Bill Lockyer's wife: what a disgusting wench

A few days ago, when the San Francisco Chronicle reported that state Treasurer Bill Lockyer's wife, who is an Alameda County supervisor and who is 30 years younger than her husband, was beaten up at a cheap motel in Newark by her ex-boyfriend, I thought the story sounded fishy:

Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer, wife of state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, was "violently assaulted" by an ex-boyfriend she met up with at a Newark motel after the Lockyers fought, her husband says.

No married woman who is in love with her husband meets up with an ex-boyfriend at a motel. The ring of it had that cheating wife all over it to me.

(Lockyer) said he and Nadia Lockyer had recently been separated but had gotten back together before the Feb. 3 incident. The trouble that night began when they were arguing over the phone, he said. Nadia Lockyer hung up and headed off to the motel to meet with her former boyfriend, Bill Lockyer said.

My immediate impression was that they separated because she was not in love with her 70-year-old husband but rather was more attracted to her 35-year-old boyfriend.

She portrayed the boyfriend as "a troubled person," he said. "She thought he was having a crisis and she thought she could get him to calm down and to be OK and not to threaten suicide. "And he turned out to be angry ... and she was violently assaulted by someone she was trying to help," he said. But she wouldn't have gone to the motel, Bill Lockyer said, if he hadn't said "something to her that was unkind and hurt her feelings. ... That's what caused her to go."

I thought, how sad if he really believes that bullshit. My guess, though, is that he is just lying for public consumption. He must be embarrassed that he married this whore. As a cuckold, he deserves sympathy.

According to other law enforcement sources, Nadia Lockyer was known by authorities to be dealing with personal problems that may have been related to the ex-boyfriend. Bill Lockyer said only that the ex-boyfriend "seems to have a long history of involvement with the criminal justice system, but her (Nadia's) only fault is occasionally having one too many drinks."

When I read that the police know her due to her "personal problems," my guess was that she is a drug addict or mentally ill.

Now, today, more about this Lockyer story has come out. The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that Nadia Lockyer has admitted she was having an affair with the so-called ex-boyfriend, that she is a drunk and that she has issues with drug addiction:

Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer, wife of California state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, said Tuesday that she's in rehabilitation for a substance-abuse problem after an extramarital affair culminated in a beating by her ex-lover.

Nadia Lockyer had reported to police that she had been attacked by the former boyfriend Feb. 3 at a Newark motel. "The injuries I suffered from that assault will require some time to heal, and I am receiving treatment for them," she said in a statement Tuesday.

"As of last week, I have enrolled myself in a wellness and recovery center to treat my injuries from the assault," she said. "I am also receiving treatment for chemical dependency and chronic pain from a past debilitating car accident. Alcoholism and addiction are diseases from which many of us suffer, and unfortunately, I have not been spared.

I would hope that the former Attorney General would divorce her, take charge of their young son, and move on with his life. This woman he married is bad people. Yet she seems to still want to keep him in her life and thus keep abusing him:

"With the strong encouragement of the people in my life who love me, including my husband, my family, and my friends, I decided to get help and treatment so that I may fully heal and recover."

The lesson is this: people almost never change. She will never fully heal and never fully recover. She has serious character flaws that likely eminate from her childhood. Her addictions are only a part of her flaws.

She should quit her position on the Board of Supervisors and go away and try to become a better person. She does not deserve her husband. She does not deserve to be a mother. She does not deserve to get the benefits of our society. She should not be trusted in public office.



She should forever pay penance for what she did to others and hope the God of the Jews does not condemn her to burn in Hell. But if she does meet get sent to that firey pit, she will at least get to see her old boyfriend on a regular basis.

Whitney Houston: She was the author of her own demise

I was playing online poker around 6 pm last night when I heard on the radio that Whitney Houston had died.

Whitney Houston, a willowy church singer with a towering voice who became a titan of the pop charts in the 1980s and 1990s but then saw much of her success crumble away amid the fumes of addiction and reckless ego, has died. She was 48. Kristen Foster, a publicist, announced Saturday that the singer had died, and police sources later confirmed that she was found unresponsive in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel about 3:30 p.m. Paramedics performed CPR on her, but she was pronounced dead about 4 p.m., Beverly Hills Police Lt. Mark Rosen told KTLA News. An investigation into the cause of death is pending.

In that alcoholic and drug-abusing pop stars very often die young, it should not have come as a surprise. But it shook me a little. Perhaps Ms. Houston dying so young--she was just 48--was a surprise because my lasting image of her is a healthy, attractive young woman. I didn't picture her the way I visualize an Amy Winehouse, an ugly face covered in tattoos who always looked wasted. I didn't see her as a needle in his vein rocker like a Kurt Cobain. I saw Whitney as young and beautiful.

When I witnessed on my television the decline and fall of Whitney Houston, I placed the blame on her ex-husband, Bobby Brown. I saw Brown as a villain. I saw Brown as the man who led her in the wrong direction, the direction of drug abuse and domestic abuse. I saw her as pure and innocent and sweet. I saw him as dirty and guilty and acerbic.



But in reality, she met and married Brown when she was an adult, already a major star. She chose to be with him. She chose to use drugs. She was the author of her own demise. Bobby Brown, for all of his faults, was ultimately just a collaborator. He did not force her to be with him. He did not force her to do drugs. He did not use any form of coercion which caused her to destroy her career and finally to end her life.

It's sad when any decent person dies as young as Whitney Houston died. But saddest of all is that for the last 15 years of her life, she wasted her enormous god-given talent. She wasted the best female voice in pop music since Barbra Streisand. She gave a lot of pleasure to everyone who heard her sing. She could have given much more.

Do we really want poor women to pump out more unwanted children? Really?

The religious right has been up in arms for the past couple of months because they claim that the Obama administration's decision on prescription birth control, which requires most employers who provide health insurance to include free prescription birth control, is an affront to their religious beliefs, particularly to the Catholic Church's stupid opposition to artificial birth control methods.

But what has been under-reported--especially by news outlets unfriendly to this president--is that there is nothing new in the Obama policy from existing policies, other than that prescriptions for birth control must be free to the patient. For the last 12 years, federal rules have required most employers to include coverage of birth control methods.

Here is what NPR reported, this morning:

The only truly novel part of the plan is the "no cost" bit. The rule would mean, for the first time, that women won't have to pay a deductible or copayment to get prescription contraceptives.

Even though this policy is nothing new, it is fair to ask if it passes constitutional muster.

"Now millions more women and families are going to have access to essential health care coverage at a cost that they can afford," says Sarah Lipton-Lubet, policy counsel with the ACLU. "But as a legal matter, a constitutional matter, it's completely unremarkable."

In fact, employers have pretty much been required to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their health plans since December 2000. That's when the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that failure to provide such coverage violates the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. That law is, in turn, an amendment to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlaws, among other things, discrimination based on gender.

Here's how the EEOC put it at the time: "The Commission concludes that Respondents' exclusion of prescription contraceptives violates Title VII, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, whether the contraceptives are used for birth control or for other medical purposes."

California is one of many states which has had a birth control requirement for years.

More than half the states have similar "contraceptive equity" laws on the books, many with religious exceptions similar or identical to the one included in the administration's regulation. That's no accident. "The HHS rule was modeled on the exceptions in several state laws, including California, New York and Oregon," says Lipton-Lubet of the ACLU.

While the state courts have consistently ruled in favor of this type of law, the Supreme Court of the United States will probably end the argument one way or the other:

There are now lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the policy, including a new one filed on behalf of the religious television network EWTN. But the exemptions have already been tested in court, at least at the state level. In 2004, the California Supreme Court upheld that state's law, in a suit brought by Catholic Charities, on a vote of 6-1. The court ruled that Catholic Charities didn't qualify as a "religious employer" because it didn't meet each of four key criteria (which, by the way, are the same as those in the new federal regulation):

● The organization's primary purpose is "the inculcation of religious values.
● It primarily employs people of that religion.
● It primarily serves people of that religion.
● It's a registered nonprofit organization.

Churches are exempt under the four rules, but not all church-affiliated groups are:

... in 2006, New York's top state court rejected a claim by Catholic Charities and several other religious groups that the state's contraceptive coverage law discriminated against them because it exempted churches but not their religiously affiliated groups. "When a religious organization chooses to hire nonbelievers, it must, at least to some degree, be prepared to accept neutral regulations imposed to protect those employees' legitimate interests in doing what their own beliefs permit," the justices wrote.

A reasonable argument could be made that the government should not require insurers to sell or employers to buy policies which charge this or that or nothing for a certain medication or a certain treatment. In other words, an argument can be made against the government interferring in a question of price. But no one arguing against "free birth control" is making that case. They appear to be making the false claim that this is some new war against the Catholic Church by Mr. Obama, when nothing has changed for the Church.

One thing I think all reasonable people can agree on--I am not counting any of the religious right in the reasonable category--is that poor people and our country at large are not better off having poor women give birth to children they don't want to have and that they will do a lousy job raising. Better and cheaper birth control for them will prevent unwanted births among women who cannot now afford the cost of prescribed birth control and it will reduce the demand for abortions.

Venezuela: Lots of beautiful women; one ugly dictatorship

NPR had a story this morning about the opponents of Hugo Chávez coming together to put up a single candidate to face the dictator in October's scheduled presidential election.

The opposition to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has tried everything to end his long rule: huge protests, a coup and an oil strike. Nothing has worked, but now opposition leaders have coalesced into a united and focused movement that is preparing to choose one candidate to run against the president, posing the strongest electoral challenge to Chávez's populist rule.

If an autocrat is popular, as Chávez was in 2006 when oil prices were skyrocketing, and he was able to buy off the electorate, he can hold an honest poll, albeit one where Hugo controls the media, he controls the message, and he employs the people who will count the votes.

This year, with inflation up and employment down, Chávez is less popular. But with all the power in his hands, he will again win election, even if he needs to cheat to do so.

Venezuela is a country of stark contrasts: rich and poor; good and evil; ugly and beautiful. More than in any country on earth, good looks mean a lot to the Venezuelan people.



Since 1979, a Miss Venezuela has gone on to win the Miss Universe title 6 times. Many others have finished in the top 3. Six wins is more than any other country over that period. Perhaps the distinction is not a true measure of how many beautiful women Venezuela has. But certainly it shows how important pageants are to the Venezuelans.

Maritza Sayalero of Caracas won the global beauty prize 33 years ago. She was Venezuela's first Miss Universe. Since that time, no one from large countries like Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Spain, Japan or China has put on the Miss Universe crown. Yet five more Venezuelans have. The only country to come close is little Puerto Rico with four champions. The U.S. has had three since Miss Sayalero took the tiara.

A recent article in OPEN Magazine (from India) explains "How they do it in Venezuela":

(Venezuela) has won 17 beauty queen titles over the past 30 years. News reports there insist that the annual Miss Venezuela pageant is often the most watched TV show on the day it airs, and most girls grow up dreaming of the crown. For a Miss Venezuela aspirant, such ambitions could start at the tender age of 13, when her parents gift the pre-adolescent girl her first cosmetic makeover. Or even at age 7, when she is enrolled at a beauty academy, where she will be taught the difference between a high street bag and a Chanel one, and where she will learn that the only fork she needs to use is the salad one. Breast implants, nose jobs and tummy tucks typically come a little later—post adolescence, for that is when they are rather more effective. ...

Once a girl is chosen to compete in the Miss Venezuela contest, the drill gets stricter still. Under the guidance of Osmel Sousa, president of the Miss Venezuela Organization, the first step involves taking stock of the girl’s flaws, and then getting down to fixing them. This includes using hair stylists, make-up artists, physical trainers, speech and acting coaches, dental surgeons and dance and walking instructors. Plastic surgeons use their scalpel on whatever cannot be moulded through diet and exercise. And though most Venezuelan beauty contestants are tightlipped about the work done on them, Sousa had famously remarked in 2008, “This isn’t a nature contest. It’s a beauty contest, and science exists to help perfect beauty. There is nothing wrong with that.”

Yet for all that success in the world of pulchritude, Venezuela has one ugly government. In 1999, when Hugo Chávez won the presidency of his country in a free and fair election, Venezuela was a democracy. But Chávez is no democrat. In the last 13 years, a few weeks of which he was out of power during a failed coup, he has turned his country into a socialist police state, with all the power in his own beastly hands.

It is true that Venezuela still has elections. Saddam Hussein's Iraq held elections, too. The votes in Venezuela no longer matter. If the autocrat cannot win an honest vote, he can cheat and no one can stop him:

Certainly "elections" can't be expected to matter much. Mr. Chávez now controls the entire electoral process, from voter rolls to tallying totals after the polls have closed. Under enormous public pressure he accepted defeat in his 2007 bid for constitutional reforms designed to make him president for life. But so what? That loss allowed him to maintain the guise of democracy, and now he has decided that there will be another referendum on the same question in February. Presumably Venezuela will repeat this exercise until the right answer is produced.

All police states hold "elections." But they also specialize in combining the state's monopoly use of force with a monopoly in economic power and information control. Together these three weapons easily quash dissent. Venezuela is a prime example.

In a fashion not too different from how Moammar Ghaddafi concentrated power in his own hands in Libya, Chávez has given titles only to sycophants whose ultimate loyalty is to him. Ten years ago, Lt. Colonel Chávez purged all officers above the rank of second lieutenant from his armed forces. He has replaced all of them with lackeys loyal to him. Those men have subsequently become his eyes and ears in every government agency, every ministry, every courthouse. If anyone speaks his mind against the president, Chávez will find out and eliminate him.

The Venezuelan government is now a military government. Mr. Chávez purged the armed forces leadership in 2002 and replaced fired officers with those loyal to his socialist cause. Like their counterparts in Cuba, these elevated comandantes are well compensated. Lack of transparency makes it impossible to know just how much they get paid for their loyalty, but it is safe to say that they have not been left out of the oil fiesta that compliant chavistas have enjoyed over the past decade. Even if the resource pool shrinks this year, neither their importance nor their rewards are likely to diminish.

Mr. Chávez has also taken over the Metropolitan Police in Caracas, imported Cuban intelligence agents, and armed his own Bolivarian militias, whose job it is to act as neighborhood enforcers. Should Venezuelans decide that they are tired of one-man rule, chavismo has enough weapons on hand to convince them otherwise.

The way Hugo Chávez controls the message in his country--there is no freedom of the press and no more freedom of thought in the country's educational system--is Orwellian. Chávez as Big Brother is on TV all day for many days. His words loom over the public, workers and school children. They have mass rallies spreading the Chavismo thoughts. Chávez learned propaganda from his socialist forebearers: Mao, Kim, Stalin.

One measure that Mr. Chávez relies on heavily is control of the narrative. In government schools children are indoctrinated in Bolivarian thought. Meanwhile the state has stripped the media of its independence and now dominates all free television in the country. This allows the government to marinate the poor in Mr. Chávez's antimarket dogma. His captive audiences are told repeatedly that hardship of every sort -- including headline inflation of 31% last year -- is the result of profit makers, middlemen and consumerism.

The Orwellian screen is also used to stir up nationalist sentiment against foreign devils, like the U.S., Colombia and Israel. The audience has witnessed violence in Gaza through the lens of Hamas, and last week Mr. Chávez made a show of expelling the Israeli ambassador from Caracas.

The only group able to stand up to the Chávez dictatorship has been the owners of private businesses. However, Chávez has moved hard to cripple that opposition:

The most effective police-state tool remains Mr. Chávez's control over the economy. The state freely expropriates whatever it wants -- a shopping center in Caracas is Mr. Chávez's latest announced taking -- and economic freedom is dead. Moreover, the state has imposed strict capital controls, making saving or trading in hard currency impossible. Analysts are predicting another large devaluation of the bolivar in the not-too-distant future. The private sector has been wiped out, except for those who have thrown in their lot with the tyrant.

I am not counting on it, but perhaps the only chance the people of Venezuela will have to get rid of their dictator is if he dies in the next few years from cancer. Barring that, Chavismo as a force of ugliness will live on.

Where will Syria be one year from now?

The way non-fans will often watch a major sporting event on TV, I am following the anti-Assad uprising in Syria: at a distance, not really paying attention to the plays as they take place on the field, but tuning in now and then for the occassional highlight on replay.

Due to the fact that the Alawite dominated dictatorship in Damascus brutalized its people from 1970-2000, when Hafez al-Assad was in charge, and it has continued to do so since Bashar al-Assad replaced his father 12 years ago, I am rooting for the rebels.

But there is reason to think that if the Alawites, who are a minority religious sect related to the Shiites, fall, the replacement government will be dominated by Sunni radical Islamists with views in line with Al-Qaeda and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. They might prove a greater danger to the outside world than the murderous man now on the throne.

Part of the reason why Sunni Islamists are likely to win power with the fall of the Alawites is that this rebellion, which came in the wake of the Arab Spring, is not so much one about liberation or economic freedom or civil rights for the oppressed or women's rights or a generation of young people raised on Twitter and Facebook who want the material goods they see that youths have in foreign lands. This conflict, war if you will, is sectarian. It is Sunni versus Shiite (albeit the Alawite version of Shi'a Islam).

The Sunnis make up 74 percent of the Syrian population. The Alawites, who have lorded over the Sunnis for more than 40 years, are less than 10 percent of Syria's people. In a sectarian sense, Ba'athist Syria is a reverse of Ba'athist Iraq, where Saddam Hussein's Sunni clan was a small relgious minority that dominated the much large Shiite majority. When Iraq finally had free elections after the United States ousted Saddam, the minority Sunni Arabs of Iraq came to realize that their country had a lot more Shiites than they had thought, and they learned what it was like to be an oppressed minority.

The traditional leadership of the Syrian Sunnis has been its religious clerics, the imams and the mullahs. They were the people who directed the uprising in 1982. Most of them pine for a theocratic government.

Hafez al-Assad ordered the murder of tens of thousands of Sunnis in the Hama Massacre, because he knew that his personal power could not last if the Sunnis across Syria, organized by religious leaders, stood as one against him and his fellow Alawites.



The question now on my mind is this: Where will Syria be one year from now?

Every day there are stories in the news about mass protests. Every day there are stories in the news about the rebellion forming its own army. Every day there are stories in the news about the geographic growth of the anti-Assad movement. Yet every day there are stories in the news about dozens or hundreds of "protesters" being shot and killed.

The LA Times, for example, is reporting that Mr. Assad bombed a medical clinic today in the city of Homs, killing 24 or more:

REPORTING FROM BEIRUT -- Opposition activists said Monday that the Syrian military bombarded the central city of Homs, hitting a makeshift clinic and killing at least two dozen people.

Amateur video from Homs purported to show a field clinic overwhelmed with wounded and dead, while an irate doctor blamed Russia and China for the shelling. The comment was a reference to the two superpowers' veto Saturday of a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have backed an Arab League plan calling for Syrian President Bashar Assad to relinquish power.

"The situation is dramatic: We are escaping from one side of the neighborhood to the other," said an opposition activist reached in Homs, adding that casualties included staff at the makeshift clinic in the Baba Amro district. "We are just putting the wounded in homes and just trying, without success, to stop the bleeding. We cannot put in stitches or do operations." ...

The opposition reported more than 200 killed in Homs during a weekend military bombardment of the Khaldiya neighborhood. The government denied the charges, accusing the opposition of fabricating the report and declaring that terrorists were attacking the city.

This chaos cannot last forever. At some point the government falls or Assad takes away the will of anyone to stand up against him. At some point there is a key battle or a key defection. At some point things become stable again.

My best guess is that Bashar al-Assad will still be in power come February, 2012, though I don't think the rebellion will have lost its will yet. Here is the basis for my calculus:

Assad has powerful friends outside of Syria who will sustain him. It's not just the Russians, who are supplying him with arms, or the Chinese, who are feeding him cash, it is his strong alliance with the Shiite crazies in Iran, who will back him to the last man. Assad also has a strong external alliances with Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups, which never lack the will to do evil. The government of Syria has no compunction to not murder and torture the people of Syria--in the name of staying in power.

With the money and material Assad is getting from the outside to bolster his regime, his Alawite faithful have nowhere else to go. If Bashar falls from power, ordinary Alawites know they will lose everything: their positions, their homes, their freedom, their lives. The average Alawite has very good reason to fear a Sunni Islamist takeover. They do not expect Assad's fall will result in free elections. They expect that will result in a reign of terror directed against them, even worse than the terror they have imposed on their countrymen.

The two wild cards, which could prove my guess about Syria's future wrong, are these:

1. Perhaps the Sunni rebels will get more outside support of their own. (I am not sure if they are getting much, now. Egypt might just have a Sunni Islamist government before too long. Egyptian Sunnis could sends guns and money. Maybe the Saudis will send material support to their Sunni brethren. Maybe al-Qaeda forces will join the fight. If the 74 percent majority of Syrians are well financed, armed, trained and organized, they could oust Assad; and

2. If more and more members of the Syrian armed forces switch sides, Assad might fall from within. While it is true that almost all of Assad's top generals are Alawites, as are his top political allies, there are secular Sunnis (including Kurds) in his army leadership, and a few of them have defected to what is now called the Free Syrian Army. If this trickle becomes a deluge, Assad will fall.

Time Magazine is reporting today that the regime's defectors have some advantages already:

The military breakaways tend to return to their hometowns, enabling even a small group to tap into a much wider social and clan-based network. In the early days of what was a predominantly peaceful uprising, bands of army defectors across the country were turning away the civilians volunteering to join their ranks, in a bid to maintain some semblance of military hierarchy and discipline. Now, in amateur videos posted on YouTube, some units are openly calling for civilian volunteers.

One thing I am sure won't happen: there will not be another Libya; the NATO powers will stay on the sidelines. The reason for this is not just the lack of oil, though that may play a role. The reason is that Bashar Assad is not Moammar Ghadaffi. He has not built up so much ill will in the West. And I presume the major Western powers understand that the Sunni forces fighting Assad will never be our friends.

It is painful to watch the Sacramento Kings ... most of the time

Based on their 8 wins and 15 losses, the Kings are not the worst team in the NBA. That distinction goes to the 3-21 Charlotte Bobcats. Nice job, Michael Jordan. However, if you look deeper into their numbers, Sacramento is probably the worst team in the Western Conference and the third worst club overall. They can play competitively against the other bad teams. They almost always get blown out by the top 15 clubs in the NBA.

Last night at home, the Kings played very well ... against the 8-13 Golden State Warriors. It was, for a Kings game, unusually good to watch. It was back and forth all the way. It finished with a Sacramento victory in overtime. It's too bad that the Kings can't just play the other bad teams.

Most nights, the Kings are just pathetic. Of the 30 teams in the NBA, the Kings have the lowest field goal percentage (.404). They are tied with Utah for the worst 3-point percentage (.293). They are in the lower third as free throw shooters (.737). They are, by a long way, the worst team in the NBA in assists (372, which is far below Chicago's league-leading 587). They have just one more block (94) than the league-worst Detroit Pistons. They are 10th worst in turning the ball over (370).

Only five clubs have allowed more made baskets. Only three teams give up a higher percentage of shots made. They are the second worst team in the NBA in allowing the other team to get offensive rebounds on them and 11th worst in allowing defensive rebounds. Sacramento is 5th worst in both giving up assisted baskets and allowing steals against them.

The argument that they are the worst team in the Western Conference is based on a metric called the Simple Rating System. It "takes into account average point differential and strength of schedule." The average team in the SRS will have a rating of 0. Better than zero is better than average. The Kings have an SRS rating of -7.59. That is well worse than the -3.26 SRS rating of New Orleans, despite the Hornets team record of 4 wins and 20 losses.

The one bright spot for the Kings is that they are young. They average 24.5 years of age, third youngest in the NBA.

They have a talented, but inconsistent and emotionally imbalanced power forward in DeMarcus Cousins. If he does not lose his mind entirely, Cousins (age 21) will one day be an All-Star.

Their other most notable player is Tyreke Evans (age 22). Unfortunately, Evans does not appear to be getting any better since his rookie season. If anything, he is worse. He plays very poor defense and he cannot shoot the basketball. His FG% has declined each year since he came out of college. He also is injury prone.

The Kings added rookie Jimmer Fredette to their roster this year (trading for him on draft day). It looks like Fredette, who was a high scorer in college, will be a bust. He cannot defend anyone, and he has trouble making his shots. He is among the worst rookies in the NBA this year in a metric called Win Shares per 48 minutes played.

To improve, the Kings need to add a competent center. Last year they had that in Samuel Dalembert, but they did not resign him. His replacement has been Chuck Hayes, and Hayes is just not nearly as good. They also need a new small forward or shooting guard who shoots for a high percentage and plays defense.

My advice is they trade away Evans and Fredette. Maybe Utah, where Fredette played his college ball at BYU, would give up somebody for Jimmer?

As this group ages, it is inevitable that they will get better. But without a significant change in personnel, the Kings are not building toward a playoff team. They are likely to move up from the 15th worst of the 15 teams in the Western Conference to maybe the 10th or 9th worst.

It's not a pretty picture for Kings fans.

Obama's plan is total nonsense

The federal government is running annual deficits around $1 trillion and President Obama proposes to increase our debt even further to create more jobs for local fire departments?

USA Today is reporting that Obama wants to pour $1 billion that we don't have into jobs for firefighters:

In an effort to cut the unemployment rate among veterans, President Obama ... will seek more grant money for programs that allow local communities to hire more police officers and firefighters.

"Let's get more cops on the beat, let's get more rangers in the parks, let's get more firefighters on call, and in the process, we're going to put more veterans back to work," Obama said Friday at a fire station in Arlington, Va. ...

Communities that hire veterans to work as police and firefighters will be given preference in the grants competition. ... He will propose an additional $1 billion for the firefighter grants.

This nonsense is all about President Obama paying off public employee unions in the hope that they will work hard to get him re-elected. It has little or nothing to do with helping new veterans. (If some of them cannot find work, they should be trained for productive employment in the private sector.)

Mr. Obama's plan has nothing to do with fighting fires. Local communities all over America have millions of firefighters sitting around with no fires to fight.

It has nothing to do with helping local governments. Once they take the federal money to hire a veteran as a firefighter, the local taxpayers will be stuck with the new union member's massive package of lifetime medical benefits and an unaffordable amount to cover his pension. The only cities which will take on these unsustainable burdens will be those where their firefighter unions are running the cities and don't care what long-term damage the added costs will bring.

The Obama hire-a-firefighter program has nothing to do with relieving national unemployment. Net job creation in our country is the result of creating efficiencies. Hiring more firefighters we don't need won't do that. Rather, it will divert money from productive uses--that is, the higher taxes needed to pay this plan off will come from money which could have gone into investment in research & development or new plant & equipment--into an unproductive use. Ultimately, this will cause our country to be less efficient and have fewer jobs created.

Is suicide always the wrong choice?

The death by suicide of Don Cornelius of "Soul Train" fame is in the news today. The LA Times is reporting that health and money problems may have been behind Mr. Cornelius's choice to take his own life:

Authorities investigating the death of "Soul Train" creator Don Cornelius continued to sift for clues after he was found in his Encino home Wednesday with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Sources close to the investigation said they were looking at several possible triggers, including Cornelius' health and his financial situation. But they emphasized they had not made any determinations.

Cornelius had undergone brain surgery in the 1980s and was quoted in newspapers at the time as saying he didn't feel quite the same afterward.

Coming into adulthood, when I formulated my opinions on most topics, I thought suicide was always a terrible choice. I felt that the act was horribly selfish and it always left behind a wake of pain for the families and loved ones of the person who took his own life.

I still mostly feel that way. However, as I have gotten older I've learned a couple of things which have somewhat altered my view.

First and foremost, I have learned a little more about depression. I have never suffered from it or known anyone close who was depressed to the point of contemplating suicide, but I do know that severe depression is the byproduct of brain chemistry and for people who are not treated with medications and psychotherapy, the "decision" to commit suicide is often the irrational act of someone whose mind is chemically messed up. In other words, it's not exactly a choice for someone who has lost his rational mind.

Outside of people who are clinically depressed, I now think there are a small number of cases where suicide could be the best option for everyone, including close family members and friends. For example, take a person with a degenerative disease, the symptoms of which make the patient terribly unhappy and a burden on his wife and children. Say he will live another five years, but over that period he will lose his mind and lose control of all of his bodily functions. He will no longer be able to think clearly, to have conversations with friends, to walk his dog, to leave his home and so on. He knows up front that his medical care will wipe out his life savings and leave his family in a world of hurt. In that sort of an extreme case, it's unfair to call suicide selfish. I am not suggesting I think a patient needs to kill himself to better others. It's a personal choice. But I would not hold it against anyone for choosing suicide in that type of case.

After the dead bodies of his wife and her waiter were found, but before OJ Simpson had gone on the run in his white Ford Bronco, I thought to myself: This is the sort of rare circumstance where suicide would be best for everyone involved. Surely Simpson was guilty of that terrible crime, killing two innocent people. Surely he was going to end up in prison for the rest of his life if they found him alive. A trial was simply going to bankrupt him, stealing away the money that would better serve his surviving children. To the extent that his repuatation as a human being and as a celebrated football player could ever be salvaged, that was only possible if he immediately paid the highest price for his terrible act and died. Suicide in the case of OJ was, I thought, the best possible answer, or at least the least worst answer.

He did not kill himself, of course. And what happened? Shockingly, a stupid jury acquitted him. But the public never did. Everyone with a brain knows OJ was guilty of a double homicide. Because of what it took for his lawyers to get him off, his reputation was entirely unsalvagable afterward. Another jury in a civil case convicted him, and he lost his money and possessions that could have gone to his kids. So his living was selfish insofar as he ever wanted his kids to have his material possessions and insofar as OJ wanted his kids to have a famous father who was famous for something other than murder. By not dying, by not choosing suicide, OJ made that impossible. And in a strange twist, he was convicted of a felony in Nevada, where it seems he will spend the rest of his life as a prisoner.

Maybe that is a better outcome than death for himself. But I cannot see how he has made anything better for his children and friends and our country by choosing to not commit suicide after he murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. Had OJ Simpson cared about anyone other than himself, he should not have fought the murder charges against him. He should have driven his white Ford Bronco off of a cliff before prosecutors had decided what to do with him.

What Joe didn't win, August 2010

What follows is an email written by Jon Li. Mr. Li titled it, "What Joe didn't win, August 2010."

The New Davis City Council
Hysterical Historical Context
The first thing to understand is that it was never about Mayor Ruth.
Ruth’s time as Mayor was collateral damage.
Don Saylor and Sue Greenwald are at about 99.9998% on the dis-like scale.
The friction between Greenwald and Saylor has always been the definition of council dynamics, with Mayor Asmundson attempting to referee, and Lamar Haystek and Stephen Souza being content to share the limelight. Saylor would regularly lob some calculated bomb Sue’s way, and entirely too often it would hit a sensitive nerve somewhere in her unbalanced explosive psyche, and she would blow a fuse.

The blow up between Mayor Ruth and Greenwald on January 26th was only the latest flare-up. As Greenwald ally Mark Siegler pointed out two days later, Sue was the way she always is. Defending her right to speak, as though she had not just lost the vote. In this case, the Mayor didn’t respond to her about something she claimed she had said in closed session – the Mayor’s agreement would also have joined Sue in violating legally bound confidentiality – and the Mayor was stunned speechless. Impatiently, Sue called the Mayor “a liar” and demanded satisfaction. The Mayor fell apart.

Five years ago, as Asmundson was completing her first year as The Mayor and still on her honeymoon, she announced to her four daughters that she was so content with her life that she didn’t have anything to give up for Lent. In shocked unison, all four said, “Sue Greenwald.”

A year ago, I recommended that Mayor Ruth trade places with Mayor Pro Tem Saylor, so that he would have to campaign for Supervisor while actually managing Greenwald’s outbursts, rather than just initiating them and then watching the fun from the sidelines. I hypothesized that the Saylor-initiated outbursts would diminish because Saylor would then be responsible for dealing with the consequences. Now that he is finally Mayor, we get to see.

The over-riding issue with the Davis city council is making it work at all. Greenwald is so negative and argumentative that each council in the past decade has been noted for its antagonism and lack of accomplishment. Don Saylor has nothing to show for his time in city “service” except self-promotion. At least with now-Judge Dave Rosenberg (as a city council member, mayor and then county supervisor) you knew that he would get the credit, but it was actually for something.

The single biggest impact of Jon Li’s candidacy for city council was the Enterprise story at the end of the campaign re-stating the potential idea of recalling Greenwald. Having that over her head lowers her hubris significantly (but not completely) and gives her allies leverage to request that Greenwald tone down her histrionics.

Saylor is not going to make it easy for Greenwald to survive his six months of mayoral manipulation. He deeply resented her for his second place finish behind her in 2004, has coveted the Mayor position for a long time, and he is going to try to make the most of it, maybe trying to institute some new procedures that go down in history with his name on it. And Saylor wants to lock in city-county relations so that he can retain influence in Davis when he moves to the county board of supervisors.

For the record, over the past 14 years, sometimes Sue Greenwald has had something useful to say, but most of it is counterproductive. Andy Warhol talked about 15 minutes of fame. Sue has had the spotlight for 10 years, and has very little positive to show for it. She actually believes her responsible role in politics is to stop things: the dis-art of making things impossible. She keeps demanding that we listen to whatever she happens to want to talk about next, and there is very rarely an end to her sentences, let alone a satisfactory conclusion. The downtown would be at least as successful if she hadn’t said anything in ten years.

Clean Slate with a new Team
The internal dynamic of the new council is going to have to evolve. They do not have any established relationships – Don and Stephen have gamed each other a lot over the past six years, and no one has ever had a working relationship with Sue. New and old council members want to probe each other, exploring about specific policies, or following up on a chance phrase. While Joe and Rochelle each gained Sue’s endorsement for the election, and they have each maintained communication with her, she doesn’t actually want anything except to be paid attention to, and her motions seconded and supported. She doesn’t actually want to accomplish anything more than to be the center of attention, so Joe and Rochelle will find meeting with Sue to be a generally unproductive for achieving tangible results. Sue has certain pet themes, like the PG&E property (leaving out the $80 million replacement price tag), and most of them are things that will never happen in a million years. The second time she brings one up, you recognize the broken record…..

The state meeting rule, called the Brown Act, makes council intercommunication weird because the law prohibits majority interpersonal communication outside of properly noticed meetings. With a five member city council, that means that between meetings, two but no more can actually interact and explore ideas about a particular policy area: communicate, caucus, and strategize. Two particular members regularly talking during the week become known as Brown Buddies. On some issues, Asmundson and Saylor were Brown Buddies for six years. The Davis council tradition is to use the Brown Act as an excuse to cut off the conversation when a council member picks up the phone and it is Greenwald: Oh, I have already discussed that issue with another council member. Sorry.

Ruth was the integral glue to the social fabric of the council experience of the always contentious Saylor, Souza and Greenwald. They have battled under her maternal good will for six years, and now they have to learn to get along without her. So nothing is clearly defined as an ongoing primary interpersonal relationship – something so automatic that the other council members presume they have already talked about the new issue. This council is really starting from scratch. The short term of Saylor’s mayorship and the selection of his replacement create an artificial deadline: Saylor’s ego is so gargantuan that you know he is going to try to do something that only he can claim is important. In the very bottom of her heart, Ruth’s intention as Mayor was to be as fair as she could. Saylor does not have as big a heart as Ruth, and he has a lot higher aspirations for at least State Assembly, so his expectations about building his image in the Sacramento region and his long view may well get in the way of his immediate steps.

How the 2010 city council race played out
Rochelle Swanson
Davis is lucky Rochelle Swanson stepped forward and put in the effort to run for city council. She is the real deal. If you meet with her, she will probably be interested in what you have to say.

When I first spoke with her on the phone, I told her about Jon Walker’s Guide to the Viable System Model, and gave her the URL to find it on the Internet. When I met with her a week later, she had read the material, understood the basics of it, and during our far-ranging discussion about city issues appropriately used the VSM five times.

She inquired with others as she had me. She learned a lot about the city and is learning more all the time. Rochelle’s campaign was about inclusion. They involved as many people as they could.

Rochelle was that unique “person a campaign was looking for” who was prepared and juggled it with the rest of her crazy busy Mom life. In late January, Ruth and Sue had their flare-up, and the next evening Rochelle did such a good job of chairing a meeting of the Blue and White Foundation that it generated a spontaneous campaign. If they would have had another month, they probably could have come in first.

The real secret behind Rochelle’s campaign is its potential.

Sydney Vergis
Sydney Vergis was a candidate who peaked two years ago, on Election Day, June, 2008. Backed by then-victors Don Saylor and Stephen Souza, her credentials as a certified planner claimed “expert.” Her youth was complimented by a sorority girl formal bearing that some people perceived as grace. Especially, in the June 2008 election, Sydney looked good compared to Sue Greenwald, who she almost beat for the third seat, and Cecilia Escamillia-Greenwald, whose vote tally she surpassed.

In 2008, as election day approached, a new campaign emerged, with t-shirts and signs posted downtown: Super-S: vote Saylor, Souza and Sydney, tying Sydney to the front runners. The problem is that Sydney’s support was based on her associations, not her own campaign, and the support that she received in the June 2008 election mostly disappeared as the voters turned in their ballots.

Sydney’s biggest problem as a candidate in 2010 was that she spent the next two years assuming that if her name was on the ballot she would be elected. Don Saylor organized a meeting last August, at which they decided that Ruth would run for a third term and Sydney would be her running mate. It was assumed that Lamar was running for re-election. (Lamar instead chose to get married and delay further elected office.) Unknown to almost everyone, right after the 2008 election Sydney was riding her bike and had a nasty car accident – requiring serious shoulder surgery with a subsequent year of rehabilitation.

Maybe she passed that year recuperating with reading, but it wasn’t expanding what she knew about Davis. She re-applied to UCD King Law School, and this time she was accepted but she didn’t do it. Then she returned to UCD to graduate school, in how to measure carbon footprint. (Hardly preparation for ramping up to challenge an enthusiastic incumbent for the second seat on the city council.)

In September Sydney started rounding up endorsements. When she asked for mine, I said sure, but I had already given it to Joe and I would give it to Ruth as well, and maybe even someone who hadn’t emerged yet.

All Sydney wanted was my name, and she really didn’t care about anything else. She didn’t want to talk about Davis or her campaign. At all. She already knew everything she needed to know, and if she needed to know anything else, then someone in The Establishment (Don Saylor, Ruth, Covell Village, the city firefighter union…) would tell her what to think/say/do.

The most troubling thing about Sydney as a candidate in 2010 is that she still thought that in the Spring of 2010, her memorized answers from 2008 worked. Long after the global economic calamity of 2008, and all the federal and state budget problems, she often would use her lines memorized two years before, all too often opening with: “as I stated two years ago,….”

My advice a year ago with hyperactive Lamar still expected to run, was for Sydney to plan on walking every precinct in the city starting in January. She looked at me like it would never happen.

If Lamar had run, he would have danced precincts, and Joe and Ruth would have spent a lot more money to run more dynamic campaigns just to compete. Sydney would have been watching on the sidelines. She pretty much was anyway.

Without Lamar or Ruth in the race, Sydney made the strategic decision to do only a minimum number of things for her campaign: get endorsements, raise money, design a few special pieces for her bicycle sign campaign, a mailer, a brochure, a lawn sign, an ad for the Enterprise at the end of the campaign. The least she had to do to still get elected.

At her campaign kickoff in January, I still had no intention of running. I chatted with my very first UCD teacher and friend, Brian Horsfield (Ph.D. Ag Engineering UCD 1970) who has recently returned to retire in Davis after many years in the Seattle area working for Weyerhaeuser. He had taken an instant liking to Sydney during her previous campaign, and became her #1 volunteer. Brian asked me what he could do to best help Sydney’s campaign. I told him to schedule walking precincts three days a week with his adorable grandson who is why he moved back to Davis. He loved the idea. Sydney wouldn’t let Brian do it; too much trouble.

Sydney was never really more than a Ruth surrogate. The code for Sydney’s 2008 campaign was that the Enterprise would regularly announce that Jan Bridge was hosting Sunday pancakes with candidate Sydney, and probably at least a thousand Ruth supporters read that message as Ruth’s stamp of approval.

This time, Sydney assumed that having Ruth’s daughter’s name as her treasurer on the return address of the envelope of the fundraising solicitation letter would be enough to raise the $30,000 to finance a hot campaign. But Ruth’s political brand took a big hit with her defense of Covell Village when she ran for re-election after the defeat of Measure X, 40-60. And then Ruth’s brand dropped into the past tense with the total collapse of council decorum on January 26th.

When Rochelle entered the race, Sydney did not change her strategy at all. Fundraising was not successful. People who gave last time, or had given to Ruth in the past, were not as likely to contribute money to Sydney’s campaign. Nobody, starting with Sydney, was particularly interested in pushing Sydney’s campaign, which had just plain run out of juice. Her core group would have these fundraiser events that a few people would come to and they would pretend they were in a campaign. But her issues were to take the life out of the dismal science of economic development. She doesn’t even actually do anything at the city Business and Economic Development Commission, or she could have at least talked about what she had been advocating. Her one and only dedicated volunteer, Brian Horsfield, drove around putting up her signs.

For me, the most disappointing moment in Sydney’s campaign was when the Enterprise was interviewing the five candidates – in what apparently was her only attempt to respond to my advocating the Viable System Model, Sydney sat up in her prim, proper way, and announced that as a licensed professional financial planner, it is the judgment of the literature that re-organizations don’t work.

At least she figured out that I am advocating real time decision taking, which would mean perpetual re-organization.

But Sydney? Even the U.S. Army (remember the Army Air Corps) and the Catholic Church have re-organized. Due to drops in advertising revenue, the Enterprise has had major cutbacks leading to necessary consolidation of responsibilities among the survivors. World class sports editor Chris Saur emerged because he was still standing after one of the many earthquakes, and the boss Editor Debbie Davis would rather have husband Bruce writing enthusiastically about kids and sports, having the time of his life doing what he loves most, and leave Chris stuck with the POWER of writing the headlines, cropping the pictures, editing the captions and squeezing in the stories with the names mostly spelled right.

Shortly before the Enterprise interview with the candidates, the Davis City Manager announced a major reorganization, over half of which was based on attrition and elimination of unfilled positions. Basically, reorganization by default. I have confidence in the city management staff, especially Bill Emlen and Paul Navazio, so I am watching to see what emerges.

Sydney has a reputation for strong analytical skills. I didn’t see it at all. Never once did she deviate from script about policy issues based on new information. Sydney should become an investment banker, have maybe ten clients who appreciate her for who she is and whatever it is that she does.

Daniel Watts
Daniel Watts is mostly interested in self-promotion. He was often mis-informed, especially by his law professors who may have had tongue firmly in cheek, and he blabbed away whatever they had said. Quoting your law professors as the gospel of municipal governance may work in law school but he was a detriment to the city of Davis.

Joe Krovoza
Which brings us to Joe Krovoza, the smiling salesman.

I like Joe’s wife, Janet. We met when she started working in the UCD College of Engineering in 1992. A couple years ago, I asked her about Joe’s running for council. (I do that. I consider it my civic responsibility, my civic duty, to encourage people that make the effort to help the body politic. Reader: I am looking for people to run for city council in 2012, or to help with a campaign and eventually be somebody’s campaign manager, or lawn sign coordinator, or help table at the Farmers Market, or make some phone calls….)

When I went on a Davis Bicycles! organized ride in August, Joe rode with me and talked about his running for city council and I encouraged him. I sent him my template on how to set up a successful campaign in Davis. We met. I talked from the experience of being involved in every single Davis election since 1982. We met several times. Joe took lots of notes. (I met with Sydney, and she was already bored, coasting, and losing momentum.) I talked Joe up, and he met with key elected officials and opinion leaders.

He asked my advice on whether to have his campaign kickoff at Nugget Fields showing his longtime soccer connections, or the Farmers Market, or a bike ride, or the multi-modal train station to emphasize transportation policy options which is his day job at the university. I recommended that he meet at Farmers Market at 10:30, bike caravan to the train station at 11:00, and then give his speech. That image crystallized in his mind, and it turned out as I had suggested. I counted over 100 people attending at the beginning of his talk at the train station.

Then Joe and I met just before Thanksgiving, to evaluate and to plan. Joe told me, “You need to figure out a role for yourself in my campaign.” Joe parceled out different jobs and then he was coordinating. I had been advocating that he pick a campaign manager, but apparently he never did. He kept complete control of his operation. I had advocated that his role as a council member would be to direct staff, and to indirectly influence citizens, so he should practice by involving more people in his campaign organization and create a structure. The other thing I advocated was that he work towards an active precinct operation that comes to fruition in May.

Joe rejected the idea of having a grassroots community network. He was building a great database of names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, and that computer list became his goal.

Based on all the work I had done laying the organization for his campaign, I told him I had a role in his campaign, campaign consultant. Joe said No you are not. And he pretty much stopped talking to me about what he was going to do in his campaign (this being the Tuesday before last Thanksgiving), and I was never again involved in any of the decisions (except one special meeting he had on President’s Holiday in late February, where the focus on partnerships emerged as a good campaign theme; again, before I had any thought of running.) At that point, Joe killed whatever relationship we had. He continued to meet with me for three months, always putting me off when I asked strategic questions (as though I was working for another candidate or going to run myself). And he would taunt me to come up with a role in his campaign that he would find acceptable. Well, there was no role that he would find acceptable. When I offered to actually make his campaign something more than he conceived with active precincts, he was so paranoid that he never trusted me again. Joe: the proof of the pudding: never at any time since last August have I, in thought, word or deed, by commission or omission (according to Luther) had a second where I even hinted at opposing your candidacy. [Then.]

Joe stopped talking to me, because he refused to listen to me, because he is paranoid. I recommended that Joe be Mayoral, that he treat each of the other candidates like he could work well with them/us. He couldn’t do it. He strategically attacked Sydney as though it would help him, when she was already gone anyway; he was hostile towards me; and, at the end, his campaign couldn’t understand why Rochelle’s campaign was gaining energy and they deeply resented it, and Joe’s campaign never had any energy except Joe’s personal hyperactivity. Joe personally worked really hard in May, and he had a network of individuals with assignments, but he didn’t have an organization that did much of anything together. Joe’s campaign wasn’t about building community of Davis, it was about building the community of Joe.

The winners of this election were: the citizens of Davis because we elected two strong candidates (Joe & Rochelle), Rochelle, Daniel because he got all his publicity, and me because I explored the Viable System Model as I claimed (contrary to whatever it is that Joe thinks motivated me to run).

The losers were Sydney, and Joe because he ended up making these false claims about getting along, that now makes all his claims sound like hollow hype. The very first time I met with Joe, he spent the final 20 minutes berating me because I wouldn’t unconditionally support whatever Davis Bicycles! might propose when I was already objecting to some of their ideas. Joe has berated me three times, where there was absolutely only one side to the story, his side.

After Joe told me I wasn’t his campaign consultant, I proved to him that I was – I made my services no longer necessary. I spent the hour saying that the kickoff was perfect. The only mistake was that he over-emphasized the need to raise money. Given his socio-economic status, and his family friends, when people hear his campaign, they will whip out their checkbooks and say “Only $100?” Just before I had to leave, I said, “AND, Thursday is Thanksgiving; on Sunday, you need to organize a fundraiser letter mailing party with two dozen people and have computer labels for what turned out to be 7,000 letters, so that people could write a check to his campaign before they started their Christmas shopping”.

Joe had lots and lots of favors to call in from his years of community volunteer work around his two daughters. During the month of December he put together an awesome database of his extended Friends-of-Friends mailing/email/campaign list. I wanted to map his whole list and create a precinct organization; he was content with having a mailing list that he could glean potential contributors and volunteers. That initial effort raised $7,000. It was a preemptive strike that sewed up his coming in first. He coasted from that point on and my ideas were unnecessary to him.

Each time Joe and I crossed paths proved more difficult. He would taunt me about what I could do for his campaign. I begged to let me help with a precinct operation, but that turned out to be something he had no interest in. Finally, in February we fought about it. I wanted an energetic precinct organization to build community with him as the focal point (The Mayor in reality and not just the elected figurehead.) Joe was content that he had already won and he was set in his campaign plan. I wasn’t a part of his plan.

Joe was so self-centered that I kept advising him to be Mayoral, to see all the candidates as allies not adversaries. He never got it. In January, after I recommended to Brian Horsfield that he walk for Sydney, I was explaining what I had recommended to Joe, and Joe was outraged that I had given HIS idea for precinct walking to the other campaign, when I was the only one talking precincts in his campaign, Joe wasn’t supporting what I was recommending, AND, I was telling Joe the story because it was opposition research that his then-principal opponent still was not mounting a serious campaign because Sydney had refused to let Brian walk precincts for her.

Although I don’t know first hand because Joe hasn’t been civil enough to talk with me (talked at, a few times, but not “talked with” after November), but he apparently was shocked when I announced for the city council race. He called but he didn’t say what he was thinking, and when we had lunch the next week for the last time, his definitive statement was that we are opponents and he resented me ever since. He never seemed to understand that he had cut me off three months before, and I had nowhere else to go with my ideas about the Viable System Model. (Forget Sydney – there were a lot less exotic things that she doesn’t comprehend or care about.) My candidacy supposedly confirmed his suspicions that I had intended to run all along, even though I never once cost him a vote by saying ANYTHING about him, except that I was supporting him with my other vote, which I did. Where is the shred of evidence to confirm his paranoia (unjustified fear)? I endorsed Joe in August, and I have kept unfailing support for him ever since. I took my Vote for Joe button off my bike a week after the election.

The city of Davis is best served by the election of Joe and Rochelle, and while I feel that Rochelle is a better politician than Joe, I am hopeful that the city will move in better directions due to their efforts.

I almost never asked for people to vote for me during the campaign. At the end of the forums, when Joe gave a rousing statement of why you should vote for him, I talked about the Viable System Model.

Joe went to law school and he likes to win. He pretty much ran his campaign to win at all cost, contrary to his civility claims after the campaign. Joe attacked Sydney on several occasions, about things she was already too embarrassed about to defend. From December on, he USUALLY misunderstood what I was saying. He often didn’t appear to listen, and got distinctly wrong what I had said. What was I supposed to do? Continue to support him unconditionally, like he is the king? Sit on the sidelines? He doesn’t understand that I appeared to do that for six years when I had Ruth’s ear. I have done everything I could to treat him the positive way he claims he has been treating me. The proof is that I sent him and Rochelle each an email after the election, congratulating them and asking for a chance to meet, but he hasn’t found time in two months to respond to my email. Joe couldn’t represent me any more than Sue who only represents herself. During the first council meeting, when Sue turned to Joe for help in gaining some of the council appointments she felt were important, he only cared about his own appointments and wouldn’t help her at all, probably not the last time Sue will be disappointed in Joe.

The only person I came half way close to as a result of Joe’s campaign was Robert Canning, who was responsible for the precinct version of Joe’s campaign. I happened to see him waiting for the train the morning before the election, and in a not friendly way he asked where Rochelle’s campaign came from, so I explained what I had seen:
- Joe’s campaign was made up of people whose children had grown up with Joe’s, and Joe was re-creating the PTA/AYSO soccer list of the past 20 years, and bringing that to life for one thing: to get Joe elected June 8th.
- Rochelle’s campaign grew out of the frustration of school people who feel the city should be doing more; it started with the Blue & White Foundation, which is the parents of children who hope to be on varsity teams when they are at Davis High, and Support our Schools, which is for parents who care about 7th period and foreign languages, and music and drama, and the kinds of programs that make the Davis community a nurturing environment for many, many children. Joe wanted to communicate with those parents, Rochelle was already communicating with those parents. Those parents are the current soccer moms, Joe’s are the former soccer moms. The reason Rochelle’s campaign caught fire was that her message was on the already necessary get-the-kids-to-school-today network. Joe claimed it, past tense; with Rochelle, it was the real thing, alive today and growing with every Blue & White Foundation Alumni Association Davis HS class reunion.

Don’t let the smile fool you. Joe cares about Joe first, Davis second. I had always advised Joe to peak on Election Day, but that was based on my ideas about a growing, evolving organization that would become the backbone of a citywide network supporting his leadership. I assumed that he would build a community of support. Joe’s campaign did only enough to come in first, but if the election campaign had run even a week longer, Rochelle had momentum, and Joe was chugging along but he had no organizational capacity to kick it up to another level, let along continue to grow after the election. Joe’s campaign list diminishes in quality daily.

Joe sold the city’s voters a product. He is a scam.

Forecast for the long term
This election was historic, like 1972 (growth versus slow growth), 1990-2 (limited growth versus no growth). This is the first time since 1906 when growth is not a force for political change. Covell Village is out there off the horizon, now in the distant future. UCD’s West Village will absorb whatever growth pressure might emerge, but that won’t be for at least 5 years (two more regular council elections).

Sue Greenwald and Lamar Heystak’s elections were the final products of a movement around the word “Progressive” that has lost all meaning, and many of the active people in the established network have retired, moved or passed away. Originally, Progressive implied environmental awareness. Like the Radical Liberal party of some Latin American country, the label came to mean whatever someone wanted to associate with it. Partly they lost their issue: it is the chaos of the global economy that is playing out in the Sacramento regional housing market; realtors are working hard to move existing product; less than ten new houses are expected to be built in Davis this year.

So during the next 5 years, if growth is no longer the dividing line within city politics, where will the dynamic be?

Without population growth, both the city government and the school district face expanding responsibilities and shrinking resources. There is increasing potential that two distinct political populations emerge as the New Davis Politics: families with children in the schools versus seniors. Within the city government, both elder and children services are unique enough that there is lots of potential for expansion or reduction of services. (One third of the city residential population are college students, who are about as relevant to city politics as the over-bred squirrels.)

The main way to see these two emerging competing political institutions (for at least the next five years and then maybe a transition to something else), is: Rochelle’s campaign represents the younger families and Joe’s campaign represents the seniors and retirees.

Joe’s database peaked in December when his computer teams finished going through the PTA rosters of the children of his friends. Most of those children are now in high school or graduated. Most of the voters in those households no longer have primary daily issues with the Davis school district, especially about using scarce school resources.

Rochelle’s list is people who are active in the schools now. Their most pressing concerns have to do with getting their families and kids ready for a successful school year.

Traditionally, the school district is subservient to the city. When former school board trustee Susie Boyd was Mayor, the city imposed restrictive parking around the high school, over the school board’s formal objections. The board pointed out that the city had violated its own policies: it surveyed the neighborhood and the potential beneficiaries had overwhelmingly opposed the policy. The Mayor haughtily concluded the discussion by announcing that the school district has no choice but to live with the city’s actions.

When the city bullied the school district and put a competing funding measure on the school race ballot, both H & I were defeated. With budget challenges looming, it will be interesting to see how the battle lines for resources set up, and how well the school board and the city council are able to collaborate.

Maybe 95% of the school district is inside the city limits. The city, the school district, the county and the university can pool their ideas about their resources and responsibilities. There has to be potential for consolidation, efficiencies, discontinuations, and shared economies of scale. I think the winning candidate called it partnerships.

Candidates to fill Don Saylor’s unfinished term:
Would not be a candidate in 2012: Delaine Easton
Others: Lucas Frehrichs, Dan Wolk
Definitely not a candidate: Susan Lovenburg

Candidates for City Council in 2012
Stephen Souza
Sue Greenwald
Dan Wolk
Lucas Frehrichs
Rochelle’s ami (woman candidate)

Should Krovoza see this

What follows is an email from Jon Li, who ran for City Council against Joe Krovoza and lost. Mr. Li titled this email, "Should Krovoza see this."

Yeah, Yeah, Good, Good
The Mayor nobody knows: Joe Krovoza
February, 2011

A little over a year ago, by Thanksgiving, Joe Krovoza had built such a strong campaign mailing list of potential supporters that he was the acknowledged front runner and coasted to victory in June. Krovoza's campaign platform was partnerships, especially between the city and UC Davis, finding financial answers (which Krovoza claims as a strength), and being diplomatic in the council ego chaos. Krovoza leveraged his many years work on the Putah Creek Council to reflect his investment in water and environmental issues; his many years coaching youth soccer while his girls were growing up; and, his long time commitment to bicycles and his day time job with UCD's Institute for Transportation Studies - which all added up to an attractive package as a candidate for the Davis city council.

Krovoza campaigned hard personally, but he really didn't have a campaign organization. People had individual responsibilities and assignments, but the campaign wasn't about rejuvenating Davis politics - it was about elevating Krovoza. The front runner from start to finish, he ran a risk free campaign of not taking a stand on any issue, so he cannot legitimately claim a mandate to do something he had advocated as a candidate.

Krovoza's campaign peaked on June 8th, election day. He then shifted into post-election disconnect with the voters. Krovoza acts like he has a mandate, unconditional support for whatever he happens to propose. Apparently Krovoza's leadership model is that he wins all the arguments. Actually, too often he has already made up his mind, decided what to do, and expects you to ratify his announcement and cave on your concerns (rather than that he will be able to negotiate from a better position based on your new information).

Krovoza has a tin ear, and a short attention span. Fortunately, he has built in a subconscious reflex when he has lost all patience, and stopped listening and expects you to stop talking and submit to his superior wisdom: he says, “yeah, yeah, good, good.” At that point, his subconscious is announcing to you that you had best give up talking, because he is no longer listening to what you are talking about. His mind has shifted to an entirely different topic, and as soon as you have stopped talking, he will tell you what it is. Krovoza stopped listening to me November, 2009 (see Thanksgiving above).

Krovoza brings an interesting skill set to the council discussion. He went to a premier techie high school in Southern California, and he loves to play engineer. In college, he devoted a lot of energy to maintaining a council of colleges in the greater Los Angeles area. At King Law School, he excelled in environmental law. These experiences have shaped Krovoza’s strengths: he runs a good meeting, and there is little potential for the kind of sibling fights that dominated the past decade of council discussion; he is working hard at attending Sacramento regional meetings and being the “new Davis image” in regional politics; he is an advocate for bikes to a fault, and, he has a laser focus on what he considers to be sustainability issues.

Unfortunately, the strengths define too much the weaknesses as well:
- because of his day job and regional meetings, he is invisible in the community, in ways that Don Saylor remains conspicuous because Saylor has nothing else to do;
- he is spending too much time grilling city staff on the phone in these one way conversations where Krovoza expects immediate performance improvement, as he happens to be defining it in the moment. Entirely too much of the Mayor’s attention is focused in minutia in the mechanics of what is probably someplace in the public works department. The Mayor loves to be an engineer. It is hard to imagine him listening. “This is MAYOR KROVOZA..” the phone conversation begins with a growl tone and quickly gets deeper as he is pushing his personal power. (appropriate staff response should be: “Thank you for giving me your valuable time. It would be best if you would type that up as an email to your city council colleagues, and make it a council agenda item. Now, I need to get back to work. Thank you for your call. Good-bye.”

Krovoza is going to have a tough time as mayor. He is going to want to be advocating when he should be listening and focusing on serving all the other people who are waiting to talk. He thinks that power is enhanced by bossing people around, instead of by superior listening - for insights, alternatives, analysis and even a whole new way of looking at the problem at hand.

There should be another person besides the city council members, to facilitate the meetings - council, commission, whatever. Not Elvia, but people trained by the city's mediation program, for the council a pool of maybe a half dozen who would become a trained subculture like the referees in the National Football League. The mayor should be running the policy discussion, not worrying about personality issues.

During Krovoza’s campaign, he was focused on himself, and was competitive to a fault in his relations with his opponents. Krovoza started with a cache of good will built up over the years when he decided to run, and he leveraged that to a successful campaign; but he didn't build a campaign, he used his good will and coasted. He didn't learn how to build support during his campaign, he learned how to leverage endorsements into more endorsements. He peaked on June 8th, and expects people to automatically support him from now on.

Krovoza's first imperial shot was the mandatory back-in diagonal parking, which blew up badly enough that it will be interesting to see how well he is able to massage the message when he brings it back up for council analysis after the trial test period. Did anyone else think it was worth doing? Staff acted like sheep, automatically doing as directed, but that was the end of his honeymoon.

Whether or not Krovoza knows how to build community remains to be seen. With only six months experience, Krovoza has the mayorship for the next three and a half years, if he survives. Krovoza is not nearly as cool under stress as he claims. He blows up pretty easily, soon after he realizes he is not getting his way. He is going to find he is a captive audience. People will use public comments to personally provoke him (or other city representatives) in ways that are going to infuriate him. Krovoza is going to be steaming so red that his ears look like they are going to burst. What does Krovoza do then?

Sue Greenwald has many personal demons that Don Saylor provoked too often, but we have ten years experience with Greenwald. With Saylor gone, the Davis City Council won't have that melodrama to worry about any more. Krovoza's demons are of a different nature. His aspirations for power are calculated, so it will be interesting to see what deals (remember, partnerships) Krovoza comes up with.

Krovoza suffers from not having had a full two years as only a council member, to be able to push and shove for little projects, to learn his way around the inside. Now he is supposed to be right about the big things. How he does in the spring budget process will be a learning experience for everybody. Krovoza is only in charge. He needs to bring out the best in other people, especially Interim City Manager Paul Navazio. The Mayor hasn’t figured out that he is so attached to Navazio that every time he interrupts, on the phone or in meetings, the Mayor is hurting his own and the city’s effectiveness.

Better Davis

What follows is an email I received in December, 2011. It was written by former City Council candidate Jon Li. It is an attack on Steve Pinkerton and Joe Krovoza. It was titled "Better Davis."

Test of Time 8.15: Better Davis: City Leadership?

Krovoza's Lapdog,
Steve Pinkerton flunks his probationary period
Too many stories - doesn't care to hear anybody including Department Heads
There are 4 city council votes to support Paul Navazio for City Manager

History Repeats:
In 1989, the Davis Test of Time was invented to build a case to replace the Davis Mayor, the Davis City Manager, and the UCD Chancellor; it took 3 years.

"The council just doesn't seem to understand that its win-at-all-costs strategy is ultimately a losing hand. The people have a right to make bad decisions. You simply can't say this thing is too important to trust to the voters. City Attorney Harriet Steiner's "opinion" was outcome based from the get go. Reach your conclusion first and then go backward to justify it. That's advocacy, pure and simple, but not good law. We need the Test of Time." -- Bob Dunning

KROVOZA'S LAST STAND
In his 17 months on the city council, Mayor Krovoza has been bogged down with repeated setbacks in the water rate approval process that should have been his road to glory. Within Davis governance, his one and only attempt to actually push through an idea was his September 2010 announcement to staff to have mandated reverse diagonal parking, which blew up in his face. Since then, he has tried to force little things behind the scenes, with disappointing consequences.

Krovoza's council campaign was strategically unspecific because he could get away with it given the way he interpreted his frontrunner status: don't take any positions that might offend a potential voter. So he kept his plans to himself. While he came in first he did not carry a mandate for anything in particular beyond bicycles. And yet, he has acted as though his coming in first gives him the powerful authority to be a Strong Mayor: personally ordering city employees around and changing city policy by arbitrary decisions rather than a majority vote of the city council after publicly noticed informed discussion.

Sidebar: The legal system that Davis has is a "Weak Mayor/Strong City Manager," where the Mayor needs two more votes just like any other council member, and so has to actually cooperate with the rest of the council. The binding state law is that a majority of the council picks the Mayor. In a Strong Mayor system, the Mayor has hiring, supervision and firing authority; with the Weak Mayor, the City Manager "serves at the pleasure of a majority of the council" and has supervision and hiring authority for all other city employees. Another feature of the Weak Mayor form is that council members including the Mayor are legally limited to only communicating with one city employee: the City Manager. All communication, legally, between council members and staff is limited exclusively to the City Manager. By design.

Krovoza acts like he has the powers that Sacramento's elected Mayor Kevin Johnson is trying to gain statutorily.

Krovoza feels that as Mayor his word should be boss to all city staff, and the city manager should honor the Mayor's wishes. Krovoza has rarely actually gone through the city council process of taking his ideas to the rest of the council via email/memo for a potential majority decision. Most of Krovoza's hands-on policy style is to call up the City Manager or some other city employee - spur of the moment - and tell them to change something. Usually not opening with a question but with an order, of a decision Krovoza has already unilaterally made and expects to be implemented immediately.

But Interim City Manager Paul Navazio was unwilling to automatically accommodate Krovoza's dictates. Whenever conflict and confusion arose, Krovoza blamed Navazio. The problem really was that Krovoza wanted to name his own city manager no matter what, so he was going to find fault with whomever the Asmundson/Saylor administrations had as Interim City Manager (Kelly Stachowicz would have been a profound alternative), so it appears that Krovoza was creating a hostile environment for the Interim City Manager so that it would be that much easier to get someone he could dominate.

No one knows what will happen with the public works department, but Krovoza wants to turn it into his personal playground. Krovoza went to a technology high school and is a closet engineer.

Former Bike Pedestrian Coordinator Tara Goddard was usually at the listening end of a screaming Krovoza demanding that she ignore the facts, ignore previous decisions and ignore her best professional judgment, because Krovoza has seen a better way. Tara Goddard was probably Krovoza's number one target for removal from city staff. There is said to be a list of ten names, nine to go.

KROVOZA'S PERSONAL CITY MANAGER
Mayor Krovoza found a soul mate in his personal city manager, Steve Pinkerton. They both love to talk. And couldn't care less to listen. They are so busy showing off how much they already know that it doesn't occur to them that 1) there might be part of the picture they haven't seen/figured out yet, or even 2) they don't have a clue what they are talking about, but that never stops them from making decisions and ordering city staff around. Both Krovoza and Pinkerton expect "collaboration" to consist of saying "Yes Sir."

It is a wonder what they do when they are together without anyone else? Both talk all the time? No, they enjoy each other too much, and listen respectfully to each other's fascinating brilliance. After all, they are in charge. They have all the time they want, and they are only accountable to each other.

Both Krovoza and Pinkerton are story tellers. The problem is that Pinkerton is so busy telling stories about previous exploits in Long Beach (have you heard about his wife's restaurant?), Stockton and Manteca, that he didn't get your name or anything about you, but now you have spent time with the new city manager, real quality time, even though you didn't get to say much of anything. Pinkerton already knows the answers anyway.

Pinkerton's claim to fame is what he has done in economic development. His experience aside, three months into the job, Pinkerton still doesn't actually know anything about the Davis economy. Every single meeting he has had with members of the Davis business community has been Pinkerton's one-way stories about his distant past, as though he was going through a job interview that he is not prepared for. The representatives of the Davis Downtown Business Association and the Davis Chamber of Commerce throw up their hands in frustration when they tell hideous war stories that Pinkerton did not have any time to understand their concerns because he was so in rapture telling them about Long Beach, Stockton and Manteca. Did you know that Pinkerton's wife opened a restaurant once?

Krovoza expects Pinkerton to complement his skills set and cover for him. Pinkerton really only knows about Davis what Krovoza has told him. Which in terms of the business community, is 3rd or 4th hand at best because Krovoza has not even made time to attend the city's business discussions. The Davis economy is Krovoza's weakest policy area, and he takes it for granted. Mayor Pro Tem Rochelle Swanson and the business community worked really hard to put together an initial meeting, to find out who the players are at the Davis table. Called "Who's On First?", 54 people showed up with something to say about their contribution to Davis economic vitality. An hour later, when everyone was done introducing themselves, Krovoza shows up, makes a speech cold without hearing what anyone else's concerns are, and then Pinkerton checks out, missing the discussion half of the event.


Wouldn't you think that if Pinkerton really cares about economic development, he would want to hear what the key people are thinking about? If it is his #1 concern, don't you think it would be the kind of event where Pinkerton would have his sleeves rolled up, and looking and acting like he is interested in engaging the Davis business community in a serious discussion about building the local economy. There has been Zero evidence that he has a clue how to do economic development for Davis.

Since Krovoza hadn't been in on the introductory foundation of the "Who's On First?" conversation, he had no idea what it was about, or why it went the way it did. The theater company wants restaurants to stay open after their shows close at 10 pm. That drove a discussion of communication between different businesses. Krovoza understood less than everyone who sat through the entire meeting. That is the only one of a half dozen city meetings on economic vitality that Krovoza attended. Krovoza is checked out on business: what he says is hot air.

Then a meeting with the new UCD Vice Chancellor for Research Harris Lewin to talk about how to collaborate between new campus innovation and the Davis business community drew 25 people, but neither Pinkerton nor Krovoza considered it important enough to attend. Lewin is the real deal, a world class cancer scientist who has had increasing administrative responsibilities and to a bunch of business people sounded like a venture capitalist. Long ago, he earned his Ph.D. at UCD, and he started by saying his major professor at UCD started a business, so he has always thought of entrepreneurial innovation as an integral part of the university mission. Lewin said more in any 5 minutes about Davis economic development than Pinkerton has said in his three months "on the job."

Of the dozen key meetings of concern to the business community during his three months, Mr. Economic Development specialist Pinkerton has attended the half of two meetings where he was the focus, and then left when other people started talking..

When either Pinkerton or Krovoza actually do meet with a business person, they are so busy talking that they don't listen. Pinkerton and Krovoza don't listen to the point that it is next to impossible to get any new versions of the situation (like maybe reality) into their thinking when they discuss particular policy conclusions that they intend to impose. And since they only know what each other has already confirmed, it is extremely difficult to get either Krovoza or Pinkerton to realize that they are operating from invalid assumptions. The problem is that they don't care to find out that they need to update their views; when asked to, they refuse to listen. That is usually referred to as "the arrogance of power."

Since Pinkerton mostly knows what Krovoza tells him, or from the standpoint of the way that Krovoza tells the story, Pinkerton only has a piecemeal view of the city, inappropriately deferring to Krovoza's views. Since Pinkerton is only accountable to Krovoza, he doesn't have to worry about the "whole city" and actually take over the reins of the government - actually take responsibility for the cumulative consequences of decisions and actions, as well as actually jump in and take charge, like he is a strong city manager and knows what he is doing. Krovoza's ego is so demanding that he has found someone who is willing to be a Weak City Manager. For Krovoza it is the way to misuse a Weak Mayor/Strong City Manager structure to fit his ego: Krovoza found somebody who is willing to be bossed around.

It looks like Pinkerton is an economic development grant hack, who really doesn't have a clue how to run a city, let alone take an economic mess in trying times, and figure out how to benefit from the University, which Pinkerton has so far been silent about.

Pinkerton hasn't engaged anyone in the business community: to actually ask questions, partly because Krovoza is confused about what he wants to do beyond "sustainability" and Pinkerton is taking his cues from Krovoza rather than the entire council. Pinkerton doesn't actually know what it takes to be a city manager. Pinkerton is a bureaucrat who specialized in getting grants for economic development when that was a useful skill. That gravy train has dried up. Economic development now means sitting down with real people with ideas who are trying to overcome tremendous challenges in this tight economy. Not for one minute has Pinkerton engaged the business community in that discussion: Pinkerton is too busy bragging that he did it before, in Long Beach, Stockton and Manteca. Pinkerton must have learned a lot about how to run a business when his wife opened that restaurant. Can't imagine what he' has learned in his time in Davis?

What about the cost of lost opportunities? How much does Sue Greenwald cost the city each meeting? Neither Krovoza nor Pinkerton has a clue what to do to have Sue Greenwald as a productive member of the discussion. The overall lack of focus and direction of the council can be blamed on Sue Greenwald's hysterics but it still seems that Krovoza only wants to be in power so he can do whatever he wants, with no particular course of action or medium term quantified objectives.


Roger Storey learned more about the Davis economy in his first 3 hours on the job of City Manager than Pinkerton has learned in his entire 3 months collecting a paycheck.


NOW KROVOZA IS REALLY IN CHARGE
All the problems Krovoza had with Paul Navazio have now disappeared. Pinkerton doesn't say "you can't do that". Pinkerton doesn't give five reasons why it won't work, why it is so unrealistic that it never should even be discussed. Because Pinkerton doesn't care, he doesn't know what he is talking about, and he doesn't want to have to find out and then have to be responsible enough to get back to Krovoza to tell Krovoza he is wrong.

And, that Krovoza is mini-micro managing so much that he refuses to even hear what are the real issues of concern. Krovoza could tell you the hundred things Davis should do, but he can't tell you the three things he is accomplishing and why they take priority. Where Don Saylor was EGO, History, Nice Talk, no substance (imitation warm fuzzies), Krovoza is EGO, Nice Talk, Big Smile, no history, no substance, no resolution (confused imitation warm fuzzies). Krovoza learned a lot from Saylor during his six month apprenticeship as Mayor Pro Tem about how to be a bully and boss city staff around. What Krovoza did not learn was how to work a project through the city process, so he assumes that whatever he wants to do is the right way to do it. No City Hall has ever worked that way. The History of New York City, for example, could well be described as how the Mayor battles City Hall at every turn and sometimes on the straightaway. That is why any community needs a mayor, to help work through the decisions; Krovoza on the other hand just thinks his point is the final decision.

At each successive city council meeting, Krovoza has spent the least amount of time reading the agenda packet and speaking with the respective communities of interest; Krovoza is least likely to be listening during presentation because his mindset is to already have a final decision and then drive towards it - too often ignoring information counter to Krovoza's predetermination.

Someone in a position to work with all of Davis' council members over the past 25 years says that some people are ignorant because they are un-informed, but some people are ignorant because they refuse to listen, and Krovoza is the most ignorant council person in their experience. Most un-educatable. Stuck in his egotistical rigidity.

Part of the problem is that Krovoza is attempting to implement a Strong Mayor form of governance within a Weak Mayor/Strong City Manager form of government. It only increases confusion. Dave Rosenberg is the closest Davis has ever come to having a Strong Mayor who was successful, all be it with a three vote majority the first time. Rosenberg drove Jerry Adler crazy with personal initiatives that he publicly announced and then brought to the city council for ratification. The most significant was the still-born and occasionally reborn "Association of Mayors of University of California Cities." But Rosenberg only got away with it because he knew he already had majority endorsement for the idea, he just hadn't gone through the formal part, which included informing Adler and requesting his support, but expecting irrelevant opposition, so why worry about it. There was too much of that towards Adler by the Rosenberg/Evans/Corbett Gang of Three whose cavalier design of the 1987 Davis General Plan precipitated the Davis Test of Time.

The art, the MAGIC, of the Weak Mayor form of council is based on the courtship of "counting to three." It is something that happens behind Krovoza's back. He is rarely involved except in lobbying other council members for his position. Krovoza is rarely the Mayor in the sense of being in the middle - his personal position always takes priority to the point of clouding his understanding of the rest of the council.


HAVE YOU DRILLED your PERSONAL WATER WELL?
The water rate issue is the biggest example of where Krovoza has lost the council but thinks he is in complete control. Krovoza was ambushed by Dan Wolk's alternative resolution, and Krovoza still refuses to respect the critics of the way the rate decision is happening.

What should be the crown jewel of a successful Krovoza administration, the grand water plan has become a clumsy disaster in terms of the process. Given Krovoza's history as a water lawyer, and his campaign claim to be an expert at public finance and big projects, this process should have given Krovoza the golden opportunity to shine as a leader who can carry a project to successful implementation.

At several significant steps, the petition gatherers and Dan Wolk have ambushed Krovoza. 1:30 a.m. in the marathon September 6th city council meeting Wolk brought up an exhaustive list of ways to improve the project process that completely surprised Krovoza. Not surprising, the list included a variety of ideas which had the finger prints of Wolk's parents, the former dean of the UCD law school and the state senator who is past chair of the assembly committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife and past Mayor of Davis. Krovoza made a deal in the heat of the moment, taking all the list in exchange for a 5-6 year rate increase package which was the only thing he cared about. That is part of the problem: Krovoza is impatient to get to the finish line to have something big.

On a fundamental level, what Dan Wolk, and Rochelle, get, and Krovoza doesn't have a clue about is that the water rate political controversy has gone way beyond the 218 requirements. Davis body politic, especially Enterprise columnist Bob Dunning, left that one behind long ago. No, this is about the fundamental credibility of the elected officials. At this point, the critics are specifically questioning the authority of Krovoza and Stephen Souza to make decisions on the water project Joint Powers Authority on behalf of the city of Davis. At question is their ability to be representatives.

After the more recent council meeting accepting the County Clerk's certification of the petition signatures, at midnight Pinkerton made public the city attorney's two week old "finding" that the city council could ignore the petition. Heretofore the city attorney's finding was "confidential" because of client attorney privilege because it was POLITICALLY sensitive: How many more people would have volunteered to carry petitions if they knew that the city attorney had already given the city manager the legal backing to ignore the petition? Following the email, Pinkerton and his staff presume that is the end of it: the city attorney said the council could ignore the petition and certify the rate increase; now the council can get on with the rest of the normal business of the city.

The way Pinkerton released the information about the city attorney's recommendation that the council actually ignore the petition for the vote on the water is such bad politics that Krovoza is in big political trouble. Unfortunately for Krovoza, the rookie city manager who should be in the best position to help him is the person making novice mistakes.

This is blatant arrogance of the new city manager. It is the electoral equivalent of the UCD police pepper spaying the motionless demonstrators three days later. It shows the complete disregard for the public process, the voters/taxpayers and the rule of law. When the petition leaders found out what the city manager did, they threatened to recall the 2010-14 council members, Krovoza and Swanson. [Rochelle lit up with delight at the prospect. Now that she knows what is going on more than anyone else, she has a story to tell.]

INSIDE CITY HALL
For the same reason that Pinkerton and Krovoza get along so well, Department Head meetings with the City Manager have become a worthless joke of listening to the boss tell more stories that mostly don't even have anything to do with the topic but are irrelevant anyway. If anyone else in the room ever did it twice, they would be reprimanded in the second meeting by the group and by the boss. But everybody has to indulge the boss.

With the second sentence of yet another worthless Pinkerton story, out come the cell phones to read email messages. Nobody has to pay any attention because the city manager is on automatic pilot. At least when Antonen was the city manager, the department heads had to work during their weekly meeting. Now it is productive only as personal time or side comments with other department heads that the city manager doesn't get and has no interest in. The meeting hours slowly creep by, as little or nothing of substance is even mentioned because the boss is too busy talking.

When Pinkerton walks into a room of Davis city employees, the room suddenly tenses as everyone is unsure what Pinkerton might possibly want. It is not likely to be good: Krovoza has a cut list. Getting rid of Bike Pedestrian Coordinator Tara Goddard was high on Krovoza's list. No telling who else is on it.

KROVOZA THE EMPTY SUIT
I supported Krovoza strongly from August to November 2009, lobbying key Davis people to support him for the June 2010 election. Then for three months, Krovoza taunted me to find a position in his imaginary campaign and he rejected each thing I proposed. Then Leo teased me to apply the Viable System Model to Krovoza's campaign, and I realized that I couldn't begin to, because Krovoza doesn't trust me at all. He is like that with a lot of people, too many people in Davis.

The good news is that since Ruth Asmundson left the council at the end of June, 2010, Rochelle Swanson has stepped into the breach as "de facto Mayor." Where Stephen Souza claims years of service (what the academics call "seat time" - the body is there but the mind is not engaged - has been used about Stephen in particular), Rochelle has been busy doing council service: actually listening to Sue Greenwald, and Stephen, as well as Krovoza, and of course Dan Wolk. Behind the scenes, it is Rochelle who has been doing her homework, listening to as many people as she can about a particular issue, working to be sure she understands all the sides, and learning what issues concern the sides, as well as what becomes the determining issues, for city staff and for her council colleagues. The behind the scenes work to settle the social friction - the art of the possible. What a society needs its Mayor to do.

Rochelle has out-thought and outworked Krovoza on every issue and every agenda item. Rochelle has out-thought staff so often they go to meetings with her for the fun of finding out what an engaged council member can add to public policy.

Krovoza is so busy in his day job at the university that he rarely has time for council business. He only shows up if he is scheduled, and then he is always rushed and usually late. Krovoza doesn't have time to have casual conversations with constituents, the glue of social intercourse, so he doesn't find out new information, and goes on what he thought before, even if others are changing, or worse, have already changed, leaving Krovoza behind. Wait. Isn't Krovoza supposed to be the "leader"?

Krovoza does power meetings on behalf of Davis, but he doesn't have time for Davis. He is respected at UCD, but there is not a single city employee who Krovoza has shown respect to besides his boy Pinkerton. He learned how to show dis-respect from Don Saylor, his mentor, and as Krovoza sees the POWER of having the office of Mayor for three and a half years, it means that he can do any-bully-thing he wants for a long time without any personal consequences except sullen city employees who don't jump at Krovoza's every whim.

Krovoza doesn't care about Davis; Krovoza only cares about Krovoza. Krovoza has a listening disability, the worst handicap a politician can have. First off, Krovoza talks non-stop (which is now called "Sue Greenwalding" someone), and just expects the listener to agree with the brilliance. When someone tries to disagree with him, Krovoza argues rather than listening to learn. Then Krovoza's brain just goes in another direction, and his subconscious actually gives the other person a courtesy: Krovoza starts saying "yeah, yeah, good, good; yeah, yeah, good, good," which is the sign to shut up and submit to Krovoza's superior ideas because you are just wasting your breath: no one is listening or cares about a word you are saying. And, Krovoza's brilliant thought is going to be so good that you are really, really going to appreciate the fact that Krovoza cut you off. Nice smile just before he cut you off.

Krovoza has turned unlistening almost into an art form; when he is being presented with information at a meeting, there is no telling where his brain is. Krovoza has had over a year, and he is a complete failure as "an elected official" because he cannot represent beyond his own personal opinion, just like Sue Greenwald. Hard to say who is worse for the city of Davis, Sue Greenwald or Joe Krovoza.

Krovoza is so arrogant that there are only about a dozen, maybe twenty Davis citizens that he listens to: the members of the school board, people he has appointed to the planning and natural resources commissions, four people in the bicycle community. Sue Greenwald has maybe a dozen people, although Mark Siegler is the only person who can tell her that she is wrong, so shut up and listen, and she actually does. Stephen Souza is so squirrelly that he will tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear. Dan Wolk is still the deer with his eyes in the headlights, will listen to everybody, as he is trying to figure out what he is really doing now that he is actually on the council and he has the opportunity and responsibility to face the voters next June. By comparison to the maybe three dozen people who actually influence those four individual council members, there are HUNDREDS of people who will say that Rochelle Swanson has asked their opinion, listened and then took their concerns into account in her thinking about the problem in particular and Davis in general so that when she is thinking about other problems in the future, Rochelle will keep those concerns in mind.

NEED A REAL CITY MANAGER
The chronic crisis in leadership that the City of Davis has is that we have been without a functioning city manager since John Meyer was so humiliated by Sue Greenwald in 2000 that he became the best administrator in the history of UCD. Sue Greenwald has ruined the lives of as many people as she can, especially city employees. The past decade has been painful, as the city manager's seat has been occupied by people with little investment in the future of the city or their decisions' consequences.

Jeannie Hippler struggled to keep the city on autopilot for two years, until I asked the Davis Enterprise reporter if Hippler was ever going to initiate the selection process for a new city manager, and Hippler used that weekly Enterprise interview to begin the recruitment process and be relieved of her duty.

Jim Antonen was a worthless Midwest escapee who was the fifth of five finalists - the first four were offered the job, found out about Sue Greenwald and turned it down. Antonen's only interest was building a 5-year CalPERS retirement fund at Top Dog wage, and he just tried to stay awake during City Council and Department Head meetings. The favorable perspective of Antonen was as the Grandfather of the city family, but Davis needs a Parent, not a Grandparent. Not just a nice person, or somebody that has great analytical skills, but someone who can seriously engage in having the city forces be discussed and worked through in public. When she was Mayor, Ruth Asmundson was so frustrated with Antonen that she went to John Meyer for advice on how to make Antonen actually do something.

I was having lunch with Bill Emlen the day that Antonen didn't keep his date for lunch that was how he symbolically resigned from the city manager's job, and the next day I had lunch with Mayor Ruth Asmundson at the restaurant next to the Davis Enterprise, and a woman walked in and the Mayor ducked her head, then glanced and asked if that is the Enterprise Editor? I said No, and the Mayor was relieved and confidentially said that she couldn't say anything but there was going to be an important headline story in today's paper and I guessed it was Antonen's departure.

As Community Development Director, Bill Emlen had been the only person in the city to stand up to the Covell Village Partners juggernaut, so I supported him in the city manager job. Emlen made drastic necessary council-mandated cuts and reprogrammings which protected his old department: Community Development keeping the most, and Public Works taking most of the General Fund hits (because of course we have to minimize the cuts to police and fire). A big part of what Emlen did was protect the city government from the bullying stomping of Don Saylor when he was Mayor. Emlen had an exit strategy from the day he started working for the City of Davis.

Paul Navazio is the first person to actually be City Manager since John Meyer, to actually pay attention to the long term consequences and plan for future decisions. In the tradition of Howard Reece (1959-83), Roger Storey (1983-87) and John Meyer (1990-2000), Paul Navazio actually cares about what he is doing and who he is doing it with.

As Finance Director/Interim City Manager, Navazio has brought the city government together with a common purpose. Those are not simply words; that is an ongoing institutional crisis that every organization must contend with, and with a city government is focused on the city manager. Paul's children are teenagers, one of whom is handicapped enough that the family is always overcoming obstacles. That is what life is: achieving what the family wants within the physical, financial, legal, social and environmental constraints of reality. Let's go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, then Yankee Stadium, and then Fenway Park in Boston. Great, OK. Now what do we have to do to make that a success?

During the past year, Navazio has rebuilt camaraderie, esprit de corps, a sense of trust and good will that was impossible for a decade. The greatest irony about Krovoza's antics since he has become Mayor is that every time he has screamed at a city employee, every time he refused to listen, it has increased that employee's respect for Navazio.

KROVOZA & PINKERTON: CLUELESS, DEAF & IN COMMAND, BUT NOT IN CONTROL
Krovoza should resign and focus on his day job.


Kerry Loux is the perfect person to complete Krovoza's council term. Loux would have seconded many Krovoza's motions, almost as quickly as he would endorse and support Loux's more thoughtful comprehensive proposals moving policy in a sustainable direction, without any of Krovoza's ego or political ambition.

Krovoza's gigantic ego will overcome this minor setback, and he will chart a different path to greater glory.
Pinkerton isn't even as trustworthy as Katehi. Pretty close to zero.

It will be interesting to hear what Jon Li might be able to put into 3 minutes of legal public comment without swear words at Tuesday's city council meeting. Krovoza will survive that 3 minutes, but the odds are no better than 50% that he will make it to the end of the water discussion. He will get so exasperated that he resigns from the city council in complete aggravation.

Rochelle is the Mayor in fact.
Krovoza is at best a distraction.
Kerry Loux should be appointed by city council to complete Krovoza's term
Pick Stephen Souza to be Mayor Pro Tem so he doesn't run for another term
Souza is conflicted and the Davis representatives to the Woodland-Davis Water JPA should be Rochelle Swanson and Dan Wolk
Navazio should be named city manager,
Bob Clarke Public Works Director and
Navazio should be authorized to hire a Finance Director.
It is time for the adults to take responsibility for the City of Davis.


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Jon Li
jli@cal.net
Institute for Public Science & Art
http://daviswiki.org/Users/JonLi