Oh no, a “sustainable” economy here in Bezau, Austria

Bezau, where we’re staying, is about the same size and altitude of Nevada City. It is a “sustainable” economy here, according to the locals. As a result, it has avoided much of the economic problems of neighboring Germany, not to mention the United States.

Much like our community, it is dependent on tourism. But it also has lumber mills and other light manfacturing to supply much of its needs. Much of the food is grown locally. It is sold at Farmer’s Markets like ours in the summer. In the winter, vegetables are grown in “hot houses.” This is a cheese growing region, and it is exported out of the area, too.

People work in and around the region, known as Bregenzerwald. It’s an idyllic lifestyle.

Here’s a “Flip” video that our son and I put together on Tuesday morning. I’m a big fan of the Austrian and Swiss dairy cows, which are in the video. They live in town in the winter and head for the hills in summer. One day, I hope to watch the cows being paraded into the mountains. It’s a festive event.

Mixing news and opinion (again) at The Union

As predictable as a cuckoo clock

Last week, I observed how The Union’s editor/publisher wrote a front-page news story about proposed high-school district cutbacks, including furloughs, without any comment whatsoever from teachers or the teachers union. None.

It was a glaring omission in a “news” story.

As I observed: “The Union largely is siding with the administration in its ‘reporting’ — while it bashes public unions over on the editorial page.”

Sure enough, like a Swiss cuckoo clock, that same Editor/Pubisher wrote a column on Tuesday stating – guess what – that teachers must accept the furloughs.

Mixing news and opinion at The Union is becoming more and more commonplace, whether it’s for marijuana dispensaries, the mine, political races or furloughs at the school. It’s insulting to the community.

And if the outcome so far on issues such as the mine and marijuana dispensaries is any indication, an opinion from the Editor/Publisher in The Union doesn’t carry much weight among decision makers and many others in the community.

School board trustees and administrators might hope for another “torchbearer.” If I were a teacher, many of whom also live in our community, I’d be pretty ticked off.

“Bad-ass” conservative sales dude Shamus and Barry Pruett are Facebook friends

Facebook isn’t just for teenagers: It can help you “connect the dots” when it comes to business and politics, too.

Here’s just one example: Clerk-recorder candidate Barry Pruett links to his Facebook site on his candidacy website, so I checked it out.

This past weekend, on his Facebook page, Barry posted a link to The Union’s story about the AtPack lawsuit against his opponent, Greg Diaz, and the county. You know, the one that omitted Barry’s involvement with AtPac, as well as its contributions to his campaign. (For the record, The Union has since been chasing down both key details – but only after they appeared on this blog first).

“Wow!!!” Barry wrote about the initial (and incomplete) article from The Union, which he posted on his Facebook page.

Then a guy named “Shamus Brown” weighed in with an “I like that” message. If you don’t know, Shamus Brown is the well-know sales guy from Grass Valley known as “Shameless Shamus Brown.”

I wrote about him once before on this blog because of his gigantic number of Twitter followers.

Brown is a professional sales coach who helps both businesses and private individuals increase their sales. His motto: Sales training to “crush the competition.” His blog is here.

But that’s not all, according to Listorious, a directory of Twitter lists.

“Shameless Shamus is the bad-ass conservative sales dude defending right-thinking and helping you put more bux in your pocket with his irreverent sales advice,” according to Listorious, a directory of Twitter lists.

One of Shamus’ favorite Facebook pages: “Telling Nancy Pelosi she’s full of crap.”

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I thought the clerk-recorder race was supposed to be nonpartisan. Gadzooks!

Scoop: Here’s Amgen video for Nevada City, GV, Auburn bike race!

You saw it here first! A video of the route for this May’s Amgen bike race is supposed to be officially announced on Tuesday, but surfing the web from Austria on Monday (in the Grass Valley timezone), my son and I *already* found it online with a YouTube search. As I reported previously, the race will go through Grass Valley and Auburn, not just Nevada City, on its way to the front of the state capital in Sacramento. It winds through 100 miles of country roads, including Dogbar, Rattlesnake and the Foresthill bridge, the tallest in California. “Don’t look down,” Amgen competitor and Auburn resident Chris Jones warns. The cool AMGEN video and all the details are below. The route map is here.

“Snowmageddon” forces deter to New York’s Katz’s Deli

Katz's Deli was bustling this weekend

While reporting on our county’s version of “Oh what a tangled web we weave” for the upcoming election season, our family was slowly making our way to the East Coast, and then Europe, for a ski vacation.

You see, the recession is making it dirt cheap to ski abroad – less than $200 a night, including board, for a sweet hotel is Bezau, on the Austrian-Swiss border. As luck would have it, the dollar is stronger than it has been since last May, too.

I negotiated a travelogue of our trip with our son’s grade-school teacher in exchange for pulling him out of school, so it’s a working vacation.

We used United Airlines miles, and the route was supposed to be Sacramento-Washington Dulles-Zurich, but the big snowstorm that slammed the East Coast changed all that. Dubbed “Snowmageddon” it forced us to reroute from Sacramento-Denver-New York LaGuardia.

I lived in D.C. once, and they really don’t know how to handle copious amounts of snowfall very well.

Instead of touring the White House and Air and Space Museum, we spent the day in New York, showing our son the Statue of Liberty, “Ground Zero,” Central Park and other sites.

I never miss a trip to Katz’s Deli (shown here) when I’m in New York, because it’s such a classic New York deli. We also swung by FAO Schwartz, the only remaining store of the famous toy retailer.

Once in Zurich, we hopped a train for western Austria and are settled comfortably in the town of Bezau, about the same elevation and size of Nevada City.

The skiing here is “old school,” kind of like Alta outside of Salt Lake City if you are familiar with that ski resort. There is no glitz or glamour – just a German-speaking town where Weiner Schnitzel, spatzle and German beer are commonplace. (Salads are fresh, too, with vegetables grown in hot-houses visible throughout the countryside).

We’ll be home in a week, and I’ll be blogging as always. This is the era of “anytime, anywhere” communications, and the happenings back home are only an email and web page away.

We’re headed out to dinner know while many of you are waking up. We wish you an enjoyable week.

Newspaper ledes that have nothing to do with their stories

A Facebook page is growing in popularity with some of my former news colleagues at The Chronicle, CNET and other newsrooms called “newspaper ledes that have nothing to do with their stories.”

It’s a hoot. “Here we honor hard-working but desperate newspaper reporters who try to spice up boring stories with a culture-saavy lede that then transitions into the actual, yet barely tangentially related, subject of the article.”

One reader writes: “My boss says a friend of his once wrote this lede on a profile of Jim Abbott, the one-armed ex-major league pitcher: ‘Jim Abbott is a southpaw because he was born without a northpaw …’”

On the page journalists and others from all over the country are offering their suggestions.

AtPac is Pruett’s largest campaign donor so far

AtPac contributed $1,500 to clerk-recorder candidate Barry Pruett’s campaign, making it the largest donor so far, according to Jack Foster, who works on incumbent Greg Diaz’ campaign.

The information is a matter of public record, Foster said.

Pruett represented AtPac – the same recording software company that is suing clerk-recorder Greg Diaz and the county – as was first reported on this blog over this weekend.

“I am proud to be supported by our local businesses,” Pruett responded here. “Linda Maclam, the owner of AtPac and one of my proud supporters, lives right here in Grass Valley, and provides a wonderful recording software to clerk-recorder’s in counties across this nation and to a multitude of counties in California, including San Francisco and Contra Costa counties.”

The Union caught up to my scoop in Monday’s newspaper, but it still hasn’t reported AtPac’s campaign contributions.

Diaz campaigner critical of The Union’s report on clerk-recorder suit

Here is a letter from Jack Foster who works on the Diaz campaign to The Union and reporter Liz Keller, who wrote the article about the clerk-recorder lawsuit.

Dear Ms. Kellar:

By now you probably have hard from many that your piece in the Union failed to point out that Gregory Diaz’s opponent in the race for County Clerk-Recorder is the former lawyer for AtPAC. You should also know that AtPAC is Barry Pruett’s largest campaign contributor to date. This is a matter of public record at the County Clerk-Recorder’s office. Ask for Pruett’s Financial Disclosure filed on CA Form 460. It shows that AtPAC has contributed $1500. Also, if you go to Google and type AtPac and Barry Pruett, you will find the minutes of the supervisors’ meeting where Pruett spoke as a representative of the firm. In continuing fairness to Mr. Diaz, it would be nice if you used a picture of him that didn’t look like it came from the police blotter. There is a lot of erroneous chatter going on in the community about this matter. It would be great if the Union could step up and by dealing in facts could put this matter to rest.

Jack Foster
Nevada City

Barry Pruett responds to clerk-recorder lawsuit

February 6, 2010 at 9:21 pm

Jeff, I respect your decision to back Greg. It’s a free country and I appreciate that you’ve been upfront with your readers about that; however, there’s sort of an insinuation in your post that needs to be corrected.

I’ve never hidden from anyone that I represented that company back in 2008 in connection with the RFP, but I don’t represent them in connection with this lawsuit which is related to trade secret misappropriation and computer fraud (Downey Brand). Different issues…Different attorneys. In fact, I don’t represent them at all as a company, and I have not for about five months. Despite your insinuations, I played no role in this lawsuit coming to fruition.

I’m sure that Greg Diaz wants people to believe that I had something to do with it, which is why he’s spreading the word that I’m behind it, but the fact is that he made a big mistake, and he’s desperate to keep that under wraps and try to blame someone else for his problems.

We have had years of drama out of the Clerk-Recorder’s office and Greg is continuing that saga. He’s gone through four assistant recorders in fifteen months. He takes contracts from our local businesses and shifts them to his friends out of state. If this lawsuit is to be believed (and it remains to be seen), he may have done so improperly. If that’s what “experience” gets you, then perhaps what we really need is some good old-fashioned judgment to make the right decisions.

I’ve been a Director of Business Development for Apple Computer (another topic on which you and I agree!), have been a small business owner and have advocated for the elderly as an attorney. I’m going to run a strong and professional non-partisan office as our next clerk-recorder. I’m being supported in this race by Republicans, Democrats and independents of all stripes who think it’s time we end the drama in our Clerk-Recorder’s office, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

All the best,
Barry

Much of the chat about clerk-recorder suit is pathetic

The Union’s omission that clerk-recorder candidate Barry Pruitt represented AtPac in a bid for a county contract, the same company that is now suing his opponent in the race Greg Diaz, is sad in its own right. It shows the lack of editorial oversight at our community newspaper under the current Editor.

Equally sad are some of the comments on The Union’s website under the story. If the bar got any lower, we’d have to do the limbo.

-Martin Light, the longtime CABPRO guy, doesn’t even know when the election is being held. He thinks it’s in November; in fact, it’s in June.

-Another dude “T3″ argues it’s probably the best The Union could do under deadline. Really? Papers are supposed to have editors with institutional knowledge – or ones who aren’t overtly biased, in this case, a Tea Party Patriot supporter just like Barry.

Not only that, but Google is the best crutch any paper could have in this day and age. If you type AtPac and Barry Pruett, you find the minutes of the supervisor meeting where he spoke as a representative of the firm. That’s not exactly Woodward-Bernstein journalism.

In addition, there was no comment from Greg. Why not? The paper already was three days late with the story, because the suit was filed on Wednesday. It could have waited.

In short, this is bush-league journalism. This is the same paper that took three days to report allegations of a Brown Act violation at a public meeting.

-Then in the cheapest shot of all some guy named “dittoman” mentions that Greg’s daughter works at the paper and alleges she is responsible for what letters and Other Voices run in the paper. “The fox guarding the henhouse,” he claims. Not only is this false, it also has nothing to do with the matter.

Any reasonable person would have to wonder about the timing of this lawsuit that named Diaz, not just the county. Why wasn’t the suit filed soon after AtPac lost the bid? The county attorney said he was surprised, too, noting that discussions about any concerns were ongoing.

You can spin it however you want, but you’d have to be awfully gulible not to wonder. It’s a newspaper’s job to raise these kind of issues.