The summer solstice when, from our perspective in the Northern Hemisphere, the axis tilts back the other way and the sun again favors the lower half of the planet. Of course, upper and lower are just a matter of perspective, too. Lacking any knowledge about the limits of the universe, it’s impossible to say what’s up and what’s down. The news of the day often reflects the same ambiguity. No matter where you get your news, the rise and fall of stories from our horizon changes from day to day. God forbid you should rely on Local Views for factual information, but some listeners have observed that we’ve been taking it a little easy lately on the Bush Gang and their war. That’s true, and I guess that makes us the victim of news fatigue.

Everyone gets overloaded, even the reporters. The most outrageous things are happening to us. All the ideals which we grew up believing were our birthright, our country, are crumbling around us, but the average consumer of the daily news is tired of hearing about it, and I have to admit, I’m a little tired too. My outrage doesn’t recede, but I’ve said all I can say. Reporting the latest atrocity by the Bush Gang, whether by words or by action, no longer seems important. Everyone already knows what those guys are about, and just as Dub said about five years ago, you’re either for ‘em or against ‘em. I’m glad some people still are reporting the body count, but following the money isn’t so easy in the midst of unimaginable amounts awarded in no-bid contracts. If as it appears, the Republicans are toast in ‘08, you can be sure the likes of Bechtel, Haliburton and Monsanto are getting behind Democrats everywhere.

The corporate bandits already have their grip on our future, so the journalists become the key players in how and how well we exercise whatever grip we have left on democratic principles, and the bandits are working diligently to quash and squash the honest reporters. Reporters have been jailed for trying to maintain confidential sources, so now there’s a bill drifting around Congress which attempts to build up more protection for that long standing journalistic principle. You can imagine the Administration’s position on that bill, but you might have expected a little more imagination. An assistant attorney general testified to a Congressional committee that if the bill were adopted, terrorists would escape detection and prosecution by claiming to be journalists.

Maybe so. As we’ve mentioned before, electronic gadgets have made journalists out of everyone who wants to report something. We used to rely on news sources that claimed to be impartial and became institutions. Now we know that honest reporters have no place left in those institutions. I’ve heard them called, "The rancid ruins of old media." The information axis is tilting, so maybe it falls to each of us to pick up a pile of plastic and tell what we know and what we think. Several books have been published. A guy named Scott Gant wrote one called, "We’re All Journalists Now." He says, "Journalism is not a profession; it’s an activity which anyone can do." True enough. The Internet is crowded with nonsense, delusion and outright lies, but it bears an element of honesty which the corporate media just can’t offer. So how are we supposed to sort through all that stuff and decide what to read?

Let’s hit a local thing or two. Why should you care who sits in the County Clerk’s office? For starters, that would be the person who counts the votes. On top of that, the last three people to hold that elective office have burned out and walked out. The last one went so far as to start working for another employer without telling the local voters. So the choosing of her replacement is an important story, and there’s something about it that doesn’t smell quite right. The only person we know who wants the job is Greg Diaz, the runner up in the last election. He seems to have the resume, but his application for the job is taking an unusual path. First, the county asked for applications. Although only six people applied, the B of S appointed a committee to interview them and send just one candidate for a public interview by the Board. That extremely short list was comprised of Diaz, and the Board interviewed him earlier this week but decided to wait another week before deciding whether to hire him. Along the way, the GV Union complained that the county wouldn’t identify the other candidates nor the people on the selection committee. If the Board isn’t planning to hire Diaz, it’ll need at least a week to select the mystery candidate and compose some very creative excuses.

Did I say the Republicans are toast in next year’s elections? Here’s what’s popping up locally. You may recall that the local Republican Central Committee has experienced some dissension in recent times, including a public fist fight between a so-called conservative and the more liberal candidate he wanted to silence. Now, the committee appears to be divided along the lines of conservative and more conservative. Five former members formed a splinter group last year, and now they’re soliciting members and donations by saying the "official" central committee dropped the ball on Congressman John Doolittle. Even though Doolittle was reelected, he failed to carry Nevada County, and these maverick elephants say it was because the central committee was poorly organized. I don’t imagine it had anything to do with Doolittle’s advice that the county ought to hire a lobbyist if it wanted to have any influence in his office.

We’ve been trying to keep up with some of the recalls of food products. First it was pet food, then it was human food, even toothpaste, and it all was blamed on one or more additives imported from China. Now we’ve got a story about unsafe toys also originating in China. Are we really importing a bunch of dangerous stuff from China, and if so, why? Some of this has to do with the old capitalist/communist argument. US corporations like to say we should buy their products because the less expensive imports aren’t subjected to rigid inspections for quality. Now we know what happens when those US companies buy the raw materials from a communist country where no one from the US inspects anything. What I want to know is whether the Chinese sell the same stuff to their own people, or do they just export it to the US?