their conviction that he and the Land Trust hatched a deal ("How the plans were laid") long before Conklin got the job. If a newspaper editor is convinced, you'd think that this fact shouldn't be treated lightly.

On the other hand, Bruce Conklin (who I think I've only met once) appears - by reputation from people I respect, and by all actions that I know of - to have the utmost integrity.

On the other hand, money is a powerful motivator.

On the other hand (hoof?), politics as practiced by certain parties up here in Nevada County are far from clean; if some of Conklin's opponents had an opportunity to 'take him out' by smearing, they'd do it.

What initially tipped the balance for me was having an ideal opportunity to outsource the judging - if Andy Cassano, a 'widely acknowledged expert' (i.e. an ethical person who knows the participants well) says the Land Trust behaved completely ethically, that's convincing.

And yet, accepting Cassano's view would entail inferring that Somerville and Ackerman have been misled or are poorly informed or deceptive, and - having never met them at all, except via email - that's not a conclusion I would want to make.

So your correspondent would be an utter waffler, except that The Union's website appears to sheds some light, by enabling calibration.

Go to The Union's North Star Controversy 'front page'. Do you see a veritable plethora of articles, all - with the exception of Conklin's "I did nothing wrong""We made a wise decision" - forming a uniformly disapproving chorus?

Do you see the piece from Andy Cassano, headlined "Political naivete by Land Trust"?

Read the article. Does the headline in any sense match the thrust of Cassano's piece?

Answer: No. However, it's just one item, copy editors are rushed, let's not be so distrustful.


I asked The Union's editor in email:
>Do you feel that this representation of Cassano's article is appropriate?

was told:
...that was the headline on his column, based on his key statement...In this case, we wrote a head that we felt represented his key point

Look at the piece again, and see if you think that Cassano's key point was that the Land Trust was politically naive.

Everyone makes mistakes and omissions, but usually they don't influence - negatively - how a community perceives one of its most prominent members. I believe The Union seriously misrepresented Cassano's article in their overview page - which will mislead the casual reader into assuming that the condemnation is unanimous. And please use this opportunity to calibrate my credibility too- as Jay Rosen said today, "This is the great thing about blogging, seems to me. You can judge [for] yourself". And, if I'm way off base, you can infer that the rest of this post - and the weblog as a whole - is probably garbage.

Because of this misrepresentation, I find it harder to put a charitable spin on The Union's not showing any of the flood of anti-Union-coverage-of-Conklin letters on their "single day" pages (you can specify on the Search page that, for example, you just want to see - online - what was in the 'paper' paper on Sept 25, 2004; but if it's a letter about this coverage, you won't find it there). It turns out these are considered "election letters" - and, in a new setup, these letters go into a separate ghettosection over on the "Election" page, where the casual reader is extremely unlikely to find them. Plus, after they scroll off the bottom of the page, there's no "next page" link (AFAIK) by which you can reach them; so, unless you do a Search for keywords (which fortunately still works, at least for recent items) you won't be able to find them.

Editor R.S. says: "All election letters can be found online under the opinion page, through the election page, or by typing [keywords] in the search engine."

Will look into this; I could be wrong, but this (availability under the Opinion page) might be new. In any case though,
It appears that the "Union criticism" letters are still only visible for a couple of days even on the Opinion page, after that being invisible unless you know what keywords to search for.

Maybe the fact that letters critical of The Union's coverage get hidden away more than 'normal' letters do is a feature. Maybe their becoming invisible to the casual browser after a few days is an oversight. Maybe the fact that the standard Archive Search doesn't bring up salient articles is (as I'm told ) a technical problem. Maybe for The Union to tell the Search users that it's broken would be "too much information". Maybe the title of Cassano's piece just happened to get written in a negative way, because The Union staff misread the column.

Maybe they don't think it's important to fix.

Maybe it's forming a pattern.


I don't want to be claiming that The Union's management sit around in the back room smoking cigars and laughing diabolically as they plot how to bring down their customers' political opponents - it's more that the absence of consideration for fairness, as shown by their disinterest in rectifying the misimpression that their oversights have produced, is likely to have affected (or effected) the original series of articles as well.

Oct 16: OK, not effected - the rapid slide into invisibility of critical letters was probably not deliberate, but to be complacent about this situation and allow it to remain thus, when a man's reputation is in the balance, is not responsible behavior.


Oct 13: to belatedly mention the most important point: we the readers have yet to see a clear, concise account - with evidence to support it - as to exactly what "unethical behavior" was engaged in.

Fame, Fortune and Good Works, several times removed

We interrupt our regularly scheduled coverage of intra-county warfare and meltdown to bring you the following post.


Amy Smith - "Inventor cobbling sophisticated, life-enhancing devices from inexpensive materials for people in areas with little access to technology and even fewer resources to obtain it" - upon whom the MacArthur Foundation bestowed one of its "genius grants" last week - is the sister-in-law of a friend of mine from school.

Wonderful article on her in NY Times Magazine last year, Necessity Is the Mother of Invention. And from Wired, Oct 11 2004, A MacGyver for the Third World.


We are all very proud, including those of us who never met her because she was in Botswana at the time.


Along related lines:

Eva Harris (via)

In her own soft-spoken way, Dr. Eva Harris, 38, has become the Robin Hood of biotechnology.

She takes new discoveries in molecular and biological technology, breaks them down into their simplest forms, figures out ways to replicate them at lower costs and then transfers the information to public health workers in the developing world.

New O'Reilly magazine/book, Make ("The First Magazine for Technology Projects"), planned for January launch (via)-

Our premier issue will show you how to get involved in Kite Aerial Photography
...we chose to focus on cool things you can do with technology, not just what to buy
..."Martha Stewart for geeks."

If you can't wait for their first issue, here's the S.F. Chronicle on Kite Aerial Photography

David Butcher's Pedal Powered Generator

I have powered 12V CHAIN SAWS directly (yes, while someone else cut wood with them) with this unit.
...
At one point a ball-bearing 3600 GPH pump was substituted for the generator, resulting in amazing water pumping capacity....

Wanted: Innovations to feed the hungry

"Prizes have been used to solve many seemingly-intractable problems, from an 18th-century prize for determining longitude at sea, to the 20th century prizes for long-distance flight given to Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. These prizes work well when governments or philanthropists anticipate that a breakthrough would be valuable, but are unlikely to be easily sold in the marketplace or obtained from university laboratories"

Last year's attempt to bring bicycle-powered wireless Internet to Laos didn't succeed in its stated goal, but has spawned other ventures. From this update on the rugged PC they developed -

The Jhai PC, meanwhile, appears to have exposed an odd little niche. There appears to be quite a few places on the earth which are tantalizingly close to Net connections and telephony, but have no electricity, no cellphone coverage, and no landlines. Think of it as the developing world's equivalent of the last-mile problem.

WorldChanging (site with links to many more such stories)

Excellent 4-part series in Washingon Post (Dec. 2003) on Kakenya Ntaiya's path from a Maasai village in Kenya to college in Virginia (here she is now)

From Paul Graham's new essay:

...I explained what a nerd was. What I came up with was: someone who doesn't expend any effort on marketing himself...

Links to all parts of the Bruce Conklin /Nevada County Land Trust / North Star controversy

Nov. 22: additional articles are now linked to from The Union's "Series" page (as of Nov. 18); removed gratuitous commentary; added links to Wright letters

To recap: local, historically conservative newspaper (with right wing publisher and 'fair and balanced' editor) runs series attacking integrity of local former county supervisor (who subsequently lost), alleging shady dealings in his taking a job in the interim (2003) with local nonprofit - a position funded with money he helped to allocate before leaving office several months before. The evidence, sadly for The Union, does not appear to support the paper's view.

Bruce Conklin is the local former county supervisor.
The Nevada County Land Trust is the nonprofit.
The late Dryden Wilson bequeathed the money to the county, with a desire that it be spent on open space.
Incoming supervisors, not partial to open space, were looking at other ways to spend it
The Union is the local newspaper.
Yubanet is the understaffed online upstart, beholden to no one, AFAIK.

Recommended overviews:

Nov. 13, 2004: Excellent column by Jim Hurley:

...The accusation raised by Mr. Ackerman that 'Conklin traded integrity for money' has itself raised an issue of intent. Did [Ackerman] trade journalistic integrity to engineer a Board of Supervisors more to his political liking?"

Oct 7, 2004: YubaNet Editorial: Tempest-in-a-teapot Strikes Small Sierra Town.

The Union's Series (also has PDFs of relevant letters, etc). Fascinating...the Oct. 27 article, which reported that no wrongdoing was found, was not added to the "Series" page. (it is now; page just hadn't been updated, mea culpa for jumping to conclusion)

When scanning their page, don't be misled by the title ("Political naivete by Land Trust") given to Nevada County Land Trust President Andy Cassano's
September 30, 2004 response; it's certainly not the thrust of its content (The NCFocus post Andy Cassano on Conklin - North Star - Land Trust prints excerpts from Cassano's response and provides context that will be helpful to readers unfamiliar with Cassano and the area.)

The Union's series is not complete without the letters to the editor written in response to its publication. To get them, you'll have to Search the archives for "Conklin" (which works sometimes, but not always), since the letters are interspersed with all the rest. Here are links to letters from Stephen Munkelt, Michelle Olsen, Bob Mora, and
David Wright (architect, "founding board member of the Nevada County Land Trust and is on the North Star House steering committee."; letters here and here)

Yubanet News, Oct 6, 2004: Nevada County Land Trust Speaks Out

Following two weeks of allegations regarding the hiring of former supervisor and now candidate Bruce Conklin by the Nevada County Land Trust as project manager for the North Star House, the directors of the Land Trust invited local media to attend a news conference on Tuesday to hear their side of the story and answer questions...

Oct 28 post on how results of Land Trust audit were reported.

See also (if you must) April 10 2003 post (second half) for your correspondent's judgement at the time.

From the PDF letters posted by The Union:
From May 2002 letter from [benefactor] Dryden Wilson's attorney

Mr. Wilson was a person who very much wanted to help in saving open space and allow for land to be used for the benefit and enjoyment of the public rather than allowing it all to turn into subdivisions or sprawling suburbs. Therefore, it is hopeful that the County of Nevada will give due and serious consideration toward using this legacy ...in furtherance of preserving any open-space land programs.

(To reiterate: Incoming supervisors, not partial to open space, were looking at other ways to spend it)

From the March 2003 Bruce Ivy letter to Land Trust (PDF):

The Land Trust board can mitigate the damage that has been done to your image and standing in the community by returning the money to the Board of Supervisors and allow the current Board to distribute the money in a manner that would benefit the community more broadly.

but...the March 2003 Board was not a fan of open space; they gave every indication of wanting to fill it with subdivisions and sprawling suburbs. How would giving the money to them have been in accordance with Dryden Wilson's wishes?

Editors need editors too

foolish title for post, please ignore it. am afraid changing it might break the permalinks.

Wednesday update: Part II: Ideal fit or 'fiasco'? Despite criticism, Land Trust stands by its hiring of Conklin. Your task: read the piece, find the 'fiasco'.

Also, added link to (and excerpt from) The Union's past Cassano profile at end of the previous (below?) post. It's worth reading, if you don't already know him.

The Union has Part I of a 2-part news article on Conklin-NorthStar-LandTrust issue today.

The four aligned supervisors - Conklin, Martin, Green and Peter Van Zant - feared the new board would use Wilson's bequest for something other than open space, which was translated by the supervisors to mean anything related to recreation

Roads, mental health, and the general county budget are also not open space.

They had reason for concern: Bedwell (who recently wrote this) had spoken of the need for softball fields and mental health services, while Sutherland had often discussed the importance of roads.

(a bit timidly stated - see Gift of park funding causes clash(Dec 2002) for background)

On the North Star House:

After a school for troubled youths failed and left the North Star House vacant in the mid-1980s, no one seemed to want the dilapidated building.

Designed by acclaimed architect Julia Morgan...scarred with crude graffiti, smashed windows... Owning it, much less restoring it, would require a colossal commitment of time and money.

"no one seemed to want" it? Was it available? My recollection (perhaps flawed; perhaps The Union could check its archives for this? articles were written) was that the (previous) property owner would not allow anyone to protect the building from vandals and the elements.

A spokesman for Terra Alta Development, which owned the house from the mid-1980s until April 2002, declined to comment on the house for this story.

Who was the individual who declined comment? Who comprised this group?

From Dec 7 2002 article on then-pending sale of North Star to now-current owner Sandy Sanderson:

Lowell Robinson (of Robinson Timber), one of the [then-]current owners...
...
[ironic...:] Andy Cassano of Nevada City Engineering, a representative for the [then-current] owners...
...
The land is also home to a house designed by Julia Morgan, who also designed the San Simeon mansion for newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. The house has reportedly been in dire need of repairs for years.

In the older (for pay) archives:

• 4/11?13?/2000
  As stewards, we must preserve Northstar Mine's history
  The Union's Opinion
  Historic buildings are among the strongest fibers knitting together any group of people. They serve...
  (Times (and leadership at The Union) have changed. From the current publisher today: "If given a say-so in the decision on how best to spend Mr. Wilson's money, I suspect that most Nevada County residents wouldn't have placed the North Star House at the top of the wish list. Not even in the top 10.")
  
  
• 11/22/1997
  Evelyn Foote Gardiner grimaces when she recalls how her family's once-proud home at the North Star Mine has deteriorated over the years. Vandals have caused extensive...
  
  
• 10/2/96
  Locals protect pioneering woman architect's work

Another irony - Bedwell had an opinion column a month or three back (The Union's Search didn't find this one either) in which he defended spending Calif-voter-approved Open Space money for public buildings. Or so I recall; it would help to have the column at hand.

To my first commenter:
1. Thank you!
2. I wish you were someone more civil and evidence-based - recommend you find congenial territory elsewhere.

Andy Cassano on Conklin - North Star - Land Trust

Updated with 1997 Cassano articles - I had blamed The Union's 2002+ Search Engine (wrongly this time; sorry) for not bringing them up.

Almost missed this piece - which is why the Nevada County Land Trust should get a blog.

Andy Cassano is president of the Land Trust Board. He's been in the community for almost all his life. If we were asked to name one person in the county whose integrity all could agree on, I expect he'd be at the top of the list. The Union did an article on him (see end of this post), basically on what an amazing person he is - his integrity, his fairness, how people on all sides of all issues hold him in high esteem.

The Union may have gone too far this time. People know Andy.

Andy Cassano, Sept. 30 2004: (emphases mine)

As a longtime [Land Trust] board member, I know that my colleagues are extremely ethical, and I know that we have a paper trail to back every one of our statements: that there have been no conspiracies, that there was no "prior deal" with Conklin, that he was selected through a competitive process, and that we can properly account for all spending on the project.

It was clear, of course, that The Union had mounted a serious concentrated attack on Conklin and that the Land Trust was the most convenient vehicle available to reach him. The publisher of The Union was unwilling to meet with me to discuss the facts, although he did meet with one of my board members. ...[The Union] suggested that the Land Trust just admit that it made a mistake and go on.

...it is clear now that our organization, which prides itself on political neutrality, was guilty of serious political naivete in choosing Conklin. The highly ethical board members who made the selection were focused strictly on his nonpolitical qualifications, including his volunteer following, his relationship with the landowners and his passion for historical building conservation....

Update: The Union did a feature (Mar 1, 1997) and an editorial (Mar 6, 1997) on Cassano - both 1997 pieces are now pay-per-view, but fortunately reprinted on Cassano's aged website.

Feature: A well-respected man: Integrity and professional skills lauded

Editorial: Cassano: Conscientious worker worthy of our respect (emphasis mine)

Andy Cassano has been involved, in one way or another, with almost every contentious land-use and planning issue in Nevada County during the past two decades, and yet the planner is almost universally respected in the community. How can this be possible?

...Because Cassano respects those with whom he works, he seeks to find consensus that will meet the desires of as many people as possible. He is adept at identifying the many attributes of Nevada County that we all value and focusing on them rather than drawing attention to the much smaller number of issues that divide us.

Those who seek to polarize and divide the community into warring camps may win the applause of zealots such as themselves. But those who seek consensus on our future are the people who are truly valuable to a community. Andy Cassano is a valuable member of the community, and we are fortunate that he is among us.

From the tone of the pieces, it must have been during the publishing reign of Margaret Wade...from an editorial (11/19/94) during her era:

The staff and editorial board of The Union will never conduct itself in any self-serving, self-aggrandizing manner, as we would consider it a betrayal of our policy of fairness and of our ethical standards.
...[our] Endorsements are not intended to coerce or manipulate the electorate...

The Union's coverage of development of the fire plan

Not local, but relevant: Wired on predicting the path of wildfires:

Cohen thought it would be a good idea to erect a couple of prefab garage kits in the path of a wildfire... To compare how different materials react to intense heat and flames, Cohen added vinyl and cedar siding and composite shingles onto each structure...added double-pane plate-glass windows...tested whether smoldering pine needles ignited composite shingles; the temperature at which plate-glass windows would shatter; how quickly flames melted vinyl siding...compiling the results of his work into a modeling program called SIAM (Structure Ignition Assessment Model) that will help builders produce structures less prone to catch fire. The program takes into account home dimensions, number and size of windows and doors, construction materials, location and types of surrounding vegetation, and proximity to other homes, then generates recommendations. These might include redesigning a deck or using specific types of fire-resistant siding.

Does the Fire Plan make use of this info?
----------------

Just collecting the links in 1 place...

The usual caveats (regarding the blogger's accuracy and The Union's
silently defective Search page) apply.

• Opinion | September 23, 2004:
  Collaborative effort for fire plan
  It had all the appearance of business as usual at the Board of Supervisors meeting a few weeks ago, but in fact something extraordinary was about to happen. Something that was almost unheard of in Nevada County, where polarization and divisiveness...
  
  

• News | August 4, 2004:
  Fire plan gives meaning to defensible space
  Fire officials hope the Nevada County Board of Supervisors will approve the county's first fire plan on Aug. 17.
  
  

• News | May 27, 2004:
  County fire plan simmers
  A fire safety proposal for Nevada County could demand that landowners clear blaze-causing fuels like brush and small trees for all parcels up to 10 acres.
  
  

• News | February 6, 2004:
  Candidate wants fire-safe home labels (interesting idea, although not part of the Plan as far as I know)
  

• Opinion | December 18, 2003:
  Acting now on wildfire safety
  In the recent catastrophic wild fires in Southern California 1,200 square miles were charred. This is an area larger than our Nevada County's 958 square miles. At the peak of the fires 80,000, a number nearly equal to Nevada County's population,...
  
  

• News | November 14, 2003:
  County starts fire-safe plan
  In the aftermath of the recent Southern California firestorms, the first meeting of Nevada County's Fire Plan Committee today is almost eerie in its timeliness.
  
  
  

• Opinion | March 22, 2003:
  Fire Safe Plan for county needed
  As spring rains end and fire season begins, we all worry about the potential for another devastating forest fire, a fire that could threaten our homes, families and businesses, like the 49er fire did in 1988. The most recent grand jury report and...
  
  

• News | March 5, 2003:
  Forest policy altered
  An amended plan for the 11 national forests of the Sierra - including the Tahoe National Forest - could call for additional logging and thinning, purportedly to avert catastrophic wildfire.
  
  
  

• News | November 14, 2002:
  Fire safe plan for county advances
  A Nevada County board Wednesday took a step toward a countywide fire safe plan.
  
  

• Opinion | August 8, 2002:
  [county-wide] Fire plan's premises wrong (A letter to the editor)
  A recent The Union editorial stated: "...A uniform countywide standard that everyone can understand might be preferable to establishing different standards for different areas..." We disagree. Different standards for different areas is the essence of good county planning...
  
  
  

• News | July 6, 2002:
  County fire-safe plan will be considered
  What may be the first county-sponsored fire-safe plan in the state will be considered Tuesday by Nevada County supervisors.
  
  
  

• News | May 25, 2002:
  NC area fire-safe plan is adopted
  The first of its kind, one Nevada City neighborhood has its own plan to reduce the risk of wildfire.
  
  

Fire plan recommendations to the Board of Supervisors

At the Nevada County govt website, the Nevada County fire plan (sorry, it's PDF; you can use Adobe's PDF to HTML form to convert it, but some parts may be lost in the conversion)

The following is a rough summary of the recommendations to the Board of Supervisors. This post does not address the impact of the plan; if you decipher the appendices (not covered in this post) you may be able to make such prognostications yourself. No guarantees as to accuracy of the following, except to say that errors were not deliberate.

---

Goal I. Reduce fire severity through fuels management (thinning trees, cutting brush etc)

Objective A: Improve public awareness and understanding

• Recommendation #1. develop school curriculum to educate on wildfire
  
• Recommendation #2. student laboratory to study fire
  
• Recommendation #3. hold seminars for landowners on good stewardship techniques
  
• Recommendation #4. create a Video Lending Library (??? Hot news flash - there's this thing called the "web") on this material
  

Objective B: ...develop a vegetation management prescription for defensible space around structures

• Recommendation #5. Defensible Space around structures: Get Supervisors to adopt Fuel Mgmt prescription (appendix B)
  

Objective C: Develop prescription for defensible community-level fuel modifications on the wildland portion of all parcels 10 acres or less. Require parcels larger than 10 acres which are immediately adjacent to parcels 10 acres or less to provide fuels management to the maximums under this recommendation.

• Recommendation #6. [extend Defensible Space into nearby parcels:] Board of Supervisors adopt a fuel management prescription (found in Appendix C) as the foundation for a new ordinance for wildland fuels management on improved and vacant parcels in and adjacent to communities or neighborhoods of ten acres or less and on parcels greater than 10 acres that are immediately adjacent to smaller parcels.
  

Objective D:
Phase it in over 5 years, starting with education; ultimate implementation
through education, assistance and enforcement.

• Recommendation #7: The FPC recommends that the Board of Supervisors adopt as a
  fire risk reduction policy the following implementation timeline:
  
  Year 1:
  Public Education
  Assistance Program .
  Enforcement of Defensible Space
  
  Year 2: adds
  Point Of Sale Disclosure For Developed And Undeveloped Parcels
  Enforcement at Building Permit Issuance
  
  Years 3,4: adds
  General Enforcement Emphasized In Very High Hazard Severity Zones
  
  Years 5 and up: adds
  General Enforcement Emphasized In High Hazard Severity Zones
  General Enforcement Of Community/ Neighborhood Fuel Management
  

Objective E:
Provide fuel management consulting service contacts for private property owners
of parcels greater than 10 acres in size.

• Recommendation 8: The FPC recommends that resource agencies...jointly develop guidelines for fuel management on large parcels. These guidelines must take into account variations based upon fuel types, differing land management objectives and proximity to communities/ neighborhoods.
  
• Recommendation 9: The FPC recommends that the Resource agencies provide
  training to fuels management contractors on the guidelines for fuel management on
  large parcels, and after successful completion of training, placed on a published hiring
  list.
  
• Recommendation 10: The FPC recommends that the Resource agencies prepare and
  make available to the public a directory of Agency Advisors, Private Consultants and
  Fuels Management Companies to assist landowners in being proper stewards of their
  lands.
  

Objective F (and a pony too - sorry, the duct tape is slipping)
Develop, organize and fund, a property owner assistance program.

• Recommendation 11: In recognition of the relationship between fuel reduction and public safety, the FPC recommends that the Board of Supervisors seek a permanent funding mechanism for the provision of chipper services or alternative services at a reduced rate and free fuels management advising services to the landowners of Nevada County.
  
• Recommendation 12: Provide consulting services for private landowners for the
  restoration and rehabilitation of wildlands impacted by fire, insect, and disease.
  
• Recommendation 13: Create Directory of Assistance of Programs for large landowners
  i. e. Vegetation Management Program, California Forest Improvement Program,
  Environmental Quality Incentives Program.
  
• Recommendation 14: Provide financial aid for community based fuel reduction to
  those landowners who can demonstrate financial need based upon established criteria
  and who are incapable of accomplishing the fuels management on their own.
  

---

GOAL II ... INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS

OBJECTIVE -A

• [Recommendation 15: identify County maintained roads that are not good enough, and improve them when we can afford to]
  

OBJECTIVE -B
Ensure that private roads that are required as a condition of approval through the
Subdivision Map Act are maintained to the design standard that they were originally required to be built to.

OBJECTIVE -C

• Recommendation #17: Review private roads that have offers for dedication placed upon them and develop mechanisms for [having county take over and maintain the ones that are important]
  
• Recommendation #18: [try to figure out how to pay for this]
  

OBJECTIVE -D

• Recommendation 19: [figure out how to pay for a countywide rural fire protection water storage tanks...stop requiring ones on individual parcels]
  
• Recommendation 20: Include water tank inspection along with fuels management(brush) inspection
  

OBJECTIVE -E
Develop an emergency public notification system and educate about it

• Recommendation 21: ...automated emergency public notification system which uses the phone system to distribute information to user identified zones...purchase this system with Office of Homeland Security Grant funds...
  

OBJECTIVE -F
Create a business environment that encourages the development of a sustainable
fuels management industry...

• Recommendation 22: ...workshops for fuel reduction contractors
  

---

GOAL III - REDUCE RISK TO LIFE AND PROPERTY THROUGH NEW OR REVISED CODES, ORDINANCES AND COMPLIANCE PROGRAMS

The four methods of interface fire hazard mitigation most often associated with
increased structure survival are:
1. Defensible space around structures
2. Landscape level fuel management
3. Ignition resistant building construction
4. Defensive actions by firefighters during the wildfire exposure.
However, it is important to have reasonable expectations of mitigation measures. A one-third or two-third reduction in historic loss patterns is reasonable with full
implementation of both fuel reduction and improved building construction.
OBJECTIVE -A
Review and revise, as needed, existing wildland fire related codes and ordinances
to address the recognized hazards of building and living in the wildland urban
interface.

• Recommendation 24: ...adopt recommended changes
  
• Recommendation 25: prefer green waste pickup, mulching or composting
  
• Recommendation 26: Provide green waste pickup services or drop off days
  

OBJECTIVE B
Consider new fire safety Codes and Ordinances to meet the county's fire safe
needs.

• Recommendation 27: ...expanded defensible space ordinance
  
• Recommendation 28: after 5 years, evaluate whether or not things have improved enough that the rules can be loosened
  

---

GOAL IV - INCREASE COMMUNITY AWARENESS AND INVOLVEMENT ...

Develop[ed] A Template for A Community/ Neighborhood Fire Safe Plan (evacuation plans, safety zones, public education etc)
....

---

GOAL: V get agencies to work together on this

• Recommendation 41: Review the effectiveness of the fire plan in a minimum of five years and each five years thereafter.
  
• Recommendation 42: if it gets better, loosen the restrictions
  

LA Times on Nevada County fire plan

A big thanks to Yubanet for pointing to this Sept. 27 LA Times article on Nevada County's new Fire Plan,
Strict Fire Rules Are Fuel for Debate ("Rural county's proposed plan for brush removal is called a 'strategy for deforestation.'")

With authorities in scenic Gold Country warning that the stage is set for another catastrophic wildfire, Nevada County recently approved one of the most aggressive fire safety plans ever drafted.

The plan, which may not become law until next year, would require that brush be cleared at least 100 to 200 feet around structures - three times the minimum state requirements. It would also demand that property owners remove and thin 80% of the vegetation on lots up to 10 acres in size, potentially costing them thousands of dollars a year.

"Some people say we are killing the forest to save it," said Nevada County Supervisor Peter Van Zant. "But this is a very complex issue."
...
County authorities, seeking to avoid a repeat of the '49er fire of 1988, which destroyed 180 structures and charred 30,000 acres, concede that they approved a plan they have no funds to implement, let alone enforce.

Beyond that, critics say it unfairly burdens homeowners by failing to apply the same guidelines on brush clearance to lots larger than 10 acres and all but ignores the importance of fire-resistant building materials in a region that has roughly 3,000 pending applications for new home construction.
...
property insurance companies have begun warning homeowners that their policies may not be renewed because of their proximity to brush in a county where 80% of the roads are narrow dead-end country lanes far from the nearest fire station.
...
"What's screwing up this county are out-of-town retirees who want to bring their big-city ways with them," [Owl Tavern bartender Max Roberts] said. "Now I'm wondering whether to stick around. I don't like the direction we're heading."

Conklin controversy continues

The Union et al vs. Conklin continues today, with Rob Kellenbeck and Neal Mitchell of the North Star Foundation - ("NSF is a small group of professionals in the historic restoration field who are connected with the larger preservation community...") weighing in on the anti-Conklinites' side. I probably shouldn't write about what I know next to nothing about, so will attempt to keep the duct tape firmly affixed over oral cavity for now, so as to bar entry to foot. I do wish Bruce Conklin had a blog. Later...

Update: I am told that Kellenbeck and Mitchell were not among the applicants for the Land Trust position.

Iraq and environs

Juan Cole is very, very good:
If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?
and
What does Bin Laden Want?

Legal Fiction explains why they hate us

Weighing in

"Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral..."

John Eisenhower -

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was.
...
The fact is that today’s "Republican" Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word "Republican" has always been synonymous with the word "responsibility,"...

Keep visiting the ShrillBlog for more. Unfortunately the tone is pretty self-congratulatory, so just try to plug your ears while you read.

• Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein
  
• more:
  
  • William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency
    
  • Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command
    
  • Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College
    
  • W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute
  
  
• Garrison Keillor
  
• Bill Moyers
  
• George Soros
  
• E.L. Doctorow
  
• Philip Gold, author of "Take Back the Right"
  
• Andrew Cline (Rhetorica)
  
• David Neiwert (Orcinus)
  

Get a Blog, Bruce

Conklin's response Monday Sept 27 in The Union. Which makes a lot more sense to me than the editorial below. What does all of this have to do with the Nevada County Contractor's Association? with the huge ads the NCCA has been putting in The Union lately, in which they say how much they care about quality of life here? Those ads must be expensive. (or not; wild speculation here (and wide of the mark, says George Boardman in a nice piece of first-person journalism Oct 16))

The Union's interviews with candidates for District III (Grass Valley) County Supervisor: Stevens, Conklin, Spencer


Today The Union ran a two-column-wide editorial slamming Bruce Conklin for his lame-duck voting in December 2002 to allocate "open space" money (bequeathed to the county by a local resident) to the Nevada County Land Trust, his subsequent hire by the Land Trust to oversee restoration of the Julia Morgan-designed Northstar House (discussed by your correspondent in gruesomely amateurish fashion in the second half of this post), his lack of "repentance" regarding this sequence of events, the hefty % of the bequeathed money that has gone to overhead (much of which, presumably, is Conklin's salary) and the relatively 'unfaithful' restoration.
-----------------------------

• Restoration criticism (PDF files)
  
• Conklin's perspective (from in here)-
  The disagreement basically comes down to a couple of people who feel that the very early work that was done should have been purer to the original house. On the other hand, the Land Trust feels they acquired a house that was in danger of falling down. The roof was gone, the windows were gone, the doors were gone, and it was constantly being vandalized when they got it. It was in an emergency condition.

-----------------------------

I don't know Bruce personally, but based on who supports him and who opposes him and what and who he has supported in the past, I'm wondering if William Arkin's admonition "Never mistake a mirror for a window" might apply here. (Actually I'm sure it does apply; the question is whose perspective it applies to.)

So, if you don't know Bruce from Adam - or if, like me, you have a gut feeling that this [editorial] is not the whole story, but not much specific knowledge - what should you make of it? You could trust in the beneficence and omniscience of The Union's editorial board, but that would lead you down some very slanted garden paths.

Alternatively, it would be nice if all citizens in the district had the opportunity to get to know the candidates. I don't mean the candidates' popping up at the door some weekend, or telemarketing or brochure-bombing the populace with carefully crafted pabulum (e.g., to recycle this:"The most overused and overrated word in the political lexicon is 'change.' All politicians are for it, even those who've been around for a hundred years and have never actually changed anything except their combovers.") - I mean we the people should have the opportunity to get day in and day out exposure to a candidate's take on what's going on in and around the county. They can do it by following the other NC's lead - North Carolina journalist Ed Cone explains who, what, when, where and why in Local political candidates hit the blogging trail:

Jeff Thigpen has something to tell you. Lots of things, actually, like what a boisterous meeting of the Guilford County commissioners looks like from a commissioner's point of view, and why you should vote for him to become Register of Deeds in November. So Thigpen got himself a weblog, and now he can talk to voters and constituents any time he likes.

By writing directly onto the web, Thigpen has the ability to communicate with a potentially enormous number of people, in his own voice, unmediated and at almost no cost. He's got his own media platform now; he doesn't have to wait for television or the newspaper to carry his message, or dip into his campaign budget to buy an ad every time he wants to get a message out. And because readers can leave comments, he's able to have something like a conversation with them...

Accumulated animal links

More fluff.

Faux foe fought

a bozo of a baboon:

I once watched a Frans de Waal film, Chimpanzee Politics, at a primate conference, and I was sitting next to another baboonologist. There is a scene where some chimp had just pulled off a brilliant Machiavellian maneuver, and the guy next to me turned and said, "Christ, that is what a baboon would be like if it had a shred of discipline or gratification-postponement."

Close encounters of the furry kind, from a cruel writer skilled in applying tenterhooks. And an aside from the above piece:

An Inuit maxim describes the wolf as "the knife that carves the caribou."

Smart animals

• Houdini sheep ("flocks have developed a new way of getting over road grids installed to stop them")
  
• New avian urbanism ("Home Depot...barn swallows...circle in front of the motion detector, the doors open, and the birds fly through and take lunch up to the kids")
  
• The border collie genius
  
• Pastures of the future - with evidence that cattle are smarter than students

Animal at your service

• Alternative medical providers - the doctor fish of Kangal. Especially the last couple of sentences.

Animals of questionable taste

• The Drake; likewise this squirrel
  
• Something you probably didn't see on TV as a child
  
• Why be vegetarian?
  
• speaking of increased rat consumption in Cambodia (weren't we?), vicariously fine (long) post on adventurous eating -
  ...It sort of looked like a big cube of prosciutto, maybe studded with pistachios? But that can't be right, because they don't have pistachios in Vietnam....

Impostor animal

• Unique and beautiful lawn ornament for the wealthy

Animal in the name

• The Crocodile Song - good for kids without learning disabilities.

Speaking of names (babies are animals, aren't they?)

• Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing - A Primer on Parent Cruelty
  
• More options if your baby is Japanese - Let's call him "Corpse"!