Briefs
Nursing Arnold
People just love Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger–especially California’s nurses! At the Governor’s Conference on Women and Children in Long Beach last week, the foot-in-mouth-inator bragged that nurses protesting his recent unilateral rollback of safe nursing staff ratios were “special interests” who were “angry because I kick their butts everyday.” The California Nurses Association (CNA) immediately fired back. “For the governor to denigrate nurses–a historically female profession–while speaking to an audience of women is an affront to women everywhere,” said Rose Ann De Moro, CNA’s executive director. Speaking of special interests, Arnold may want to check his own fundraising coffers, which have swelled some $26 million his first year in office–including $1.7 million received from the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, according to the Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights, the Southern California-based consumer watchdog organization.
Count North Bay In
Think globally, act nationally–that’s become the credo of a cadre of North Bay activists seeking a recount of last November’s presidential election results. On Dec.10, Eve Roberson, a retired election official from Santa Rosa, and Joan Quinn, a former criminal research attorney from Sacramento, had just uncovered evidence suggesting that the student vote was intentionally suppressed in Greene County, Ohio, when a county election official seized the records, claiming they are no longer public information by order of Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. “It is reasonable to infer that the student vote was suppressed, and that warrants an investigation,” says Quinn.
Trailer Trashed
Residents of the Riverside Villa Mobile Home Park in Healdsburg were sued for defamation last week by Carole Mascherini, the park’s owner, when they refused to cease a boycott against Garrett Hardware, also owned by Mascherini. At issue are recent rent increases at the park that may force some residents to relocate. Mascherini told the Healdsburg Tribune that the increases “are intended only to recover increased costs in property taxes and insurance,” but at the Dec. 6 Healdsburg City Council meeting, Dia Misuraca, one of the residents named in the suit, disagreed. “These residents are being forced to pay taxes on almost a million dollars worth of property that they aren’t allowed to use,” she said. The city council will discuss the legality and feasibility of a rent freeze for mobile-home owners on Dec. 20.
From the December 15-21, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.
