What may are may not be what’s going on inside City Hall in Nevada City remains the most interesting local story this week. In the last meeting of the City Council which was, literally, the last meeting of the current council configuration, following the advice of some outside consultants, the council voted to eliminate the job called operations supervisor and create a new position called financial officer and another new position as the financial officer’s assistant. What that means is that Cathy Wilcox-Barnes, 20+ years as a city employee, former member of the council, former mayor, and currently the city clerk, is fired. Some people tried to talk the council into leaving the issue to the new council to consider in a couple of weeks, but nothing doing. You have to read deep between the lines in The Union to get much of a grip on this story, but it appears that the city manager and the consultants he hired are saying Wilcox-Barnes just wasn’t collecting all the business licence fees and water bills she was supposed to collect at a cost to the city of at least a quarter million dollars. I see litigation in the city’s future before the dust settles.

We’ve talked before about that US Supreme Court decision last year allowing the seizure of private property by local government for the purpose of handing it over to private developers. We predicted that the decision was likely to be legislated out of existence, and it’s happening fast. At least 25 state legislatures have bills pending, and local governments all over the country already have passed ordinances. Here in California–here’s a surprise–the legislature isn’t doing anything, but you can expect to see it as a ballot initiative soon. The developers would have to spend record amounts of money to stop that train.

A court appointed federal investigator wrote a report saying that California’s state prison system is in ruins, and the feds ought to take it over and fire all the people running it. In response, governor Arnold now has the legislature in special session to solve the "prison crisis." The only solution anyone is talking about is building more prisons in the state that already locks up more people per capita than any other. No one is even considering the idea that maybe we could just reduce the prison population. The last time I looked, somewhere near 70% of the people in jail are drug offenders, and I shouldn’t have to repeat all the better ways to deal with most of those people.

The US senate has killed a bill to raise the federal minimum wage a couple of bucks from the current $5.15 an hour. The bill actually got a majority of the votes, but failed to get the necessary 60. Ted Kennedy said it best. Arguing for the bill he said, "A job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it."

Back in the 1960s, landmark legislation called the Voting Rights Act was enacted, but a sunset date was attached to it, and it’s renewal is now before congress. Just as they opposed it in 1965, the Republicans are saying they won’t vote for renewal. Does this mean the elephants don’t want you to have a right to vote? The way the last two presidential elections went, that shouldn’t be a surprise. The argument goes that the act is no longer needed; everyone’s right to vote is secure. Tell that to a few hundred thousand black voters in Florida and Ohio. It’s hard to see how anyone can argue that the civil rights movement is over when almost everyone in prison is from a racial minority and 3/4 of them are black.

I see the FBI busted seven guys in Florida for talking about blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted they had no weapons and no money. I guess if you can’t find any real terrorists, the next best thing is to bust people who fantacize about it.

I want to talk for a couple of minutes about personal privacy which is being defended as a basic human right, although it isn’t specifically mentioned in the Constitution. I’m pleased that the corporate media has finally begun to report about it, but I suspect that’s true only because it’s already too late to do anything about it. The subject is being called the erosion of privacy, but it’s more like a ful-scale elimination of any right to privacy. We’ve all heard the litany: The government is listening to your phone calls and examining all your financial records; the phone company and most insurance companies gladly hand the government data bases containing all the personal information they have on everyone and say they did it because they want to and they can; people are being arrested without warrants and locked away indefinitely without charges; and now the people who hold the highest cards at the nation’s poker table are saying that the New York Times and other daily newspapers are traitors for reporting what the government is doing. The government says, "Even though we were trying to keep it secret, it’s actually legal," and so far, the courts are agreeing.

Knowing these things, it would be easy to conclude that we have no more rights in the good ol’ USA than people have in the countries to which the gift of democracy has not yet been bestowed. The democracy factor is why the US can maintain the illusion of civil rights when, in reality, very few remain. If the great capitalist democracy has learned anything in the last couple hundred years, it’s how to sell the product. Instead of being forced at gunpoint to be under constant surveillance, Americans have been persuaded that they like it that way. I want to suggest that the situation is way beyond writing a letter to your congressman. It’s even beyond throwing the scoundrels out and electing someone else, because there’s nobody on the ballot for whom you’d care to vote, anyway. I’ll have to leave it for you to imagine what else we might be able to do.