Think about this: Over a 23-year span 1,800 law enforcement officers nationwide were killed in the line of duty, that’s an average of 78 officers a year.

As terrible of a tragedy as that is, it gets worse. Over a nine-year span 1,090 firefighters nationwide were killed in the line of duty, that’s an average of 121 per year.

And as tragic as this loss is, in a six-year period 841 highway workers nationwide were killed while performing their jobs to make it safe for you and your family to get to work, school or to the grocery store! That’s an average of 140 preventable deaths per year!

These people were not killed by a bank robber, nor were they killed by the walls of a building that were weakened by the fire they were fighting. These men and women were killed by average, law abiding citizens that were inattentive, talking on the cell phone, in a hurry or just plain upset for being delayed in their daily lives. In other words, they were killed by people like you and me.

Why am I bringing this to your attention? On Aug. 6, one of Lake County’s own public works staff had a serious medical emergency, and collapsed while performing traffic control during re-paving operations at the intersection of Soda Bay Road, South Main Street and Highway 175 in Lakeport. This individual was at the far end of the project, away from their coworkers and collapsed in the street.

I’m telling you about this because not a single person cared enough to stop their car and get out to help this worker! Not a single one of our “neighbors” could take the time out of their busy, hectic schedule to help this person and just swerved around them! What if the next car didn’t see you swerve and ran over this person? And yes, I’ve heard all of the jokes: “Well they were probably on break” or “is it so unusual to see a road worker lying down.”

As humorous as these jokes are this could have been a very serious tragedy for Lake County!

I want you to consider this, Lake County: each and every worker on the roads is someone’s son, daughter, father, mother, brother, sister, etc. Let’s not let them be another statistic!

Consider this: What would happen if there were no street, road or highway workers? How would the police get to your home when the bad guy is robbing you? How would the ambulance and fire trucks get to your home when you need them? How will you get to work, school and to the grocery store without them? Who will come out and plow the snow or cut out the tree across the road in the middle of the night? With out your road crew workers … NO ONE!

Highway workers are killed or seriously injured every year close to home. This year a Caltrans worker was seriously injured by a person that was in to much of a hurry to be delayed by road work, and tried to pass cars in a construction zone, lost control of her vehicle and crushed a worker against the guard rail. When asked about the accident, her reply was, “Well he should have gotten out of the way quicker!” The list of workers killed or injured in adjoining counties to us goes on and on.

As your road superintendent, I have the responsibility and duty to safe guard the county’s workers to the best of my abilities. The Department of Public Works has always attempted to do this with the least amount of delay and inconvenience to you the traveling public, but if the danger to our crews becomes too great we will be forced to close roads while repairs and maintenance are being performed.

I am asking – no, I'm imploring – each and every citizen in Lake County to team with your streets, roads and highway workers to keep not only them but you safe!

The Lake County Department of Public Works would like to thank the staff of Rotten Robbie’s gas and mini mart for coming to the aid of our family member.

Steve Stangland is road superintendent for the Lake County Department of Public Works.

The corporate media in the United States are ignoring valid news stories, based on university quality research. It appears that certain topics are simply forbidden inside the mainstream corporate media today. To openly cover these news stories would stir up questions regarding “inconvenient truths” that many in the US power structure want to avoid.

For example, current research indicates that public schools in the United States are more segregated today than they have been in more than four decades.

According to a new Civil Rights report, published at the University of California, Los Angeles, schools in the US are 44 percent non-white, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students in the US.

Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement 40 years ago. Millions of non-white students are locked into “dropout factory” high schools, where huge percentages do not graduate.

The most severe segregation in public schools occurs in the Western states, including California – not in the South, as many people believe.

Most non-white schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. Schools in low-income communities remain highly unequal in terms of funding, qualified teachers, and curriculum.

Other taboo stories include civilian death rates in Iraq and questions on 9/11.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and a professional survey company in Great Britain, Opinion Research Business (ORB) report that the United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since our invasion six and half years ago.

In a January 2008 report, ORB reported that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003 … We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000.”

A 2006 Johns Hopkins study confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces. Iraqi civilian death levels in the summer of 2009 likely now exceed 1.2 million.

Former Brigham Young University physics professor Dr. Steven E. Jones and some 700 scientific professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering and physics have now concluded that the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according to laws of physics.

Especially troubling is the collapse of WTC 7, a 47-story building that was not hit by planes, yet dropped in its own “footprint” in 6.6 seconds in the same manner as a controlled demolition.

To support this theory, Jones and eight other scientists conducted chemical research on the dust from the World Trade centers. Their research results were published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal Open Chemical Physics Journal, Volume 2, 2009.

The authors write, “We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.”

Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide, which produces an aluminothermic reaction known as a thermite reaction and is used in controlled demolitions of buildings.

Each of these taboo news stories is based on solid scholarly research. These stories represent the failure of the corporate media in the US to keep the American people democratically informed on important issues. This lack of coverage of critical and potentially political news stories is what many thousands of people in the US are now calling a Truth Emergency.

Political activists at all levels must support full news transparency as an important component of building a non-exploitative world based on democracy, truthfulness, and human rights.

Peter Phillips is Professor Sociology at Sonoma State University, President of Media Freedom Foundation http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/ and the former director of Project Censored http://www.projectcensored.org/. Daily non-corporate independent news is now online at: http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/13160-validated-independent-news .

Voters tried to tell him that they approved of the budget the Assembly had passed earlier, the one that he vetoed.

Voters sent a clear message that they wanted a balanced budget solution that includes revenue increases.

In fact, according to an April 30 Field Poll (www.field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/Rls2306.pdf):

• 74 percent of California voters support increasing tobacco taxes;

• 73 percent of California voters support an oil extraction tax;

• 63 percent of California support raising the state income tax for top earners.

Every other oil-producing state in the union taxes the extraction of oil from its lands – including Texas and Wyoming. Even Sarah Palin raised the oil severance tax in Alaska to 25 percent in 2007.

The California Budget Project estimated a 9.9 percent oil severance tax would bring it at least $1 billion to state coffers. If oil prices rose again above $100 a barrel, then we could see $2 billion in revenue per year. Given the high likelihood of such increases, an oil severance tax would be a significant long-term boon to the state's coffers, since oil companies can't exactly shift production out of state, since oil is only going to become more valuable over time.

And that money could help prevent the most egregious human services cuts that were agreed to in the budget deal – the cuts to Healthy Families that will cost 500,000 children their health care coverage, the cuts to In-Home Supportive Services that people need to survive.

Voters don’t want drastic cuts to the programs Californians depend on. Voters don’t want to close schools and parks. And voters don’t want $2.5 billion a year in more corporate tax breaks for a handful of the world's largest corporations. Or to lose billions in federal funds because of stupid cuts.

Californians expect choices to be made that keep teachers in the classroom, keep public safety personnel on duty, keep infrastructure projects moving, keep our hospitals operating and our cities and county governments open to serve us.

Californians expect revenue increases to come from the corporate chief executive officers who receive astronomical profits from doing business in California.

Oh, and that whole “the rich are leaving California” mythology was debunked two weeks ago by a Public Policy Institute of California analysis of the census (www.kcra.com/money/20017385/detail.html). In fact, the study concludes that the poor are leaving California, not the rich. Which is just what the Republican Yacht Party wants.

Years of shortsighted political pandering to oil companies and big corporations have left the state with truly staggering budget problems.

Tough choices have to be made, but Californians demand and deserve better.

A budget that preserves services all Californians need and positions our economy for recovery is the only solution.

This new budget preserves billions of dollars in tax cuts for oil companies and the state’s biggest businesses.

It will have drastic impacts on California’s economy.

It will:

• Drain $24 billion from California's economy, stunting the state's recovery efforts;

• Drive up the unemployment rate by more than two percent, plunging California further into recession;

• Deny 300,000 students a college education and increase class sizes in our public schools, making California less competitive;

• Decimate public safety and the public services that maintain our quality of life and attract businesses;

• Result in a loss of billions in federal funds.

It does not matter to Californians what the Republican Yacht Party and the governor promised Grover Norquist.

The last time I checked, he neither lives nor votes in California.

I do.

Rebecca Curry lives in Kelseyville.

It was clear in the 2000 case that the characterization was intended to emphasize the out-of-town aspect, because Miami is not Brooks Brothers country. It's more Banana Republic and Victoria's Secret, and always has been, even though we had our button-down Brooksie pockets in the buttoned-down '50s. So those rude folks had to come from elsewhere.

Brooksies were calm folks with Ivy League aspirations who wouldn't dream of causing a scene. Probably they still are. Not fashion-forward, you understand, but always tasteful. (OK, call me petty, but I take offense on behalf of the pale pink button-down Oxford cloth shirt.)

Apologies to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, who seems like a decent guy, but the new Brooks Brothers brigade appellation is just plain wrong.

Today's disruptors of town hall meetings on health care are not strangers. They're our neighbors (or maybe pod people replacing our neighbors?) who come to those meetings to parrot the instructions they've gotten from the public relations consultants for interests which will not benefit from health care reform. Interests like insurance companies which now routinely deny health care to their customers and pharmaceutical companies which won't continue to profit quite so much from widespread preventive care or regulated costs of their pills.

Conservatives for Patients' Rights is a major player in organizing the anti-reform brigades. They work with the conservative PR firm previously known as Creative Response Concepts, the firm "that masterminded the 'Swift boat' attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry," the Washington Post reported.

Along with other groups friendly to “tea parties” they are advising their sympathizers on how to manufacture apparent grassroots objections (or Astroturf) to health care reform. One memo suggests that tea partiers should "pack the hall ... spread out" to make their numbers seem more significant, and to "rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation … to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early.... to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda ... stand up and shout and sit right back down."

So much for civil discourse or informed dissent.

“Brown shirt brigades” seems more appropriate for these folks, in recognition of their similarity to the 1920s and 1930s pro-Hitler storm troopers who specialized in intimidation and starting fights.

That has pretty nice alliteration also, and doesn't insult a stalwart of American fashion. (Or the beloved shirt.)

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

Congressman Mike Thompson. Courtesy photo.

There are a lot of questions about the health care bill in Congress. Here are answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about the bill that passed the Ways and Means Committee.

Question: Has Congressman Thompson read the bill?

Answer: I have read and was involved in drafting the bill I voted on. For weeks before the introduction of H.R. 3200, members of the Ways and Means Committee, myself included, met daily to go through the bill line by line and section by section. As a group, we spent 86 hours going over this legislation.

Question: Will health reform force all Americans out of their private insurance plans and into a one-size-fits-all government plan?

Answer: No. H.R. 3200 builds on the current system of employer-based coverage, it doesn’t replace it. If you are happy with your current plan, you can keep it. H.R. 3200 includes a public plan that individuals will have the option of purchasing, along with a variety of other private plans. This public plan will be required to be financially self-sustaining, as private plans are, covering its costs through premiums and co-pays.

Question: Does page 16 of the bill require me to join the public plan if I lose my private insurance coverage?

Answer: No one will be required to join the public plan. If you lose your insurance, you will be able to shop for a new plan at an online exchange that includes information on all insurance options. This exchange will bring together information that is currently scattered giving consumers the opportunity to quickly and effectively compare plans to make informed decisions about what coverage works best for them. The provision on page 16 merely requires individuals joining a private insurance plan after 2013 to do so through the exchange.

Question: Are members of Congress exempt from changes that are being proposed for the rest of the country?

Answer: No. Members of Congress receive the same health care options as other federal employees, with a choice of plans from private insurers that vary by benefits, premiums and co-pays. This legislation would affect federal employees in the same ways that it affects everyone else who gets their health insurance through their employer.

Question: Will proposed legislation provide free health care to illegal immigrants?

Answer: No. Section 246 of H.R. 3200 explicitly prohibits the payment of affordability credits designed to help low and moderate incomes families purchase insurance to anyone who is not lawfully present in the United States.

Question: Will all small businesses be forced to provide coverage to their employees?

Answer: This bill exempts small businesses with a payroll of less than $250,000 from the requirement to provide health insurance for their workers. Businesses with payrolls above $250,000 that do not provide coverage will be charged a payroll tax that will gradually increase with the size of their payroll. The current version of the bill has this tax will start at 2 percent for payrolls above $250,000 and increase to a maximum of 8 percent for payrolls above $400,000, however, there are currently discussions to raise this exemption to $500,000. Proceeds from this tax will go to offset the cost of coverage for individuals purchasing insurance through the exchange. Small businesses that opt to offer insurance will receive tax credits to offset the cost of insurance.

Question: What does this bill do to stop fraud and abuse in Medicare?

Answer: This bill strengthens existing compliance and enforcement tools for Medicare, increases funding to support these efforts and creates new, tougher penalties for individuals who submit false claims or applications to Medicare. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that for every $1 we invest in fighting waste fraud and abuse we will produce $1.75 in savings.

Question: Can our nation afford health care reform?

Answer: The truth is that the rising cost of health care for all Americans is a problem that will not fix itself and that we can’t afford to not address. Today, our nation spends one out of every $6 we earn on health care. If we don’t take action to slow the increase in costs, within a decade we will spend one out of every $5 on health care, and within 30 years this will rise to one in every $3. These facts make it clear, the longer we wait, the more it will cost to fix our broken health care system.

Question: How much will this bill cost?

Answer: There is no question that there will be significant costs to implement this legislation. The CBO’s latest estimate puts the price tag at $1.042 trillion over 10 years. Here is how we are going to pay for the bill. First, we are going to address inefficiencies in Medicare and Medicaid and crack down on fraud, waste and abuse in these programs to save $465 billion over the next ten years. Second, we will need to raise $583 billion in revenues to cover the rest of the cost. The Ways and Means Committee proposes to do this through a surcharge on the wealthiest 1.2 percent of income earners, who have enjoyed a tremendous advantage for the last eight years because of the Bush tax cuts (the average reduction in federal taxes for the top 1 percent in these tax cuts was $44,622). The Senate is considering other ways to raise these funds, and it is unclear how this issue will be dealt with in the final bill.

Question: Will this plan lead to rationing of health care? Will Congress be legislating what care my doctor can or must give me?

Answer: No. I believe that medical decisions should be left between patients and their doctors. Section 1401 explicitly forbids any studies or research called for in H.R. 3200 from being used to either mandate or deny care to a patient in any public or private plan. This research will gather data about what procedures are most effective to give doctors more information to consider when treating patients, not to replace your doctor’s judgment with that of a bureaucrat from a private insurer or the government. The bill protects the ability of doctors to do what they think is necessary to help their patients without having to constantly worry about whether they will be reimbursed by an insurance company, which is why this bill has earned the strong support of the American Medical Association.

Question: Why is this bill being “rushed” through Congress?

Answer: Universal health care was first proposed by Teddy Roosevelt in 1912. President Harry Truman called for it in 1945. Former Representative John Dingell Sr. introduced a bill to provide universal health care in 1947 and his son, Representative John Dingell Jr., has reintroduced a bill every Congress since 1955. So, this is not a new issue and it was supported by both President Obama and Sen. McCain in the November presidential election. This particular legislation has been crafted, reviewed and revised repeatedly since the 111th Congress began, and it has been changed to reflect the considerable input from those in the health care community, members on both sides of the aisle and constituents. This bill is not being rushed – it is long overdue.

Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) represents Lake County in the US House of Representatives.

Water has led the way for the growth of California. Just add water, and you get a state with half its 38 million person population in its seven southernmost counties – the most arid part of our 100 million acres. Just add water, and you get an agricultural landscape that produces more than half the nation's fruit, nuts, and vegetables. This freedom to expand, to convert desert to both suburb and breadbasket, has been a hallmark of California’s growth and success. But freedom today doesn’t necessarily translate into freedom tomorrow – there’s no free lunch.

When I travel the Second Senate District, people constantly talk about water. They note that water is intertwined with our valuable vineyards, and is the lifeline for the people. They stress that water is key to our declining fisheries, and that the rains and water table feed our superlative forests. And they express their real fears that Southern California is still on the prowl for our rivers and valleys to quench the thirst of growing cities and established agriculture.

This need for water creates an everlasting drought in California. While we speak in terms of “average” rainfall, we hide the fact that two out of three years are “below average.” When we speak of “water needs” for agriculture and cities, we suggest that California can’t be as productive without endless diversion of water from the northern and Sierra rivers to the deserts of the state.

We must get beyond the concept that there is only so much water, and that the cities, farms and fish must fight it out. Rather than continue with this struggle, we must tap the well of ideas to find the abundance that we Californians are so lucky to have.

Cities and farms must support water conservation in their zoning, choice of plants, application methods and water sources. In agriculture, this may mean selecting plant varieties and rootstocks that are less thirsty, and monitoring the soil to restrict over-watering. In cities, this may mean giving up traditional lawn mixes for less water intensive grasses, and developing gardens that reflect the native ecosystem. Rain barrels, cisterns and thrifty appliances all help as well – provided that cities and counties allow them.

I have been concerned about water and growth for a long time. As an Assemblywoman, I introduced AB 2924 in 2002. That measure would have required local government approval before water could be shipped out of the Russian, Eel or other watersheds to the north. While that bill failed to become law, I subsequently introduced a new and improved bill, AB 858, requiring study of any proposed diversion of greater than 500 acre-feet per year, which was signed by then-Gov. Gray Davis.

The state still struggles to develop groundwater laws, following the lead of forward-thinking counties like Napa. While the state still is hesitant to suggest curbs to water use, the State Water Resources Control Board has placed a significant conservation goal in this drought year for the Sonoma County Water Agency. The state is still unsure about “fixing” the Delta with a peripheral canal, and rumors still persist that the Eel and other North Coast rivers are at the heart of plans to move yet more water south.

Why let our permanent drought achieve crisis status, when we know it will persist in California for the foreseeable future? Why do we cling to a landscape of lawns in the desert? Why can’t the use of water be rationally shared, rather than continued as a competition between old users, new users, groundwater users, and the state and federal governments fulfilling contracts written in a fog of abundance?

Where the state fails (generally due to veto), the counties need to act. Groundwater, water conservation and land use all may come under the purview of counties and local, special districts. Agricultural practices can be made more thrifty with help from University Extension and the farm advisor. Gardens can be more efficient with permission from cities and support from the community and master gardener network. And stream flows and the wildlife dependent on them can be protected by land trusts, parks, water districts and effective zoning.

Freedom is why people come to and stay in California. But we are not free to waste water, to take others’ resources or devastate the environment for personal or corporate convenience. And when others do that, it limits our own freedom. Fortunately, we still have the freedom to innovate – and that will be our solution.

Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) represents California’s 2nd Senate District, made up of portions or all of six counties: Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Solano and Sonoma. She chairs the legislature’s Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture.