Rotary Club of Eureka, California

Meeting of the Rotary Club of Eureka
May 7, 2012

Pledge and Invocation

Jim Howard led the pledge and Joe Mark mentioned the need for prayers for Steve’s wife and Joe’s aunt. In the invocation Joe asked the Lord for the wisdom and the courage to act-- particularly in difficult situations.

Raffle

The raffle winner was Walt Shimasaki and a guest brought by Lowell Maffia.

Student Guests

Ryan Fray brought EHS students Catherine McGibbon and Izzy Piland, who sought support for Eureka High Loggers Academic Fair.

Visiting Rotarians 

One of the forum candidates from Mendocino, I believe it was John Lewallen.

Guests of Rotarians

Keith Crossly brought his wife Carol, and Kim Bauriedel his wife Sile. A third guest was

Chris Witt from Humboldt Area Foundation.

Announcements

Dan Price encouraged our club to support Backpack Buddy Night May 20^th. Please buy tickets (only $30) for this Sunday evening event, which will take place 6:30-9:30pm at Cher-Ae Heights Casino. See either John Bradley or Dan Heinen. Tickets are also available from SHN consulting Engineers, Old Town Coffee and Food for People.  If you can donate gifts to be auctioned off, please contact Jeff Leonard.

Next week Hank Ingham will be president pro tem, and the following Monday Will Kay will stand in. Memorial Day (28^th) is dark.

Program

Matt Owen presented the program, informing us that Congressman Thompson is no longer living in our district and is therefore not our congressman. We are now part of California’s Second District. Matt also said we have an open primary that may shift the number of candidates.

Beth Matsumoto from the League of Women Voters of Humboldt County moderated the meeting of the candidates for Second Congressional District. Ten were present, and two congressional candidates were missing (whose names you will have to look up if you want to vote for them).

Here are their brief opening statements of the ten candidates. The entire forum will be posted on YouTube by May 16th and we will add the link here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpxusYNb5x8).  Until then, this Burl reporter made an effort to accurately summarize the questions and answers as best he could:

Brief opening statements:

(click on each candidate's name below to link to their campaign websites)

Susan Adams says get out of the war and shift the money to healthcare. Susan is a nurse and has advocated for a healthy planet and healthy country, and says she can do a great job particularly with healthcare issues.

Andy Caffrey is from Humboldt. He says we are now making the same mistakes in the war in Afghanistan that we were making in the Vietnam war. He will urge congress to declare a national emergency, presumably to extricate us from the war.

Brooke Clark said that all votes for Republicans and Democrats endorse the status quo. Therefore he urged us to vote for him, an Independent.

William Courtney deplores the Patriot Act and says that airplanes did not bring down the WTC Towers in New York on 9/11. We need a full investigation because we are losing our civil liberties.

Larry Fritzlan is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Though a Democratic, he’s a self-proclaimed centrist. He asked why 90% of Americans do not trust congress. It is because of the money in Washington, he says.

Michael Halliwell is a retired college professor. He advocates for local control. He also thinks our county would benefit from parks and tourism, perhaps even more than marijuana sales.

Stacey Lawson claims her twenty years of economic development and business experience will help her bring jobs to our area. Jobs are needed here and she wants to bring them back. 

John Lewallen is a businessman from Mendocino. He is a fisherman, environmentalist and Independent. He says warfare is speeding us toward economic disaster. He would also like to revisit the Magnusson Act.

Tiffany Renee is from Petaluma. She was involved in some aspects of the Golden Gate Bridge and local government. She claims to understand the needs in rural areas like Humboldt.

Norman Solomon grew up in a League of Women Voters household and accused Stacey Lawson of not voting in recent elections. He asked her to provide an answer.

Questions #1: Do you want health care for all Americans and how?

Susan Adams delighted in this question because she is a nurse. She is an advocate for single payer health care and reminded us that Medicare is a single payer provider. The problem is that Medicare is only for the old and infirm. We need a system that provides health care like Medicare for everyone.

Norman Solomon claims to have worked on the state and local level on health care issues. He wants health care for all and says it is a basic human right. He thinks it is terrible to have so many with health care needs going to the emergency ward because they do not have a primary care physician.

Michael Halliwell countered that health care is not a human right. But he did say that 10% should be charged across the board so that undue burden is not placed upon the younger citizens; he claims this is the case with Obamacare--it overburdens younger persons.

Stacey Lawson agrees that we need to move toward a single payer system. She is the daughter of a mother who was very involved in the health care system.

Andy Caffrey says that as Independent and Green he wants to get rid of the nukes (power or weapons he did not say), tax the rich, rebuild the infrastructure and give health care to everyone as well as freedom to everyone.

John Lewallen also would vote for a single payer system. This can only be done by a mass movement of people. He urged us to go to singlepayernow.net. He said if we cut back the military we can pay for medical care.

Brooke Clarke also said we need a single payer system. He pointed out that the US is #1 in teen pregnancies, and mentioned that one of Clinton’s appointees was fired for talking about masturbation—perhaps placing the blame for teen pregnancies on this lack of freedom of expression. At any rate, he was convinced that the Democrats and Republicans represent a seamless garment so a vote for him would bring change.

William Courtney claimed that Medicare is excellent and reduces costs from 30% to 3%. He advocates for preventative medicine.

Tiffany Renee laments the increased cost of medical insurance and care for local governments. She would urge us to get out of foreign wars and thus have money for health care.

Larry Fritzlan asked why we do not have a single payer system. Because, he says, the 1% are running the show. Big insurance and big lawyers are running the companies and in order to make change we need to dis-empower them. 

Question #2 What should be done with the Klamath dam?

Stacey Lawson said that we need to remove the dam and restore the streams and our environment to their natural condition.

Tiffany Renee also supports removal of the dam.  This will help with food security for our area. She did not say how, but perhaps she assumes we in Humboldt are all on gluten free diets.

John Lewallen claims that the restoration of all our watersheds is a high priority in his campaign. He thinks the dam should be removed, to restore free flow of water and the salmon. Hoopa Indians need the dam removed, but he does not want to say when or how to un-dam.

Andy Caffrey said, “I am with the fish.” He then added that we should not pay to remove the dam, but I did not hear exactly who should pay for dam removal. Remove it for the fish and the fisherman, he said, adding that our water should not be exported to southern regions.

Susan Adams supports the removal of the dam. But the devil is in the details. How to do it right?

She has had experience doing similar types of actions and legislation (e.g. mining). It takes time to do these types of projects right.

William Courtney commented that water is a precious commodity and we need to look at the resource closely. He labeled this issue as difficult in general, then added, “I am an extreme environmentalist, but how to provide clean drinking water is a key question.”

 

Michael Halliwell said that on the state level he has experience in the water wars. He generally supports the long term over the short term and would vote to have the salmon restored.

Larry Fritzlan would vote to restore the biosphere by thinking of the bigger picture. If elected he would take on big oil and the big lobbyists back in Washington. He is willing to address the corruption that exists in Washington.

Brooke Clarke said I don’t know about the dam and won’t speak to it. Growth is approaching the big trouble; no growth, he said. 

Question #3 What are most important things to improve our domestic economy?

Andy Caffrey says that gridlock is keeping us from acting on the economy. Domestic and Pentagon cuts are many billions and trillions: we need to look at the hard and ugly

Larry Fritzlan pointed out that our military spends more money than the entire world combined. Our system is corrupt, for example, funding oil companies. We need to take the money out of politics.

Stacy Lawson says we need to get small businesses going again. Wall Street takes all the money, but we need local main street businesses back in business. She would get an industrial policy in place.  We need to cut the military budget and put more into the domestic economy.

Brooke Clarke reminded us that the stock market crash of 1929 resulted in the Glass-Steagall Act, but congress took Glass-Steagall apart recently. He believes this was short sighted.

John Lewallen says we need to write a national peace conversion act.  Stop imperialism. A massive jobs program from the federal government is his solution. Tax reform is needed and regulation of the financial industry as well.

Norman Solomon wrote and spoke against the Wall Street Bailout; he also opposed the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. He also pointed out that with three billion dollars per day spent on military our veterans are not treated well.

One of the candidates, I believe it was William Courtney, claimed the largest organized crime and terrorist organization is the Republican Party. Because of the Republicans we now have hungry people and students are in debt. Wealth is being sucked out by Republicans, by the military-Keynesians, he said. His solution is #3 of his Great American Proposal.

Tiffany Renee proposed to bring dollars back from overseas and spend the money at home. Build bridges, highways, roads, and clean energy, more green power to Sonoma County. This program can go national and bring jobs to our national and local economy.

Susan Adams’ solution is to get out of the war, and eliminate the oil subsidies.

Michael Halliwell: the Republicans are not larger nor more criminal than the Democratic party.

A bi-partisan coalition got rid of pork barrel bills and earmarks.

#4 Closing statements:

John Lewallen. The 2^nd congressional district should become a north coast bio-region. John says he runs a tightwad campaign. His goal is to work with people and have no obligations to big business or money.

Norman Solomon. Go to Solomon for congress website; and he does not have any obligations to big money or big business. Once again he asked, why did Stacy Lawson not answer his question about why she did not vote two-thirds of the time in recent elections?

Stacy Lawson says she did vote in 2008 and asked us to go to her website. She wants to fight for middle class families and get the economy going. She knows rural counties and logging economies.

Larry Fritzlan asked why are all of our politics so irrelevant that half the people don’t vote? He then argued that corporations are not persons. He pledged to not take more than $100 from any individual, and will not be party to big money politics.

Susan Adams claims that as a fourth generation descendant of a Mendocino ranching family, she has experience that money doesn’t buy. I have a 60% approval rating and an 80% approval rating from nurses. Go to Susan Adams.com.

William Courtney proposed that John Kennedy was killed by the CIA (or someone) for speaking out for freedom and peace; he added that we have murderers at the top. Finally, he repeated that the planes did not bring those two towers down on 9/11. We must get to the bottom of who really collapsed the towers, otherwise we are going to lose all our civil liberties.

Michael Halliwell closed with his position that traditional marriage is a big social issue and he strongly supported Proposition 8. Traditional marriage has to do with mate selection and encouraging couples to live together while raising children. He does not denigrate gay marriage, but thinks government should provide essential support for traditional marriage.

Tiffany Renee joined the Petaluma city council and balanced the budget at the local level. We’ve got to change the “dialing for dollars” system in DC. I am a tough worker and hard worker.

Brooke Clarke said, Independent means you are not throwing your vote away. Prisons are a result of the crime wave in 80’s trying to stop crime. The U.S. is the number one country in world for prisons.

Andy Caffrey closed with this: “There will be no jobs on a dead planet.”

No one asked the candidates, who would quickly dissemble our military, if Al Quaeda was a real threat, and if not, why they are still sending underwear bombers to blow planes out of the sky. Presumably they would ask the newly formed national health care system to deal with underwear bombers.

President Greg thanked the league of Women Voters for moderating.

Next week our club will host the candidates for First District County Supervisor in a similar forum.

Get backpack for kids going on May 20^th, said President Greg, then dismissing us all.

Respectfully Submitted,

Dan Price