A couple of local things, first: We’ve been following the story of Nevada City’s peculiar relationship with its elected City Clerk and former mayor Cathy Wilcox-Barnes. She filed a claim against the city over the elimination of her 20-plus-years association with the city in non-elected, paid positions, and the city council met earlier this week, until deep into the night, to discuss what to do about it. "Filing a claim" is the step you take before you go to court. It means, "make me an offer or I’m suing you." No one is saying anything for the record, but the word is out that Wilcox-Barnes wants $2.5 million in damages and indemnification against any future claims against her.

The outcome of the city council’s long discussion wasn’t much. It was something like, "We’ve got insurance for this kind of thing, so we’ll let our insurer decide whether to make a deal with her or go to court." I guess that makes sense for the city, that’s why it pays for insurance, but when disputes drift into the realm of insurance companies, lawyers and courts, the merits of the case are almost always forgotten. The insurance company will settle for anything less than it thinks it would cost to go to court. Then it’ll sever its relationship with the city, no matter who’s right. No matter how much insurance you have, it always ends up costing you.

And we’ve also been following the changing face of retail business in our little corner of the world. You probably know that Hedman Furniture is shutting its doors. That’s not unusual for family owned businesses, but one Grass Valley city councilman suggested that a chain store such as The Gap might be persuaded to occupy the building. That’s bound to stir up another version of the great Walgreens vs. Trader Joe’s debate. The local family owned business is a fine ideal, and it’s not dead, but you can’t legislate it. The owner of the building will rent it or sell it to whoever puts the money on the table, even if it’s a chain store. At least it won’t be a new "big box."

In the supermarket biz, we already know that Safeway is venturing into the location formerly known as Ralph’s, now we know that Albertsons is about to become Save Mart. Grocery stores are becoming just like banks; every few months they hang a new sign on the building, but what goes on inside is pretty much the same. Come to think of it, most supermarkets now include banks, anyway.

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From the local to the global, now, but I don’t know what I’m talking about, today. Just asking questions. Bob Gates is the guy Dubya selected to replace Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary. Gates is the guy who presided in 1985 and ‘86 over the secret sales of weapons to Iran and the use of the money to finance a revolution in Nicaragua which actually was being orchestrated by the White House. Do you really think this personnel change at the big office in the Pentagon is supposed to be an improvement?

Bush has appointed a guy who is opposed to the existence of the United Nations to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, and he recently appointed a person who is opposed to contraception as the director of a federal program that doles out money to promote birth control. Do you think there’s a pattern developing here?

The Bushwhacker currently is in the middle of a whirlwind tour of the middle east and eastern Europe for what the mainstream media politely describes as diplomacy. The mainstream media also tells us that this little junket signifies a move toward changing US middle east policy, perhaps even getting troops out of Iraq, and that it was inspired by the recent US election results. I’m not buying that. Bush’s line of talk remains the same. No one, not even the US electorate is going to change his mind about occupying Iraq, he says. He’s not visiting anyone who isn’t known to be friendly to the US. He’s visited the Balkan countries which have sent troops to Iraq; he’s visited Saudi Arabia; he scheduled a meeting with the puppet leader of Iraq in Jordan because it was too dangerous for him to go to Baghdad. Condi Rice also is wandering around the middle east on a different agenda, but if there’s any thought of backing off, they’re not talking to the right people. It looks a lot more like they’re organizing the posse and digging in. I’m sticking with the analysis that the Bush gang is staying the course, no matter what they call it.

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While the Bush gang is stumbling around trying to dominate the middle east, Latin America is rapidly slipping the leash of US political and economic influence. Hugo Chavez says Bush is the devil, and Rafael Correa, the guitar playing political ally of Chavez has been elected president of Ecuador. Then there are those people in Oaxaca. They’re out in the streets in big numbers, and now they’re burning buildings. The media is telling me they’re leftists, but I don’t actually know any details about their political agenda. I’m told they don’t like the governor, but when someone is torching a building, it’s not easy to get an explanation of their political philosophy. The impression I’m forming is that the people of Latin America don’t feel much obligation to kiss up to the USA anymore. They have their own economic resources and if they don’t know how to use ‘em, they mean to figure it out, even while the Bush daughters are conducting a little real estate business in Paraguay.

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Finally, the Associated Press followed up the story of Michael Richards using the infamous "N" word when he was heckled by a couple of black guys in an LA night club by finding and interviewing a guy named Kenneth Kramer, the real person on whom the character Richards portrayed on Seinfeld was based. The real Kramer proved to be funnier than Richards. He said, "Judith Regan is right now on a plane to California trying to sign Michael Richards to a book deal: ‘If I were a racist, here’s what I would have said."