JoAnn Saccato is current chair of the Lake County Community Co-op.

While I am not in agreement with the recent decision of the Clearlake Planning Commission to recommend the Clearlake City Council certify the environmental impact report for the Provinsalia project, I am quite encouraged by the process and have a renewed hope for our democracy. People are becoming active in designing and co-creating the community we all call home.

Once, individual property rights were considered the top priority. Today, we can no longer deny the connected nature of all things, and the good of the whole community becomes more important than the good of the few. While once the path and priorities of a community were set by a select few, usually those with property and money, people have awakened to making those decisions that affect them and their community directly.

Provinsalia affects many aspects of the community. Clearlake’s population is beginning to see that there are seemingly far more important considerations at hand than a potential substantial profit for the owners, developers and contractors. Sewer, land use, traffic impact, environmental degradation and school impact are just a few of the areas where local community members have voiced opposition. My guess is that if a substantial portion of the community were found to be against a project, the City Council would be bound by ethical commitments to honor their constituents.

Here are a few more points of consideration:

– Raising the median income of Clearlake is a worthy goal, but, to do so by importing a population of a much higher income bracket to achieve this is, well, deceptive, in the least, and disregarding the current population at best. If our city is committed to this goal, which I wholeheartedly support, then the focus should be on the existing residents of Clearlake.

– Has the developer pledged to use local labor for construction and support services? How many of the current or recently completed construction projects in Clearlake use/d local contractors and labor? If our city were really committed to raising the living standards and median income of our residents, they would make efforts to ensure that our local citizens are being employed whenever possible, thus increasing income and the dollars spent in local community.

– What will Clearlake need to become in order to cater to this new population that we are enticing to move within our city limits? It is already well understood, and admitted by city staff at the last meeting, that residential development in itself actually cost cities money. So, cities usually depend on increased commercial activity to offset costs and positively affect the city’s coffers.

While this may be true (though hard to believe possible in the economic crisis we find ourselves), if the city were committed to supporting the existing locally owned small businesses and encouraged the continued gentrification of downtown and Lakeshore Drive, then this could be seen as a commendable act. But, instead, the city of Clearlake is negotiating with big box stores that will actually decrease local income due to the local multiplier effect (LME).

This economic function tells us that $100 spent at a national retailer yields a return of about $15 to the local economy, though, when that same $100 is spent with a local retailer, it returns about $45 or three times as much income to the local economy. Also, the returns in the community from the national chain stores are usually in the form of lower-level service job wages, and none of this even takes into account the local support services (i.e. accountants, printers, etc.) that local businesses utilize that chain retailers usually do not.1 If we are trying to grow decent paying jobs for residents, big box chains in our community will not support this, and they drive out the independently owned merchants. How many businesses closed as a result of Wal-Mart’s entrance into the city? How many more will close if Wal-Mart is allowed to expand? This doesn’t seem to be an effective way to support our local community or grow our local economy.

– This model of development is not only not sustainable, it is actually contributory to the current economic and environmental crises we find ourselves today. It is outdated and outmoded by new and diverse models of development that seek to uplift and benefit all equally rather than just a small, affluent portion of it. The model of the sustainable future includes infilling already existing development and designing communities for walking, bicycling and small electric motorized vehicles rather than large distances traveled by big automobiles. It includes revitalization efforts that include education to create and support small, local businesses and production.

Again, the happiness I feel stems from the fact that the whole community is participating in the future of development for Clearlake. People are stepping up and voicing their concerns and opinions. There is hope that Clearlake will not fall wayside to the now-crumbling dominant economic model of development that has contributed to the demise of our social, economic and environmental fabric. This, to me, is reason to celebrate.

JoAnn Saccato, a native of Lake County, is a master's student at Sonoma State University and current chair of the Lake County Community Co-op.

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But earlier this month, legislative Republicans released a set of demands they said would have to be met before they’d even discuss raising revenue – hardly an appropriate way to negotiate a budget.

One of their demands, in particular, stood out to me: That California delay implementation of our ground-breaking global warming law, AB 32, which was signed into law by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2006.

Seeing as how only one Republican voted for AB 32 as it passed through the legislature, it’s no shock that they’re now trying to delay this first-in-the-nation law. What is sad, however, is how out of touch their thinking is.

California has led the country in pursuing new laws to address climate change and needs to lead the country in developing a 21st century economy. While my Republican colleagues insist that implementation of AB 32 will hurt the economy, several companies are busy proving them otherwise by looking and moving forward.

With the imminent passage of a federal climate change law, numerous large businesses are working to mitigate global climate change by reducing their own emissions and impacts, while at the same time growing their companies.

For example, the multi-national chemical giant Dupont has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions 72 percent below 1990 levels – not only better for the planet, it’s also helped the company save over $3 billion.

In 2005, General Electric, the third largest company in the world, revealed its new business strategy: “ecomagination.” The plan was, and is, to develop and sell clean technologies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce environmental impacts.

It’s not all about corporate social responsibility for the 128-year-old company, though.

When GE’s chief executive officer says “Green is green,” he’s also referring to the color of money. Profits from the “ecomagination” products have increased from $10 billion in 2005 to $18 billion in 2008.

Even Wal-Mart is on board, promoting compact fluorescent light bulbs, requiring suppliers to reduce packaging, and installing solar panels on the roofs of some its stores. Again, this may appear to be a marketing strategy, but in the end, it improves the bottom line while reducing emissions – good for the economy and good for the environment.

In the past month, we watched as the three major American car companies appeared before Congress requesting a bailout at the expense of the taxpayers. I do not wish to see the automakers fail, per se, in part because of the devastating impact that their collapse would have on countless working families as well as the overall economy.

Nor should we believe the rhetorical tirades of Congressional Republicans who have tried to pin much of the blame on the workers and their labor unions.

It’s important to recognize that the primary reason that the Big Three slid towards financial failure because they lacked the foresight to innovate and to lead the way toward development of new technologies that could have improved their products and improved their bottom line. As their competitors moved forward, they remained stagnant.

California has always led in environmental protection, and we are well positioned to lead the way for the new green economy.

We need to look forward, not back. And we must continue to embrace strong environmental laws that protect our health and safety while encouraging businesses to innovate and improve efficiencies.

Congressional Representative Hilda Solis (D-El Monte), author of the 2007 federal Green Jobs Act and President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to become the next U.S. Secretary of Labor, estimates that green-job training could create as many as three million new jobs in the next decade.

I encourage my Republican colleagues to consider the possibilities – and to embrace changes that can be a win-win-win for businesses, the economy and the planet.

Patricia Wiggins represents California’s Second Senate District, which includes Lake County.

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Encouraged by Dale Neiman, Clearlake's ordinarily astute city administrator, the commissioners concluded that this smoke-and-mirrors project would miraculously solve the city's fiscal dilemmas and provide badly needed infrastructure.

To achieve those goals they are apparently willing to disregard the many "significant and unavoidable" environmental impacts detailed in the environmental impact report, sacrifice an amazing pristine site that could become a treasure to the city second only to the lake itself, distort their own general plan, skate on the thin ice of California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) legal violations, and encumber Clearlake with a a viper's nest of future problems.

Let's have a little reality check.

This unimaginative, badly designed project takes hardly any advantage of the special qualities of the site, which lies just outside the Cache Creek Wilderness and borders the creek itself for more than a mile, but relies instead on a second-rate, money-losing nine-hole golf course to sell jammed-together houses on minimally-sized lots.

This is a pattern of development that was obsolescent a decade ago. Even during the heady days of our recent real estate bubble, a subdivision like this would attract few of the affluent buyers whose theoretically plump and open wallets are being advertised as one of the benefits Provinsalia would bring to a demographically challenged city.

To make this subdivision even less attractive to potential buyers, the lots would be burdened with the excessive costs of sprawl. Extending infrastructure to a site remote from public services would require substantial new water treatment facilities, a sewer upgrade estimated to cost a minimum of $13 million and a completely new access road for which no budget has yet been provided, quite aside from the streets, gas lines, electric lines, recreational facilities and other infrastructure on the project site itself.

Some of these costs would be reflected in the purchase price of the lots, and others carried as permanent maintenance district fees assessed on residents. Collectively, these charges would put Provinsalia at a hopeless competitive disadvantage compared to residential properties elsewhere in Clearlake and in other parts of Lake County.

To make matters worse, the parlous state of the American economy has led to an extraordinarily tight credit market and a wave of foreclosures that is not expected to crest any time soon. Many of Provinsalia's potential customers – affluent retirees from the Bay Area – currently own houses that have decreased drastically in value, with no purchasers in sight. The few who still intend to relocate to our community can find a plethora of attractive homes available at fire sale prices in Hidden Valley and elsewhere in the county, leaving them with no incentive whatsoever to pay a large premium for a less desirable property in Provinsalia.

The conclusion seems obvious to anyone whose judgment has not been clouded by a haze of imaginary dollar signs: Provinsalia will never be built, and the project site will become the latest example of Lake County's many paper subdivisions.

As long as regulations preventing grading, tree-cutting and other on-site environmental degradation are properly enforced, this end result would ordinarily be of little consequence. The temporary maps would lapse after a few years, the developers would figure out some way to write off their losses and the whole episode would become a footnote to Clearlake's history.

But in this case project approvals have been structured in a way that would result in long-term distortion of the city’s general plan, its “constitution” governing growth: even if this project is abandoned, any deviation from the tiresome design outlined in the 70-page specific plan would require a subsequent general plan amendment and full CEQA review.

Not even such a minor alteration as the repeatedly suggested alternative design replacing the golf course with a more natural rural landscape incorporating hiking, biking, and equestrian trails would be possible without amending the general plan, much less anything like the innovative "eco-destination" suggested in Debi Sally's LakeCoNews letter of Dec. 10 (http://lakeconews.com/content/view/6599/770/).

Clearlake residents whose sanity remains unclouded should act now to keep this planning albatross from being hung around the neck of a city that has more than enough problems already. Please contact Mayor Chuck Leonard and Councilors Judy Thein, Joyce Overton, Curt Giambruno, and Roy Simon and urge them to reject this misguided and ultimately destructive project.

Victoria Brandon is chair of the Sierra Club Lake Group.

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Consider some of the bogus claims we've debunked just since Election Day:

• It's not true that unionized auto workers at Detroit's Big Three make more than $70 an hour, as claimed by some opponents of federal aid.

• And no, 3 million workers won't be tossed out of work if aid is not forthcoming, as claimed by those favoring a taxpayer bailout.

• President-elect Obama never promised to seek a ban on all semi-automatic weapons, as claimed by some fearful gun owners.

• And no, Obama did not propose a Gestapo-like civilian security force as claimed by a Republican member of Congress from Georgia and any number of overwrought bloggers.

• Democrats in Congress are not discussing any plan to confiscate the assets in 401(k) retirement accounts, another falsehood spread about by chain e-mails and Internet postings.

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not demand a 757-size personal jet, a false claim resurrected when Democrats criticized Big Three executives for flying to D.C. on their own private jets to beg for aid.

• And Pelosi's husband doesn't own a $17 million stake in a food company that she may (or may not) have tried to help with an exemption from a new minimum wage law.

Analysis

The troubles of the auto industry have spawned a number of exaggerations and falsehoods, including a couple of TV spots we're including here, claiming that millions of jobs will be lost if taxpayers don't cough up billions in aid to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

Three million jobs?

There's no question that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost should General Motors or Chrysler go under, delivering a severe blow to an economy already facing one of the worst recessions in modern history. But would it be three million as claimed in a TV spot by "America's Auto Dealers"? Or "millions" as claimed in another by the United Auto Workers?

Not likely, as we explained in detail in an Ask FactCheck item posted Dec. 24. That three million figure comes independently from two groups, one with ties to the automakers and another with a tie to the union. Both are based on the unlikely assumptions that all three automakers will be forced to shut down (Ford has said it can make it through without aid for now); that all their suppliers will go under; and that even Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers will shut down all their U.S. manufacturing operations. Independent economists say all that isn't likely to happen. David Wyss, chief economist of Standard & Poor's, estimates that at worst half a million jobs would be lost if GM and Chrysler both go out of business.

$73 an hour?

On the other hand, it's not true that the unionized workers at the Big Three take home $75 an hour, as claimed by some bailout foes. That figure represents total labor costs, including wages paid to current workers and the cost of their benefits, plus a substantial amount paid to the Big Three's many retired workers for their pensions and health benefits.

The labor cost figure is higher than the estimated average labor costs for the U.S. plants of Toyota and other foreign producers, to be sure. But that's due largely to the fact that the foreign-owned plants aren't saddled with big payments to retired workers.

For more, see the Ask FactCheck item we posted Dec. 11 (http://factcheckcms.bootnetworks.com/articles/articleview.php?id=865).

Different versions of the dealer's ad ran in Kentucky and Minnesota and the UAW ad ran in Washington, D.C., according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group of TNS Media Intelligence, which featured them as its "Ad of the Week" for Dec. 15.

Obama get your gun?

The election of Barack Obama and the expansion of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate have spawned some misinformation spread by viral e-mails and bloggers. One is a fake quote in which Obama supposedly promised during his presidential campaign to seek "bans on all semi-automatic guns," a category that would include many common handguns, hunting rifles and shotguns. As we detailed in an Ask FactCheck item posted on Dec. 8, this claim is baseless and the quote is almost certainly fabricated.

It is also not true that Obama said he'd seek to create a Gestapo-like "civilian national security force," as claimed by Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia shortly after the election. Broun said that's "exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did." But it turns out, he was echoing misinformation that had been circulating for months on the Internet and through anonymous chain e-mails. It was a badly distorted version of Obama's call for doubling the Peace Corps, creating volunteer networks and increasing the size of the Foreign Service. Details are in an Ask FactCheck item we posted Nov. 11.

Democrats get your retirement?

As if the stock market's nose dive wasn't enough to worry about, some rumormongers were spreading a baseless claim that congressional Democrats were talking about confiscating IRA and 401(k) investment accounts. This falsehood was started by a Nov. 4 report posted by the Carolina Journal, a publication of the conservative John Locke Foundation of Raleigh, N.C. But as we reported in an Ask FactCheck item posted Nov. 19, the report was simply wrong. It was a twisted account of what one House witness actually had proposed – to allow some people to trade their old accounts for a new type that would be less risky, on a voluntary basis.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continued to be a magnet for misinformed attacks. More than a year ago, we debunked a claim that she was advocating a "windfall" tax to take 100 percent of the profits of any stock sale. That claim, a fraud complete with a fabricated quote, is still listed in our "Hot Topics" section as among the claims that we're most frequently asked about.

But since the election, we've had many questions about other anti-Pelosi claims as well:

• She doesn't have routine use of a private 757-size jet. This misinformed claim was revived after Democrats ridiculed the chief executives of GM, Ford and Chrysler for flying to Washington on their own private jets when they first came begging for a taxpayer bailout. The truth is that Pelosi normally flies in the same type of 12-seat Air Force jet, a military version of the Gulfstream III, that was used by her Republican predecessor Dennis Hastert. For more, see the Ask FactCheck item posted Dec. 21 (http://factcheckcms.bootnetworks.com/articles/articleview.php?id=8650).

• Her wealthy husband does not, as widely claimed, have a $17 million stake in Del Monte foods. That bit of misinformation originated in a short-lived Wikipedia item that was quickly removed for lack of substantiation. And American Samoa never got the exemption from federal minimum-wage laws that Pelosi supposedly sought to aid Del Monte's StarKist tuna plant there. You can find all the details in our Nov. 26 Ask FactCheck item (http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_nancy_pelosi_get_wage_breaks_and.html).

Disinformation works

We wish we could say that all this disinformation is harmless, but there's evidence that a lot of people end up believing such nonsense.

In a FactCheck.org "Special Report" that we posted on Dec. 12, titled "Our Disinformed Electorate," we released some findings from a post-election poll taken by the National Annenberg Election Survey. It showed that millions of voters were bamboozled by false claims made by both sides in the 2008 presidential campaign.

More than half of those polled thought Obama's tax plan would raise taxes on most small businesses (a false claim made by Sen. John McCain) and more than two in five (42.3 percent) found truth in Obama's false claim that McCain planned to cut Medicare benefits.

Nevertheless, we'll keep blowing the whistle whenever we find political spin. Watch our Ask FactCheck space on the home page (www.factcheck.org) for items we'll soon be posting on claims that the EPA is proposing a pollution tax on cows and pigs (false) and a widely circulated e-mail quoting a law school professor giving "unreported stats" from the 2008 election. (The professor denies authorship, and the "statistics" are all wrong.)

And keep checking back in 2009. Because the spin never stops.

The Annenberg Political Fact Check is 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.

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They said, "The earliest human civilizations on earth first created celebrations such as the ones we have today as a way to keep people's spirits up during the darkest and coldest time of the year. This can be a dark time of year for some of the students that attend here, so like our ancestors before us, we use the exchange of gifts to bring joy to them."

There wasn't a single critical comment on the column, so let's assume nobody took it as another battle in the fictional war on Christmas.

This is, literally, the darkest time of year, when we have the winter solstice, the longest night and shortest day of the year. It's a science kind of thing, and it's been recognized for millennia by people sure they were seeing a yearly miracle.

It happened Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008, at 3:04 AM PT when the sun was at its most southerly position from our constantly moving planet. Winter began in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. That's all. Between Wednesday, as I write this, and Sunday we'll gain a full minute of daylight.

A minute doesn't sound like much but it's worth celebrating, because it's a start on longer days, and the spring miracle. Don't you feel better already?

The ground will get warmer, planting time will come,we'll all get out of our caves, spend more time under those precious rays and start recovering from the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) that sends us grumping off for long naps or snapping at our loved ones.

Is it worth fighting over? No. Are there rules about how to celebrate? No. At least, not for those of good will. Except this: all over the world, whatever it's called, it's also a festival of light.

So lighten up, OK?

Sophie Annan Jensen is a retired journalist. She lives in Lucerne.

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While most of my time was spent in built-up tourista areas, I did get to do a fair amount of driving around and got to see some of the poorer and more rural areas as well, and was surprised by what I observed everywhere I went.

Of course there were the loud-mouth drunk American tourists to keep one's national pride in check, but the thing that was truly humbling as a gringo was what the locals were doing.

Probably the most obvious example was the condition of the roads; even in the most humble neighborhoods the pavement was better than almost ANY street in Lakeport, and nowhere were the roadways as crude as they are in the city of Clearlake.

The reason was apparent everywhere I went, as road construction/repair was taking place all over the place. Mexico has obviously decided that good roads mean safe travels and good jobs for lots of people, and they are investing heavily in this aspect of their infrastructure.

It was also obvious that the building boom bust had not yet affected Mexico, as all sorts of structures were being erected – homes, businesses and government buildings, too. Signs of prosperity were everywhere, and there were no signs of some of our social problems, which had even more impact on me than it did on my last visit many years ago when it was not too uncommon to see children working.

There were no homeless people panhandling or stumbling around drunk in the parks, unlike my hometown of San Francisco, where the crazies, drunks and druggies roam the streets in annoying and sometimes frightening groups with barely any attempts to redirect their behavior.

Then there was the garbage issue, or to be more precise, the lack of it. Poor neighborhood, tourist zone or rural highways were all the same, they were trash-free.

I'm not sure if this is because an army of workers are employed to pick up roadside refuse or if people just don't throw so much stuff out the window of their cars, but whatever the reason for it the lack of misplaced garbage it made me think of the litter-choked ditches and roadsides around here, and how even when they are picked up a week later they're a mess again in some places, I have a hard time just keeping up with my trash problem generated by the one-third of a mile of county road that bisects my property.

Not only were the roadsides trash-free, but everywhere I saw a public garbage can in Mexico it was divided into two sides, organic and non-organic halves. Apparently Mexicans are more concerned with recycling than Americans, and are making the effort to sort all the trash they can into groups that can help keep landfills from getting used and again, keep people employed while preserving natural resources.

So I kept wondering, why can't we do some of these things? Are Americans too dumb or lazy to sort garbage? It does take a couple of seconds to read the signs that tell you what goes where, plus a bit of eye-hand coordination to get it there, can that be beyond us?

Haven't we been playing games by postponing road repairs for too long, and now the problem is so big it seems almost hopeless to try to get caught up?

Should we settle for roads that are unacceptable in third world countries, and continue to spend the nation's wealth on B-2 bombers and wars in far-off places that never threatened us?

If Mexico can keep crazy people off the streets and stop lazy people and drunks from annoying the rest of the citizenry then why can't we?

This isn't how you show leadership, it's time to pull our heads out of the sand folks, unless we want to become another Britain in our lifetimes.

Philip Murphy lives in Finley.

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