Memorial Day is always the holiday that makes me think of my father and his entire generation, who put everything on the line to both save the world and create a world that was so easy for the baby boomers to grow up in. Their courage, sacrifice and accomplishments overcoming grave economic and political threats are still awesome to me. That’s a word that is so badly overused, but utterly powerful when you think about what it really means.

The “greatest” generation pulled together as one, facing down threats we could hardly imagine. They put their lives on the line, paid taxes without bitching, built superhighways, schools and infrastructure that the rest of the world couldn’t imagine. They rose up as one to transform everything from top to bottom and then showed their kindness and generosity not only by creating social security, the GI bill and unemployment benefits here, but in rebuilding both Germany and Japan while allowing both to retain their cultures without taking tribute in victory. The world has never seen anything like it before or since.

Today our country is going through a trying time. There are real threats to our economic lifestyle and our political dominance of the world. How are we responding? Are we unified, rallying behind our new leader who inherited two wars, staggering debts and an economy in freefall? Are we willing to sacrifice and pay taxes to help those less fortunate? Hardly.

We want everything but are not willing to pay for anything. We talk about how much we believe in god and religion, but oppose all social programs designed to help the needy. Provide health care for all so that we don’t lose everything we’ve worked for all our lives during our last six months of life due to crushing medical bills, even if we were actually “insured?” Don’t be silly, you must be a commie, or a socialist or a fascist, or all of them at once!

Today you see it’s all about name calling, just like in third grade. Take for instance a great man who has dedicated his life to service of this country, Colin Powell. He is called a “RINO” (Republican in name only) because he didn’t tow the party line and vote for his party’s candidate in the last election. Those calling him a RINO and calling for him to be drummed out of the party have never worn a uniform, risked anything for their country or made any kind of real sacrifice. The brave Dick Cheney “had other priorities” during our generation’s war in Vietnam. Rush? Please. What sacrifice has he ever made?

Pay no attention to the fact that Powell was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest rank in the U.S. military. Or that he was born black in the Bronx and that he worked hard for every one of his many achievements with no help from a wealthy and politically connected family. Nope, you are told to judge him solely based upon the fact that he voted his conscience and it wasn't Rush or Cheney’s pick!

On Tuesday, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. Like Powell she comes from the Bronx, her parents both having come here from Puerto Rico. Her brother became a doctor. She too worked hard for everything and has had a brilliant career, first being appointed a federal judge by the first President Bush. She is the first Hispanic ever nominated for the Supreme Court and by almost all accounts the most qualified nominee in decades.

The right wing had signaled that they were prepared to filibuster anyone that Obama might nominate and their name calling started before the news conference had ended. They have done everything possible to stall and hinder every single action the president has proposed to date and their utter lack of cooperation in this regard only plays true to their form.

So as I reflect on Memorial Day and all that it means to me, I wonder how so many people can come here from all around the world and achieve so much so quickly, while so many Caucasians, whose families have lived here for so many generations, have achieved so little. They speak the language of the country (my Dad spoke only German until he was 6, Sonia Sotomayor’s father never learned to speak it!), they are white and they are both destitute and resent immigrants. They actually listen to Rush and think he represents the truth and them. Rush preaches the Rand theory of “Darwinian Economics,” which is survival of the fittest, or to put it another way, the “I got mine, to hell with you!” philosophy.

The damaged mind of Rand took it to the next step, “If I’m stronger than you, I can take what your’s too!” It’s horrific and repulsive. I wonder what Jesus would say to the right wing if he came back to preach a sermon next Sunday and they were there to hear it.

Lowell Grant lives in Kelseyville.

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.

And just how much of your annual budget do you allocate to advertising and marketing to reach new customers? Five percent? Ten percent? Twenty percent? Twenty-five percent?

Imagine: After starting or continuing your advertising campaigns, the phone rings, the shop door opens, you don’t recognize the person, oh my goodness, it’s a “PLRC” – a potential loyal repeat customer!

What’s the first impression that you’re going to give to this PLRC, potential loyal repeat customer?

A big smile! Finally, you’re going to get a return on the investment of your marketing dollars. Now is your chance to get paid off … or not!

You discover that for whatever reason, you can’t accommodate them!

For example you have no occupancy, you don’t offer that particular product or service, you’re temporarily sold out of the product their looking for or the first appointment or availability you have is not until next week or next month.

What is the reason you can’t make that sale today?

If it’s just a matter of timeliness, ask your PLRC what their time line is.

If you cannot accommodate their time line – you can still create a PLRC today through “co-opetition.”

Our first year in business at the Edgewater Resort, located in Soda Bay on the shores of beautiful Clear Lake, after being in business for just two months, we received the first call for a reservation from a PLRC for a date that we were full on.

We had already met some of the other hospitality owners our first week in the county, at a Lake County Resort and Restaurant Association meeting and had visited and checked out some of their accommodations.

So, after finding out that the PLRCs dates where not flexible, we asked if we could mail her a brochure for the future, recommended and gave the phone number of a couple of co-opetitioners, or “COOPS.”

To our surprise, the next week we received a handwritten letter in the mail from this woman who was obviously blown away at our customer service. In her letter she thanked us for the referrals and wrote that the next time she comes to Clear Lake she would definitely call the Edgewater Resort to make her reservation. We’d made our first PLRC!

This PLRC has been coming several times every year since 1996 with her family to the Edgewater Resort and continues to recommend us to her family and friends … all of which have become loyal repeat customers.

Here’s a few tips for that PLRC that comes to your place of business rather than calling or e-mailing.

1. On the back of your business card, write the name and contact information of the COOPS that you are recommending.

2. When at all possible, take the extra step – pick up the phone and actually call the COOPS to see if they have the product or service available for the PLRC and tell them you are sending your PLRC to see them.

3. COOPS work both ways. Now you have created a win-win relationship with the co-op and in turn they will start recommending you.

4. Remember, after receiving a recommendation from a COOP, take a minute to call them and thank them for referring you.

How do you pick your circle of COOPS? Remember that because you are recommending them to your PLRC you must be sure that they will have a positive shopping experience. Believe me, your PLRC will get back to you, if they don’t!

Through my 40 years of having five successful businesses, I have always found that the most successful business people are ALWAYS willing to share their “secrets to success.” These folks get the concept of COOP. Success breeds success!

We all know that when a visitor comes to our communities and they have an negative experience, they don’t just go home and bad mouth that particular business, many of them go home and bad mouth the entire community!

Co-opetition referrals will ultimately alleviate this. The strong businesses will strive while the weaker ones will either step up to the plate and make the necessary changes or eventually, simply put, just go away.

We, Mt. Konocti Facilitation – MKF, have just recently facilitated the committee chairman, Leslie Firth, of the new “Shop, Stay and Play” campaign in Lake County. We suggested that they take a survey of our local citizens of the “top five best local businesses” in numerous and various categories including:

Wineries, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, event planners, photographers, travel agencies, massage therapists, consultants, retail stores, local news, certified public accountants and tax preparers, architects and engineers, pet services and veterinarians, doctors and dentists, computer and technology services, real estate and insurance agents, automobile repair and body shops, attorneys, electric, plumbing and building contractors, and one of my favorites – the best cheese-burger and fries on the lake … and the categories go on and on.

Now … here’s your list of COOPS to add to your own the list.

Hopefully, your business will be voted one of the top five. We have also suggested that this survey be taken once every four months and updated with the results each time. So, if a business is not on the top five best list, it’s certainly a goal to reach for, or not. They can either take the opinions of our local consumers or not. They can complain that their business is not on the list or strive to be one of the best of the best.

This list is not only a valuable resource when local citizens shop local, it is also valuable to the tourists and visitors that come to our communities and it gives deserving recognition to those businesses that are doing it right!

Our recommendation to survey and update every four months, the “top five best local businesses” in the various categories, also insures the consistency and level of service remain strong of the top five and creates the possibility for any new businesses and the ones that do step up to the plate, a chance to receive this prestigious recognition. We can imagine the top five soon becoming the top 10 in our community!

So, the next time you cannot accommodate a customer, no matter if they are new or repeat customers, take the time to turn them into a PLRC – a potential loyal repeat customer and at the same time guaranteeing them a positive local shopping experience.

When businesses play the co-opetition versus competition game, everyone wins – the local consumer, the visitor, our business community, our reputation and, most of all, the economic health of our communities.

Think about it – it only took a few mega businesses to put our national economy in the situation it is today. Small businesses have been creating the most new jobs for years, while many big businesses have been outsourcing their jobs for years.

Our motto at Mt. Konocti Facilitation is small businesses rock!

Sandra West is co-owner of Edgewater Resort in Kelseyville and co-facilitator of Mt. Konocti Facilitation, www.mtkonocti.com. She gave this talk at a business networking seminar hosted by the Lodge at Blue Lakes on Thursday, May 7. Mt. Konocti Facilitation offers free and confidential business facilitation services to businesses based in Lake County. For more information call 707-995-8133; all calls are returned within 24 hours.

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.