Just Sayin

I was sitting and thinking yesterday, and it dawned on me that I have been in Yuma now for 40 years. I came in on a Trailway's bus with my grandmother from Indiana at 4 am on or about January 31, 1975. The first stop was Gary's restaurant on 4th Ave and 24th St. It is called Bubba's now. I was in the fourth grade and was 10 years old. In the ensuing years I went to elementary school, junior high school, high school and college right here in Yuma. most of my childhood friends and acquaintances are here. My first love, first real girl friend, my first job, and for the longest time my family was here. I learned many valuable lessons here that have gone with me my whole life. Over the years I have seen quite a few changes. I have seen the Old Town Mall come and not go and struggle to remain relevant and thus in business. I have seen the Southgate mall come and go. I have seen the community grow from 32,000 to 100,000. I have seen two highs schools turn into five...

I come from a card carrying union family. In the last 60 or so years there have been including me, 10 members of the last three generations in 10 different unions. So I am well aware of the history of unions. I have though, formed my own opinion about unions. I can take them or leave them. I believe they are good and bad and necessary so that the worker and the employer both get a fair deal. I have worked as a public employee, and a member of a union that was Fair Share/ Full Share. I was a member if the International Operating Engineers Union Bargain Unit 12. In 2006 Arnold Swartsnegger put four initiative's on the ballot. One was to bust up the union. He wanted the people to vote on whether the workers who didn't agree with the unions politics could opt out of dues. The problem was that they already did. It was because of the Fair Share/Full Share union model. Full Share members paid $42 per month. That afforded you a vote on any contract. You al...

I remember as a child watching the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. I remember all of the old guard journalists, Cronkite, David Brinkley, Howard K. Smith, Harry Reasoner, and Eric Severied to name a few. These men and others were exceptional writers. Unlike the journalists and news people of today. Bob Simon was an old school broadcast journalist who was an exceptional communicator. Broadcast journalism was better for his having come, and will be a little less exceptional for his passing. Broadcast journalism today in general, and news dissemination in particular, are more about entertainment and politics and less about substance. Today broadcast journalists have to entertain us with, as well as deliver the news. Broadcast journalists today have a political agenda, and as such are less objective. Where once reporters just reported the story, today they have become the story. Once they were in genuine harm's way, now they just pretend they were to get t...