Well, it turns out that this proposition actually will take thousands of dollars away from programs that serve both children and families in our county, and does very little to balance the state budget. This proposition does anything but “protect” services for children.

On the other hand, we also know that the proposed solution to the state budget deficit depends on the passage of Propositions 1A thru 1E. If these don’t pass, then even more reductions will need to be imposed to balance the budget.

As background, the state budget deal forged by the governor and the Legislature was designed to bridge a deficit estimated to exceed $42 billion. The vast majority of this amount was addressed by the enormous budget cuts that have already been approved by the legislature and the governor and by the $5.8 Billion in revenue that will be generated by Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D and 1E.

The budget agreement of cuts and additional taxes and revenue transfers was considered the least terrible of truly awful options. The budget agreement tried to protect public education as best it could, but as we stand now the state budget agreement hinges on the approval of the propositions on the May 19th ballot, in particular Propositions 1A, B and C.

If they do not pass it is likely that more draconian cuts will be needed and there is no way to escape the fact that education as the largest single state expenditure category in the state will suffer additional devastating cuts.

So I am voting Yes on propositions 1A, 1B and 1C.

But what about Proposition 1D and Proposition 1E?

In Lake County Proposition 1D would cut 36 percent or about $225,000 each year for five years, from the current revenue that our county receives from the cigarette tax approved by voters in 1998 and reaffirmed in 2000. And an additional $125,000 of earmarked state funds will be lost in the first year.

I am a member of our county’s First Five Commission that decides how this money is spent to serve children from birth to age five and their families. For 10 years, our commission has made decisions to spend this money on services that are proven to prevent higher costs to our communities when these children are older.

These services have included: a comprehensive oral health project that over the last five years has reduced substantially the amount of dental decay and disease in our young children; a parenting educational program called “Nurturing Parenting” that has shown families new ways to communicate without using physical punishment making for happier families; an early intervention project that identifies children with developmental delays and prepares corrective plans so that these children are entering school ready to learn.; a program that trains “stay at home” parents how to be an effective first teacher of their toddlers; and programs that train family run child care providers how to provide a quality learning environment and experience for the children in their care.

Why would I vote to eliminate these services that are showing impressive results now for the same children and families that we will serve later in our public schools? “An once of prevention is worth a pound of cure” comes to mind.

The amount taken by Proposition 1D for the state deficit is $608 Million for the 2009/2010 year and approximately $268 million annually for the next four years. These are big numbers, but the total is less than 2% of new revenue needed to balance the budget.

The revenue from Proposition 1D is just not worth the elimination of the early childhood education programs and health and family services that are working now for our county’s children. The passage of Proposition 1D will have a damaging effect on children and families in our county, and will cause the need for such increased expenditures in the future that the relatively small amount of revenue is unjustified.

Similarly, passage of Proposition 1E would potentially reduce funding for mental health services in our county. Statewide it transfers voter approved funding of $234 million in 2009/2010 and $226 million in 20010/2011 for mental health services. Reducing these services could impact our most vulnerable citizens. Our County Mental Health Department is already struggling with budget challenges as evidenced by the most recent reduction of 18 positions.

So I’m voting YES on Prop 1A, 1B and 1C, and NO on Prop 1D and Prop 1E.

Dave Geck is the Lake County superintendent of schools.

Congressman Mike Thompson. Courtesy photo.

When Earth Day was founded 39 years ago, it was generally assumed that environmental ideals and the tax code were completely unrelated from each other. But as we’ve learned over the last few years, using tax incentives can be a powerful tool to help green our economy and protect our natural resources.

For example, after Congress passed provisions to provide tax breaks for solar panels in 2005, there has been a 370-percent increase in solar panel installation in our country. Using the tax code to help generate environmental change can work.

For all of the success that the conservation movement has had over the years, there’s still a lot more to be done.

In California, I’m especially concerned about the loss of open space and farm land. If current development trends continue in California, another two million acres will be paved over by 2050.

To put that in perspective – in the next 40 years we’ll lose an area larger than the state of Delaware to development.

That’s not just an empty statistic – every acre that is paved over is a significant loss of our heritage and our environmental bounty. But it’s a tragedy that we can act now to prevent. That’s why I’ve introduced legislation that provides strong financial incentives for property owners to keep their land free of urban development.

When landowners donate a conservation easement, they maintain ownership and management of the land and can pass the land on to their heirs, while forgoing their rights to develop the land in the future. These easements also ease the tax burdens that might otherwise force people to sell family farms that have been passed down for generations.

Since Congress passed my provisions to enhance these tax benefits on a temporary basis in 2006, we’ve seen a 50-percent increase in conservation easements. With these enhanced tax provisions, 535,000 more acres were put into trusts in the last two years.

It’s time we made these protections permanent. By making sure that landowners can count on this program, we’ll take a big step forward in preserving our agricultural lands and open spaces, and ensuring that our children and grandchildren can enjoy the same trees and open vistas that we enjoy now.

Congressman Mike Thompson represents the First District – which includes Lake County – in the US House of Representatives.

Nevertheless, we find that the president has occasionally made claims that put him and his policies in a better light than the facts warrant. He has claimed that private economists agreed with the forecast in his budget, when they were really more pessimistic. He's used Bush-like budget-speak trying to sound frugal while raising spending to previously unimagined levels. And he has exaggerated the problems his proposals aim to cure by misstating facts about school drop-out rates and oil imports.

At the same time, there's been no shortage of dubious claims made about the president by his political opponents. Republicans have falsely claimed that Obama planned to spend billions on a levitating train and that his stimulus bill would require doctors to follow government orders on what medical treatments can and can't be prescribed, among other nonsense.

And those whoppers are mild compared with some of the positively deranged claims flying about the Internet. No, the national service bill Obama signed won't prevent anybody from going to church, for example. And no, he's not trying to send Social Security checks to illegal immigrants.

Economic cheerleading

Facing some heat from critics who complained that the administration’s budget figures are too rosy, Obama offered a misleading defense to a national TV audience during his March 24 prime-time news conference. He said: “Our assumptions are perfectly consistent with what Blue Chip forecasters out there are saying.” That wasn’t true.

Obama was referring to the Blue Chip Economic Indicators, a survey of forecasts from 50 private economists. In fact, at the time he spoke, the most recent Blue Chip forecast was far more pessimistic than the administration’s budget projections. That’s no small matter, since a weaker economic performance will produce even larger federal deficits than the Obama budget already forecasts.

Obama also got it wrong when he claimed in that same speech that “we are reducing nondefense discretionary spending to its lowest level since the '60s.” His own forecast puts this figure higher than in many years under Reagan, Clinton or either Bush.

Furthermore, he used the same verbal sleight-of-hand that President George W. Bush had used to deflect attention from the larger truth – that total federal spending is (and was) soaring far beyond the government’s means to pay for it. “Nondefense discretionary spending” is just a small slice (under 20 percent) of total spending. It excludes military spending, homeland security spending and rapidly rising Social Security and Medicare spending, among other things. So even if Obama’s claim had been true, it would have been misleading – pure spin.

Presidential puffery

We've noted a tendency for Obama to puff up the problems he's facing, as well as the solutions he's proposing. For example:

• He told a joint session of Congress Feb. 24 that "we import more oil today than ever before." That's untrue. Imports peaked in 2005 and are lower today.

• He claimed in the same speech that his mortgage aid plan would help "responsible" buyers but not those who borrowed beyond their means. But even prominent defenders of the program in his administration concede that foolish borrowers will be aided, too.

• He claimed in a March 10 address on education that the high school dropout rate has "tripled in the past 30 years.” But according to the Department of Education, it has actually declined by a third.

We’ve also found Obama being more certain than is warranted. He is fond of repeating, for example, that his stimulus bill will “create or save” 3.5 million jobs. Maybe so; some leading economists figure that’s possible, though it's far from a certainty. The immediate reality, however, is that the economy has been losing an average of 22,000 jobs per day since Obama took office.

Stimulus bill bravado

Another example occurred April 16 during his visit to Mexico. Obama wanted his hosts to crack down on the violent drug trade and was promising that the U.S. would do its bit, too. But he went too far when he said, “More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States.” It's true that U.S. officials say that more than 90 percent of the guns Mexican officials ask them to trace are found to have come through the U.S. But Mexican officials don't ask the U.S. to trace all the guns they recover, so there's no way to know exactly how many come through the U.S.

Republican spin

Of course, we’ve noted plenty of false claims made by Obama’s critics, too.

• Republican Rep. Tom Price of Georgia claimed Obama’s stimulus bill created "a national health care rationing board," when in fact it did nothing of the sort.

• A number of House and Senate Republicans claimed that Obama’s stimulus bill contained $8 billion for a “levitating train.” In fact, not a dime of the money was earmarked for the proposed 300-mph “maglev” bullet train between Anaheim, Calif., and Las Vegas; the $8 billion is now being directed to 10 other passenger routes using more conventional technology.

Internet dementia

The wildest claims about Obama continue to come from anonymous chain e-mails that spread like viruses. Some notable examples:

• There's no evidence that Obama dithered and delayed the rescue by Navy SEALs of Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates, as claimed in a quick-spreading e-mail full of military jargon. The retired rear admiral who (in some versions) supposedly wrote it told us he's not the author, and that he never even met a Navy SEAL. The message's central claims are false, according to both White House and Pentagon officials.

• Nobody will be prevented from going to church by the national service bill Obama signed on April 21, and students won't be forced into slave-like forced labor either. The bill actually had broad support from Republican lawmakers, many of whom enthusiastically joined Democrats to pass it. It greatly expands such existing programs as VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America).

• And there's no point in sending Obama a petition asking him to veto a bill to pay Social Security benefits to illegal immigrants, as urged in yet another viral message. Obama has never supported such a move, and there's no such bill anyway.

None of this surprises us. Spin, fact-twisting and deceptive claims have been standard fare in Washington for a long time, and we doubt that will change. It's just part of the messy process we know as democracy, and it's our job to help citizens sort through all that.

Brooks Jackson is with the Annenberg Political Fact Check, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It is a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.

What is GE/GMO? GE/GMO is “cloning” of our food utilizing bacteria, viruses, biopolymers, (plastics), DNA genes from other plants, seeds etc. The gene for Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is used in insecticidal crops and Bt toxin kills beneficial organisms such as bees, ladybugs, lacewings and butterflies through pollen. Bt toxins are also secreted into soil from Bt plant roots and are toxic to earthworms, lepidoptera, and other members of soil fauna (Stotzky, et al. Nature 402, 480 1999).

Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a plant pathogen (literally ‘cancer causing’) used to inject genes into plants and viral gene as promoter to make the genes express themselves once in the plant. This is the field of molecular biology.

GE/GMO is still a relatively new technology and not well understood. What is known is only the tip of an iceberg. Dr. Craig Venter, a leader in the Human Genome Research Project, states: “We know nothing about biology.” I fully agree with Dr. Venter’s statement. We humans, our entire planet’s creatures, plants, vegetation, forests, and everything else in our ecosystem will become an endangered species.

There is no indication that this technology will solve world hunger. Instead it is known that genes will contaminate our healthy food – if we could call it healthy food any more – with all contaminants in the atmosphere, water and soil.

In Scotland pollen was carried 10 miles from the mainland and contaminated crops on Ailsa Craig Isle. In other parts of Europe years after they stopped planting GE/GMO crops, their non-GMO crops got contaminated. Once genetic pollution gets into the environment it cannot be called back. This could present a very serious problem for our organic and conventionally grown food and possibly threaten our existence.

In May 2000, Canada shipped unapproved GMO seeds (supposedly by accident) to the United Kingdom and other countries of Europe where many acres of the crop had to be destroyed.

In the USA in 2000, massive contamination of the corn (maize) crop and the human food chain by Starlink, an unapproved variety for human consumption, showed that genetic pollution to non-transgenic crop and food is inevitable. In India, the GE/GMO rice contaminated entire region of wild rice. Wild rice is gone, possibly forever, in that region.

During the 1970s Republican and Democrats, working together, created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and passed 28 major laws to protect our air, water, endangered species, wetlands, food safety and public lands.

Powerful corporate polluters were finally held accountable but not for long.

In 2001, the White House instructed the EPA’s office to stop filing new cases against giant factory farms and others without approval from upper-echelon political appointees in the EPA. We have laws on the books, yet crimes go unpunished.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is supposed to protect the safety of our food, has betrayed the public and approved GE/GMO without any real scientific study. Furthermore they allowed GE/GMO foods to be secretly used in many foods without the public knowing. All ingredients, vitamins and minerals must be posted on the container. But not GE/GMO. It is inside our food. There are not enough independent studies done to establish if it is safe for human or animal’s consumption.

The Lake County Board of Supervisors first voted to ban cultivation of GE/GMO in Lake County, then turned around and formed an advisory committee to advise on what?

We scientists have a serious problem with GE/GMO safety. It is an intruder and a pest in our natural foods that humans have consumed ever since the beginning of time. Advisory committee members are good elements of humanity, but they do not have scientific knowledge of this subject.

I have a suggestion to our politicians. Heaven can wait. This is a complex issue; it is not for you politicians to decide the fate of humanity and our nature. The logic would be to place a 10-year ban on GE/GMO or let the public vote on a 10-year ban, and give a chance to the Union of Concerned Scientists to do their work. Their request was sent to our new administration to investigate FDA behavior. The GE/GMO is clear assault on our food, humanity and Nature.

Source information used: “ Crime Against Nature,” by Robert Kennedy Jr.; “Pros and Cons,” by David Heaf, April 2001, and the Union of Concern Scientists.

John Zebelean, Ph.D., lives in Lucerne.