I Like Obamacare

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I Like Obamacare

More than 7 million people signed up for health coverage under President Obama’s health reform law in 2014.

Specifically in California, droves of people flooded the online Covered California website to sign up, at times making it impossible to complete the application process. Others opted to seek help by phone or from health insurance brokers and certified enrollment counselors—although they too ran into problems with the Covered California website. There were likely some people who became frustrated with the whole process and probably gave up. If you didn’t enroll, then expect to incur a tax penalty next year.

The positive aspect of the Affordable Care Act is that it will benefit many people, including students who are considered independent from their parents, people who have otherwise lost their medical insurance due to job loss or a “qualifying event,” or those who simply cannot afford the cost of other healthcare options, such as COBRA. For those who cannot afford specific medical plans through Covered California, they may be eligible to obtain payment assistance through Medicaid.

For the millions of people who are now covered through Obamacare, there’s a great sense of relief, because they can now get proper medical care, which they previously may have had to put off due to the unfortunate financial circumstances.

I personally had not planned to sign-up for healthcare in late March. About three years ago, I was laid off from my job and gave up paying out-of-pocket for healthcare insurance because my monthly premiums became too expensive. Now I’m playing the waiting game with the government and Covered California, while my paperwork is processed.

Here’s hoping Covered California is prepared for the next surge of applicants enrolling in healthcare this fall, as well as the commotion conservatives will continue to make in opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

Jessie De La O is a student at Sonoma State University and a freelance writer.

Open Mic is a weekly feature in the ‘Bohemian.’ We welcome your contribution. To have your topical essay of 350 words considered for publication, write op*****@******an.com.

Letters to the Editor: June 25, 2014

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Letters to the Editor: June 25, 2014

Disastrous Conformity

Victoria Hogan seems to think that good Democrats must not challenge the wisdom of party leaders (Letters, June 18). But from LBJ’s escalation of the Vietnam War to President Clinton’s corporate NAFTA pact to President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan, such conformity has been disastrous.

Along the way, Hogan is so eager to be a party gendarme that she can’t resist pseudo-factual distortion. From her letter, you’d never know that I’ve been a registered Democrat for the vast majority of my voting-age life. But if she’s determined to root out Green-tinged deviation inside the California Democratic Party, I’d suggest she start at the top.

As the Sacramento Bee noted (Sept. 13, 2010), Jerry Brown went on CNN in 1998 to denounce then–President Clinton for “overwhelming” policy failures and leading the Democratic Party to be “taken over by a confederacy of corruption, campaign consultants and lobbyists.” And guess what? Jerry Brown “said he voted for Ralph Nader instead of Clinton in 1996.”

But for people with Hogan’s mentality, Gov. Brown later redeemed himself by proving to be—yes—a corporate Democrat.

—Norman Solomon

Inverness

Stop the Presses

What we have left of our rural habitat we must keep sacred! The expansion of a 60,000-square-foot industrial printing operation at Ratna Ling in the remote Cazadero hills of Sonoma County would be a grave mistake.

The operation would bring in toxic chemicals, commercial vehicles, water pollutants and an extreme fire threat to a delicate area of our county. Ratna Ling has already shown that they have no regard for laws and regulations by committing serious permit violations. With their track record, we should not be awarding them with an exemption to county plans that have reserved this area for forest and agricultural use.

Supervisors Carrillo, Rabbitt and McGuire have shown their support for this industrial operation that has been creeping into our community. Supervisors, I ask you how many times we must make the same mistakes? Again and again we have seen nature around us destroyed. Reversing our impact has proven challenging if not impossible.

There are places where such activities are appropriate and have the adequate infrastructure to accommodate this production and scale. That place is not here, nor should we continue to destroy our habitat to allow for it to be.

—Sunali Sikand

Cazadero

Destruction of Berryessa

Mike Thompson, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of the Interior, Napa County supervisor Diane Dillon, Tuleyome’s Napa branch director Carol Kunze, and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein are the pack who contributed to or directed the destruction of Lake Berryessa (“Ghost Lake,” June 18). Their goal has been to eliminate family recreation and motorized boating. Stimulus funds were used to destroy infrastructures, marinas and all facilities. The Thompson/Boxer bills to create the Berryessa Snow Mountain Monument are incongruous with the Thompson/Dillon pretense that they want recreation at the lake. This has been and continues to be a land/water/resource grab. The Thompson/Dillon Orwellian speak is the rhetoric of distraction and distortion. Neither has good intentions for Lake Berryessa, a regional asset and boater destination, and its community.

—Lucy White

Via online

Support Our Libraries

How have reductions in staffing and hours of operation of the Sonoma County Library affected you? The cuts started in 2011 after the Bush administration/Wall Street collapse of 2008 and 2009 caused mandatory, across-the-board funding reductions.

The library’s operating hours of 52 hours per week were sliced to 40 hours per week. Attendance plummeted from 2.9 million in 2010 to 1.9 million in 2013. Today, the Sonoma County Library struggles to do its job with barely $33 per capita here versus $51 in Napa County and $95 in Marin County.

Contact your county supervisor. Ask him or her to place a funding ballot measure of 1/8 of 1 percent or a parcel tax of $25 on November’s ballot. A vote of more than 66 percent is needed to pass. Regular hours and full staffing would resume. Teen parents, children and seniors will thank you, and planning would start for a new Roseland District branch. Visionary educational advocates from Ben Franklin to Sam Brannon to Andrew Carnegie would be pleased. A young person or brand-new Sonoma County reader will gain his or her reading skill and an ability to soar.

—Frank Baumgardner

Santa Rosa

Write to us at le*****@******an.com.

Cabaret Buffet

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Cabaret Buffet

The audience had a beef with Oakland vaudevillian Jamie DeWolf last time he was in town.

To be specific, it was beef liver, and it came from a game DeWolf calls “What’s Down My Pants?” at the C Media party at Santa Rosa’s Arlene Francis Center in April. It ended with cow’s liver being thrown into the audience, then thrown back in disgust. “I got a couple of calls after that,” says Jake Ward, who produced that event. Still, Ward is bringing the magnetic, controversial and talented poet and emcee DeWolf back to headline the first North Bay Cabaret at Santa Rosa’s Whiskey Tip Thursday night.

“‘Tourette’s Without Regrets’ was the inspiration,” says Ward, referring to DeWolf’s racy monthly Oakland variety show. “We’re kind of seeing if our scene is ready for something like that.”

This event probably won’t be as controversial or profane as the Oakland show, but it will feature burlesque by Eva D’Luscious, music by Josh Windmiller (of the Crux) and others, standup comedy by deadpan goth Oliver Graves, dance, spoken word, DJs and emcees. In short, it’s all over the place—and that’s just how it’s supposed to be.

“It’s such a buffet of a cabaret,” says Windmiller, who also books events in the North Bay. The style morphed out of the Arlene Francis Center, which has been hosting unclassifiable events like this for years. “To see this as a spreading out of that patchwork cabaret is really cool,” Windmiller adds.

The event is really two shows packed into one night, says Shey Roth, who is responsible for the hip-hop and dancing portion of the event. “There’s the frenetic, unpredictable thing outside, and inside is the shelter, the structured format.”

Three emcee duos (headlined by Spends Quality and Elle Araminta) will be spitting rhymes while DJs spin vinyl during and between sets all night long. Dance performances by Reprezent Break Dance crew and others get the party moving, while spoken word by Brianna Sage and others inspires a poetic verse or two.

“It’s like a yin and a yang all in one,” says Roth.

Like Ward and Windmiller, Roth, the producer of Good Hip-Hop Monthly, also started his booking career at the Arlene Francis Center and is glad to see the vibe spreading throughout the city. “Connecting the two sides of Santa Rosa is a really important part of this,” he says.

“We want to show other venues, other audiences what kind of talent we have showcased here,” says Ward, referring to his work at the Arlene Francis Center.

The diversity is “something really special that people are catching on to,” says Windmiller. It’s important for the overall strength of an arts community to showcase under-the-radar acts, he says. “You can’t really build a community of music and a scene based just on headliners.”

Doo Whopper

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Doo Whopper

Third act troubles mar one of Clint Eastwood’s best movies, an adaptation of the hit showbiz musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Jersey Boys. Events are rejiggered so that the triumph (the 1967 smash “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”) can come after a sketchily and half-heartedly directed tragedy.

Yet the movie succeeds. Eastwood brings it home with a nearly no-star cast; its one star, Christopher Walken, playing Gyp DeCarlo, a well-mannered mafia don, is Oscar-bound. Watching Walken’s jaw tremble while he listens to Valli sing about mother love, we view not only one of the best actors alive, but also see Eastwood sparing us overpraise for the Four Seasons’ music.

The Four Seasons’ white doo-wop, inescapable in the 1960s, had an eerie jet-age glaze on it—in these mixes, with the archaic keyboards, you think less about Johnny Ace and all the other black doo-woppers excluded from this picture, and think more about Joe Meek over in the U.K. The debut of “Sherry” on American Bandstand is greatly evocative: Valli’s rich chilling wail, the cramped studio blocked by a clunky TV camera, a waxy Dick Clark paralyzed behind his podium.

Valli is played by John Lloyd Young as a man so uncomplicated that he’s slightly mysterious, a workaholic who sacrifices himself for his shady partner (Vincent Piazza of Boardwalk Empire). He’s instantly likable. The down side: we don’t see enough of the debuting Renée Marino as Valli’s tough wife.

Snipers have been describing this as an overlong Behind the Music episode, but it’s more like an engrossing oral history of a band’s rise and fall, with conflicted perspectives and old hurts. The direct address to the camera works well, sometimes brilliantly. Beyond the Jersey metaphysics, there’s something deep and tangy and downbeat here, countering the hysterical ebullience of the tunes. At heart, it’s a musical about overwork and debt.

‘Jersey Boys’ opens Friday across the North Bay.

Under the Radar

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Under the Radar

Nestled among nondescript industrial blocks on Santa Rosa’s Piner Road is one of the most extensive and all–encompassing musical centers in the North Bay.

Music scholar and educator Nathan Prowse started the Live Musicians Co-op nearly eight years ago as a small rehearsal and recording space. The locally raised musician, who studied at Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State before earning a degree at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, returned to the North Bay and saw the slim pickings that local musicians had in terms of space for making music.

“There’s a ton of talented musicians around,” says Prowse, “but the area doesn’t support live music. I don’t know why.”

Prowse saw an opportunity to put together a successful business model for the underground scene with his co-op. Bands pay a monthly fee and are guaranteed rehearsal time in one of the space’s soundproof studios, complete with equipment and gear. There are also state-of-the-art recording studios, with reasonable rates and a professional mindset.

“It’s more of a networking hub for musicians, a cesspool of ideas,” says Prowse.

For him, it’s all about the community, and the co-op has long worked with nonprofits like the InterFaith Shelter Network to offer free music and dance lessons to disadvantaged youth.

In the last two years, the co-op has doubled in size. The largest rehearsal space has been outfitted with a top-notch sound system and dance floor. “We’re not a bar, we’re not somewhere you eat. This is where you hear live music,” says Prowse.

This summer, the co-op is bringing underground music back to Santa Rosa with an exciting concert series. Out of all the eclectic offerings, the most intriguing show is expat Chinese punk band Stegosaurus? The group was formed in 2009 in Shanghai by four Americans, two of whom hail from Sonoma County, and mashes up a fun and addictive brand of outlandish punk mixed with Chinese pop and throwback rock riffs.

Stegosaurus? play for the first time on American soil, kicking off a DIY tour at the Live Musicians Co-op. The show also features local alternative rockers Green Light Silhouette and indie-rock pop endeavor Survival Guide, which features Petaluma vocalist and musician Emily Whitehurst, best known as the voice of seminal punk outfit Tsunami Bomb. The co-op will also host contestants in the Bohemian’s 24-Hour Band contest later this summer.

Stegosaurus? play Wednesday,
July 2, at the Live Musicians Co-op, 925 Piner Road, Santa Rosa. 7pm. $6. 707.527.8845

Bottlerock’s Back, Baby

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Bottlerock’s Back, Baby

Weezer at Bottlerock 2014. Photo by Katie Stohlmann.
Like the Terminator, Bottlerock proclaimed it would be back. The official announcement today made good on that promise.
The Napa music festival will return in 2015 again as a three-day festival, May 29–31. It will again take place at the Napa Valley Expo, according to an official statement made today by Latitude 38 Entertainment, the festival’s producers. Bands have not yet been announced.
“We’re thrilled to be back at the Napa Valley Expo with the support of our community of music, wine and food lovers for 2015,” says L38 CEO Dave Graham in a press release.
The festival mostly cleared its name this year after a fun-filled first year took a nasty turn after the founders failed to pay nearly $10 million in debts after the five-day event. They sold the brand to the new owners, who hosted the event with just three months of planning and addressed nearly every complaint of the previous festival. Many vendors returned after cajoling by the new owners, and the only major issues seemed to be the exit line on the festival’s second day, owing to about 35,000 fans trying to exit to shuttle buses at the same time.

High Times Medical Cannabis Cup Comes to Sonoma County

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High Times Medical Cannabis Cup Comes to Sonoma County

CannabisCup_frisco2014_MOE__WEB.jpg

News that the High Times Medical Cannabis Cup was returning to the Sonoma County Fairgrounds June 28-29 hadn’t yet reached David Rabbitt by Thursday morning, even as the event rolls into the playground, err, fairground, next weekend.

“It seemed to be successful, so it doesn’t surprise me,” says Rabbitt, the 2nd District Sonoma County Supervisor and its board president.

But…what of the quasi-legality of this whole California marijuana dance with dispensaries and lurching law enforcement, on the county fairgrounds, no less?

“The state, obviously and beyond the state, the U.S. has not come to grips with what it wants to do with marijuana,” Rabbitt says.

Rabbitt strongly supports medical marijuana and applauds self-regulation efforts at dispensaries. On legalization for recreational use, he says, “I think we’re heading in that direction.”

His view?

“I’m torn.”

Rabbitt describes a libertarian, pro-individual-rights tendency to support legalization, and “doesn’t want to be a hypocrite on alcohol.”

Some of his main concerns are with law enforcement, and protecting kids and the environment.

“It’s a tough one,” he says as he warns of a persistent economy of “illegal growers on public and private lands.”

Locally, he is concerned about pop-up dispensaries and places where “it’s legal with some question marks going out the back door.”

Dispensary supervision could be tighter he says, but the supervisor says the bigger issue than recreational or medical use is, “What’s the cost to society when it’s grown on denuded mountain?”

“Until we legalize and regulate it, we really can’t deal with that. Go ahead and legalize and tax the hell out of it to pay for the programs to monitor the issues. … There will always be growers or operators flying under the radar.

“Like most counties, we try to do the right thing,” Rabbitt continued. “Certainly with medical marijuana—far be it for us to deny anyone their medicine.”

The Cannibus Medical Cup features many buds getting together, including jam band Moe, and offers products and services, devices and totemic relics you might associate with certain persons of the varying degrees of the whole sort of pot-smoking persuasion, but never at dusk.

“It is incumbent upon the operators and whoever is putting on the show to adhere to the laws,” Rabbitt says.

“Law enforcement, if called, will enforce the laws on the book. That’s what they are sworn to do.”

He recalled 2013’s Cannabis Cup event as a peaceful, “no negative feedback” affair.

“Last year, I don’t remember it being a problem,” says the supervisor.

SRJC Named in $15 Million Lawsuit

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SRJC Named in $15 Million Lawsuit

srjc_sign.jpg

As reported in the Bohemian June 4, former Santa Rosa Junior College nursing instructor Daniel Doolan is filing a second lawsuit against the school after winning over $300,000 in a case last year. It was reported today by the Press Democrat that he is seeking $15 million.

Doolan’s lawyer, Dustin Collier, told the Bohemian he would be filing suit for the dismissal and denial of tenure status by the school in this second lawsuit, but had estimated the amount at $1.6 million. “There’s a whole year’s worth of allegations that weren’t adjudicated yet,” he says of the first lawsuit. “For whatever reason, [a supervisor] started making allegations that he was a physical threat,” says Collier. “He is a big guy, about 6’3”, 6’4”, a little over 200 pounds, but he is a giant teddy bear.”

SRJC’s vice president of human resources Karen Furukawa-Schlereth says the first case brought four charges: Gender discrimination; sexual harrassment; failure to prevent harassment; and defamation of character. A jury found in favor of Doolan on the defamation charge, awarding him over ten times the $25,000 he was seeking. “My recent info does look like we will be appealing the decision,” she says.

Meanwhile, Doolan’s new case centers around his termination and what his lawyer refers to as “manipulation” of his tenure review process. All in all, Collier says his client has been set back about 10 years in terms of professional advancement.

Union Vote at Graton Casino Wrapping Up

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Union Vote at Graton Casino Wrapping Up

union.jpg

By Tom Gogola

Nothing was official yet, but the vote was “going great” Wednesday afternoon at Graton Casino, where Unite Here’s Sara Norr was counting union sign-up cards from workers here that would set in motion a collective bargaining agreement for 650 casino employees.

Norr said the results would be out by week’s end.

If enough waiters and janitors, hospitality workers and cooks vote in favor of unionization, they’d enter collective bargaining talks with casino operator and their employer, Station Casinos. The casino opened in 2013 and is owned by Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.

Norr said that tribal input in any talks would be a matter of negotiations between the Las Vegas-based casino operator and the owners.

“It is between Station and the tribe how they want to divide up input or responsibility, so the tribe could send a rep to bargaining if they wanted to and Station agreed,” Norr says via email.

Workers signed the cards Tuesday and Wednesday in a casino events room rented to Unite Here’s 2850.

“As a single parent, job security is number one,” says porter and signee Christina Vega, who lives with three of her children in Santa Rosa.

Sarah Brightman Cancels Show at Green Music Center

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One of the most powerful voices on Broadway and beyond, soprano singer Sarah Brightman has unfortunately been forced cancel her August U.S. tour, which included an appearance at the Green Music Center’s Weill Hall. From her website:
“I have suffered a hairline fracture to my ankle and have been advised by my doctors to rest it until September by which time it will have fully recovered. I have, regrettably, taken the decision to cancel my forthcoming US dates in August. I truly apologise for any disappointment caused.” -Sarah Brightman
No word on rescheduling yet, as the performer focuses on recovery.

I Like Obamacare

More than 7 million people signed up for health coverage under President Obama's health reform law in 2014. Specifically in California, droves of people flooded the online Covered California website to sign up, at times making it impossible to complete the application process. Others opted to seek help by phone or from health insurance brokers and certified enrollment counselors—although they...
Read more

Letters to the Editor: June 25, 2014

Disastrous Conformity Victoria Hogan seems to think that good Democrats must not challenge the wisdom of party leaders (Letters, June 18). But from LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam War to President Clinton's corporate NAFTA pact to President Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan, such conformity has been disastrous. Along the way, Hogan is so eager to be a party gendarme...
Read more

Cabaret Buffet

The audience had a beef with Oakland vaudevillian Jamie DeWolf last time he was in town. To be specific, it was beef liver, and it came from a game DeWolf calls "What's Down My Pants?" at the C Media party at Santa Rosa's Arlene Francis Center in April. It ended with cow's liver being thrown into the audience, then thrown...
Read more

Doo Whopper

Third act troubles mar one of Clint Eastwood's best movies, an adaptation of the hit showbiz musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Jersey Boys. Events are rejiggered so that the triumph (the 1967 smash "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You") can come after a sketchily and half-heartedly directed tragedy. Yet the movie succeeds. Eastwood brings it home...
Read more

Under the Radar

Nestled among nondescript industrial blocks on Santa Rosa's Piner Road is one of the most extensive and all–encompassing musical centers in the North Bay. Music scholar and educator Nathan Prowse started the Live Musicians Co-op nearly eight years ago as a small rehearsal and recording space. The locally raised musician, who studied at Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State...
Read more

Bottlerock’s Back, Baby

Like the Terminator, Bottlerock proclaimed it would be back. The official announcement today made good on that promise. The Napa music festival will return in 2015 again as a three-day festival, May 29–31. It will again take place at the Napa Valley Expo, according to an official statement made today by Latitude 38 Entertainment, the festival's producers. Bands have not...
Read more

High Times Medical Cannabis Cup Comes to Sonoma County

News that the High Times Medical Cannabis Cup was returning to the Sonoma County Fairgrounds June 28-29 hadn’t yet reached David Rabbitt by Thursday morning, even as the event rolls into the playground, err, fairground, next weekend. “It seemed to be successful, so it doesn’t surprise me,” says Rabbitt, the 2nd District Sonoma County Supervisor and its board president. But…what...
Read more

SRJC Named in $15 Million Lawsuit

Former nursing instructor files second lawsuit against school
Read more

Union Vote at Graton Casino Wrapping Up

By Tom Gogola Nothing was official yet, but the vote was “going great” Wednesday afternoon at Graton Casino, where Unite Here’s Sara Norr was counting union sign-up cards from workers here that would set in motion a collective bargaining agreement for 650 casino employees. Norr said the results would be out by week’s end. If enough waiters...
Read more

Sarah Brightman Cancels Show at Green Music Center

One of the most powerful voices on Broadway and beyond, soprano singer Sarah Brightman has unfortunately been forced cancel her August U.S. tour, which included an appearance at the Green Music Center's Weill Hall. From her website: "I have suffered a hairline fracture to my ankle and have been advised by my doctors to rest it until September by...
Read more
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