Voters all over the nation stood up against the forces of unethical government on Tuesday. The decisive wave struck here in San Jose with the rejection of Manny Diaz and the Gonzales-associated Cindy Chavez and the election of Sam Liccardo and Chuck Reed. The Jack Abramoff-connected California District 11 Congressman Richard Pombo was swept out of office, in what was thought to be a safe Republican seat, along with several of his colleagues in similar positions. The voters in besieged Ohio rejected the corrupt Ken Blackwell’s bid to become their governor, and in Florida, they firmly turned down Katherine Harris, the ethically challenged engineer of the 2000 Bush “victory” who wanted to be a U.S. senator.

Probably like most of you, I have one of the popular antivirus programs on my computer. Every once in a while when I am online, I get a message that the antivirus has stopped a Trojan horse worm from secretly infiltrating my computer and killing off my data, leaving nothing but itself. If only we had a similar program to detect and foil political Trojan horse worms from squeaking through the vote and becoming law. One such worm, a classic of bait-and-switch techniques, is Proposition 90.

There is new evidence suggesting that George W. Bush is a movie fan, especially of animated features. It’s obvious that he has seen “A Bug’s Life” and was taken with the scene where a mile-long single-file column of ants finds its way suddenly blocked by a fallen leaf and stops dead in its tracks, unable to move forward, unaware that it could just go around or over the barrier. I am sure Bush had this scene in mind when he signed a bill approving the construction of a 700-mile fence along portions of the 2,000-mile Mexican-U.S. border. That ought to stop those columns of pesky illegal immigrants from crossing over. Thank God, we can all breathe a sigh of relief now.

Last Friday evening, I received a copy of a letter from the Diaz campaign. It was written by Manny Diaz to Sam Liccardo, and it made mention of a letter which was sent to Mr. Diaz by neighborhood leaders throughout District 3. In our letter to Mr. Diaz, we had raised concerns regarding his continuing activity as a lobbyist. Instead of responding to our group, Diaz sent a letter to Sam Liccardo. I have now responded directly to Mr. Diaz with my concerns, and also told him why I have chosen to support Sam Liccardo in the District 3 race.

Leonard McKay 1921-2006

The most revered member of Celtic society in ancient Ireland was the seanchaí, or “storyteller”—the man who carried the sum total of tribal knowledge in his memory and recited variations of colorful legends created by the ancestors to carry kernels of truth and information from one generation to the next. Leonard McKay was our seanchaí. History, lore and legend—and the “creative elaboration” thereof—were his stock in trade, having learned the craft from his acknowledged predecessor, Clyde Arbuckle, in the old-fashioned way.

In a day when the city council spent over $200 million (including the recently “discovered” $34.1 million surplus) on airport construction, cleaning up Watson Park and other items, they also threw the Rep Theater a lifeline that may save it from certain death, just in the nick of time. Because of the way the deal is structured, it remains to be seen whether the theater will be financially fit enough to survive, but I believe that it is a good start.

It is with great sadness that I report the passing away of our close friend Leonard McKay this morning. A native of Los Gatos who bravely served our country in Europe during World War II, he was 85. He was a beloved colleague of all of us here at San Jose Inside and we are going to miss him so much. We will be running a special tribute to Leonard in a few days and I will keep our readers informed of the plans for services below. In the meantime, please feel free to express your feelings or personal remembrances of our remarkable friend who loved life and freely shared his great knowledge of local history for the benefit of all. As a tribute, I am repeating one of his favorite stories again below. He loved to tell this one and would howl with laughter at his youthful naiveté.

Does anybody remember the 1994 Republican “Contract with America,” whereby all the GOP members of Congress elected that year pledged by their oath and signature to end Congress’s “cycle of scandal and disgrace,” and voluntarily submit to a 12-year term limit? Here is a little excerpt just to remind you:

Norway, with a population of just over 4.5 million, is one of the richest countries in the world. Since oil was discovered on its continental shelf in 1971, it has grown to become the third largest exporter of oil and gas in the world. It is completely self-sufficient in meeting its petroleum and electrical energy needs.  Paradoxically, it also has the second highest gasoline pump price (after Turkey) in the industrialized world of over $7 per gallon.

Like everyone else who went to college, I took Economics 101 and read Adam Smith. I guess I got the wrong idea about the meaning of the “free market”—at least that is what I am learning from the current attempt to bring Nvidia to the Sobrato building in downtown San Jose. Apparently, it means the cost of operating these profitable businesses is passed on to the taxpayers.

I decided the day after the primary votes were counted who I would vote for for mayor in November, and it wasn’t either one of the candidates whose name is printed on the ballot. Nothing since that day has made me change my mind about voting for “none of the above.” In fact, this week’s revelations about both candidates (Reed’s expense scam and Chavez’s letter) and their individual responses to related criticism only strengthen my resolve.

The denizens of San Jose are already known to be among the wealthiest, on average, in the nation. Now, an article in this month’s Atlantic Monthly identifies us as the most highly educated large city in the country, based on the number of college graduates per capita. This is very good news for all of us. I would expect that such statistics would translate into a population that is the most supportive of arts and culture in America, financially and intellectually. However, I am not so sure when I look at the continuing problems of the Rep Theater.

The way the major corporations have been acting the past few years, you would think that they believe themselves to be above the Constitution. Right here in Silicon Valley, the latest corporate scandal—where members of the HP board and Chairwoman Patricia Dunn have apparently been caught red-handed spying on their employees and on journalists—adds a nice new euphemism, “pretexting,” for a couple of common crimes, endemic in American corporate culture, to the list of white-collar conspiratorial activities. Dunn excuses her decision to order the spying by saying she did not know that pretexting (an Orwellian construct if there ever was one) meant any laws would be broken when she hired a firm of investigators to obtain the personal information of the company’s targets. That’s hilarious, given that the defined action of pretexting combines the crimes of fraud and identity theft in a very creative manner. Call it what you want, it’s still a felony and Dunn and anyone else involved should be accorded the prescribed punishment under the law if they are found guilty. As we all know from high school civics, “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

When I was a kid growing up in the mountains of southern California in the 1960s, one of the most magnificent sights, then common, was to see a full-grown California condor soaring overhead. My father, a professional pilot, and I used to fly alongside the giant birds at 8,000 feet where they would soar in thermals for hours without flapping their wings once. We wondered how they learned to do that. Then, all of a sudden, the condors disappeared—victims of the huge influx of humans greedy for space and resources. It happened so fast. Now, forty years later, these amazing birds are making a very slow return and our state is all the better for it. The unfortunate thing is that the condor’s long-term trip to the nearly-extinct species list didn’t have to happen.

If the above title sounds like one of Juan Miro’s paintings, you get my drift. Surrealism became tangible in San Jose this week with multiple manifestations. At least the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors came to their senses and stopped the concert hall project for the fairgrounds. I guess they finally realized that Kevin Costner’s “if you build it, they will come” rationale to spend himself into bankruptcy in the movie wasn’t a good idea in (sur)real life. The intentions may have been good, but the pie-in-the-sky entertainment-center vision and financial plan were fatally flawed. The unfortunate results, had the concert venue gone ahead per the county’s plans, would have made the problems at the Rep Theater seem like a piece of cake by comparison.

I don’t know about you, but I find the assaults by bands of petition signature-gatherers at the front door of Trader Joe’s or Safeway to be extremely intimidating. Now, I won’t sign any petition until I have read the text of the proposed initiative and have decided to support whatever it is, which means that I don’t sign petitions most of the time. However, refuse one petition, and the signature gatherer will whip out a different petition, and another and another. Often, these people are very aggressive, and I have observed scores of shoppers signing these documents without as much as a thought or question.