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Category: Ethics

  • Good Fire, Living Water: The Gifts of a Marsh Economy  

    Public Invited to New Exhibit on Native Californian Stewardship

    Promotional Flyer for Good Fire, Living Water; Illustration by Ooti Maxine

    (From press release) Over 90% of the Sacramento Valley’s wetlands have been destroyed over the past 150 years, contributing to today’s interrelated extinction, climate and water crises. Naturalist, artist, and Maidu/Wintun Cultural Practitioner Diana Almendariz is working diligently – with plants such as tule and cattail, and with artists, youth, land managers, and scientists  – to reverse this significant loss.

     A leader in revitalizing Native Californian stewardship through cultural burning and Native plant restoration, Almendariz brings to life indigenous knowledge that was once targeted for erasure and genocide. In a sign of changing times and attitudes, the Sacramento Bee recently recognized Almendariz as one of the region’s top change makers. She praises tule – a keystone wetland species — for renewing her cultural traditions.

    “Tule has been my creative muse for 30 years. This important reed is at the heart of the marsh economy – drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, creating rich soil, cleaning water, and cultivating the valley’s rich food web. By restoring wetlands, we can revitalize the  natural systems that are key to a livable future,” explains Almendariz.

    A new exhibit, Good Fire, Living Water: The Gifts of a Marsh Economy, opening on September 20th at the Davis Art Center, showcases Almendariz’ multifaceted eco-cultural practice that spans the arts, education, Native homeland culture, and environmental stewardship. The exhibit highlights how she is passing on this vital  knowledge to the next generation of Native cultural practitioners – her daughters Ooti Maxine and Christina Almendariz.

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  • Prophets of the Finite: Remembering Paul Ehrlich, Ronny Davis, and Wendell Berry

    From L to R: Ann Ehrlich, Amory Lovins, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, and David Kupfer, having lunch in Palo Alto in 2022

    By David Kupfer

    The summer of 2026 has witnessed the quiet, heavy closing of an era. With the recent passings of population biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, radical theater pioneer R.G. “Ronny” Davis, and most recently, the visionary agrarian writer Wendell Berry on August 31, we have lost a singular trinity of American defiance. Operating in vastly different arenas—the university laboratory, the public park, and the rural hillside—these three men were bound by a shared, ferocious commitment to shaking humanity out of its industrial complacency. To have known them as friends and mentors over the decades was to witness the rare alchemy of brilliant intellect wedded to an uncompromising moral compass. Now, as the dust settles on their long lives, their final, intimate moments reveal the heavy burden borne by those who dare to speak truth to a civilization bent on its own consumption.

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  • Eric Jones’s Healthcare Record: Employers 7, Patients 0; the good news is your boss saved money

    Wrong seat, wrong moment, CACD-04 Part VI

    By Judy Tipple

    His campaign biography says his father’s health struggles taught him “how critical affordable health care” is to working families (ericjones.us/meet-eric). It says he “built a firm that built businesses.” It lists Lyra Health as a company he helped make “accessible to millions.”

    Fair enough. Let’s look at the businesses.

    His job was healthcare

    Jones joined Dragoneer Investment Group in 2013 and became a partner 4 years later, where he remained until he resigned in July 2025. Not an employee. A partner. His sector title at the firm was “Partner – Healthcare, Fintech, Internet” (RocketReach profile; his LinkedIn will confirm). Healthcare was not a side interest. It was his book.

    So the question is simple. When Jones and Dragoneer put money into healthcare, who was the customer?

    Seven companies. Same answer.

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  • In CA04, which Eric Jones do you get?

    Wrong Seat, Wrong Moment – Part V

    By Judy Tipple

    Yesterday in Marysville, Eric Jones stood in front of 250 farmers at the Yuba-Sutter Farm Bureau forum and said this:

    “Let me make a simple statement: no more data centers in California.”

    He called for a national moratorium. He said members of Congress who don’t understand the technology shouldn’t be in the room for these decisions (Patch, Sept. 2, 2026).

    Strong stuff. The kind of line that gets applause in a room full of people watching data centers drink their water and eat their farmland, and farmland all over the country.

    Here’s the problem. It’s not what his campaign has been telling voters for months.

    Go to ericjones.us right now. His official AI platform page said something very different, until 2 days ago:

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  • Give Yourself a $200 Pay Raise

    By Bertie Brouhard

    It may be more. Might be less. But it’s monthly and this is a raise of after income tax dollars. Most living dwellers, bill payers, are eligible. Those incredibly wealthy, not even slightly cost conscious, a few living off the grid or your neighbor perhaps who has recently invested a large sum in solar panels, lithium battery banks and highly efficient mechanical systems might not be. My  target audience for this article is the rest of you.

    We live in a meteorological wonderland; this huge valley with its high desert, dry heat climate. Thankful every summer evening for our refreshing delta breeze. And our frost, snow free winters. As I type this about 9 AM it’s bright and still on this late August morning. Outside air temp is 68F and it’s 66F in my living room. Last night’s low was 58F and today’s high is 93F. My predicted indoor high is 78F. Only my laptop, my fridge and the trickle charges (TV and smart speakers) are consuming any electrical energy.

    Your pay raise is generated by the cost saving measures you implement to drastically lower your P, G & E monthly devotional, offering, bequest, and irksome payment.

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  • Flip-flopping Eric Jones first casts himself as a progressive, but now endorses right-wing policies

    Jones is “ashamed” of supporting Prop 50 and endorses “sunsetting” of federal programs

    By Roberta Millstein

    Eric Jones, former partner of the venture capital firm Dragoneer Investment Group, seems to be shifting dramatically rightward in the wake of (or in order to gain?) the endorsement of Republican Ray Riehle, his former opponent in Jones’s attempt to become the congressional representative for California’s District 4.  What’s going on here?  There are several aspects, so let me unpack.

    First, I remind readers that Jones still has financial interests in Dragoneer and that his run for Congress is largely funded by 1) his own money, 2) by maximized direct donations from his former Dragoneer colleagues and other high tech executives, and 3) by a Super PAC that has so far funded only Jones, coming from some of the same sources as the direct donations.  Each of these three categories individually amounts to millions of dollars.  This is Silicon Valley, venture capitalist, AI/high tech, data-center-favoring money, not money that is looking to benefit citizens.  Details can be found here.

    As I noted in an earlier article, Jones has sought to present himself as a progressive, implying affiliations with Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders and touting his endorsement from Our Revolution (removed from two Our Revolution web pages and now mysteriously reappeared).  As I document in the same article, that appearance of being a progressive was always misleading, given his donation to a Republican candidate for governor — a member of the Bush family — and support of AI-driven health care, among other things.  But his mask seems to be slipping further.

    Generally, it is a sign of desperation when a candidate dramatically changes his stripes.  Does Jones think he can woo Republican voters?  Maybe so — after all, he founded an organization whose specific goal was to figure out what voters want (see previous links).  And did Jones craft a new platform to gain Riehle’s endorsement?  It’s hard to explain why else Jones would now say:

    “I supported Prop 50 as a response to the gerrymandering effort in Texas. But after speaking with thousands of voters at their doors, I am extremely disappointed — ashamed, even — of the way this was carried out in our own state.”

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  • Why an Unubstructed Delta Breeze Is Critical for California

    And how the proposed California Forever project threatens livability in Davis and other parts of the Central Valley

    By Dr. Glen Holstein

    Covering 18,000 square miles, California’s Central Valley is the largest nearly flat valley on earth.  It is almost entirely surrounded by mountains and consequently prone to very high temperatures since winds blowing downhill from mountains compress and heat air.  That is why Death Valley, completely surrounded by mountains, has average July temperatures higher than those of any month anywhere else on earth.  Its mean July temperature is 100.9 degrees F while the mean July temperature of Aswan deep in the Sahara Desert but not surrounded by mountains is 91.8 degrees F.  Death Valley even set the all-time scientifically accepted high temperature record of 134 degrees F in 1913.

    But the Central Valley is not entirely surrounded by mountains.  They open up at the Golden Gate to permit a cooling air flow from the Pacific Ocean called the Delta Breeze to significantly lower summer temperatures in the center of the Central Valley but much less so in its northern part called the Sacramento Valley and its southern part called the San Joaquin Valley. 

    The Delta Breeze’s origin is the cold California Current flowing southward from Alaska.  Disturbance where it encounters obstructions like Point Reyes and the Monterey Peninsula causes upwelling from depths that cool coastal water even more.  

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  • Senior Citizens Commission Bites the Dust

    By Elaine Roberts Musser 

    In checking over the Senior Citizens Commission agenda, it was incredibly sad to see that it is “concluding its work”. In other words, it’s disbanding. What is particularly disheartening, is knowing that my successful fight, many years ago, to save this commission (when the City Council was attempting to eliminate commissions at the time), was ultimately unsuccessful so many years later.  Does anyone honestly think that senior citizen issues will be addressed, when their concerns are split between three different commissions not designed to handle senior issues? The upshot will be that seniors will no longer have a meaningful voice in Davis.  

    Because of Councilmembers Vaitla and Chapman and their plan to defang commissions, they have single-handedly destroyed the Senior Citizens Commission, the Tree Commission, and the Utilities Commission. Along with that, they have eviscerated the power of the other commissions – by insisting that no new items be placed on commission agendas without City Council permission.  And the rest of the City Council, to their shame, have gone along with this nefarious plot. That controversial commission agenda policy was to be reviewed after a year, but no such assessment ever took place.In other words, we were lied to. 

    It has become patently clear the current City Council is hostile to public input. They are not interested in independent review or advice from commissions composed of ordinary citizens. We have entered a more authoritarian form of city government, much like what is going on at the federal level, a revolting development.

    Elaine Roberts Musser is Former Chair, Senior Citizens Commission and Former Chair, Utilities Commission

  • Our Revolution seems to have quietly rescinded its endorsement of Eric Jones

    They should state their un-endorsement explicitly and explain their reasons for it

    By Roberta Millstein

    As I documented in a past article, Eric Jones is not a progressive.  Now it seems that Our Revolution, which Wikipedia calls “an American progressive political action organization founded as a continuation of Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign,” has finally figured out the same thing.  Having previously endorsed Eric Jones in his run to unseat Mike Thompson in CA-04, Our Revolution seems to have quietly withdrawn that endorsement.

    I want to be clear: this is not a critique of Our Revolution. I consider myself to be a progressive and I generally support their mission. I contributed to Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, voted for him twice, displayed the swag. But organizations can make mistakes.  So it is no surprise to me that they would withdraw their endorsement once that they had the complete picture of who Jones is.

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  • Eric Jones, Red-Boxing, & the AI Money Nobody’s Talking About

    And update to the series on the race for congress in California CD04 (Links below)

    By Judy Tipple

    [Reposted with permission of the author. See original at https://rosietheboomer.substack.com/p/eric-jones-red-boxing-and-the-ai]

    OK, I admit it… I’m a political nerd. Many years of campaigns, more FEC filings read than I’d like to admit. And I had never heard of “red-boxing” until a friend flagged it to me last week. Wait till you hear what it means — because once you see it, you can’t unsee it on every campaign website you visit.

    Before I get to that: credit where it’s due. Roberta Millstein at Davisite already dug up the core of Jones’s Dragoneer ties and his Super PAC connections. Read her full series here: Who is Eric Jones? A summary of the series. This piece adds a few new pieces to her picture.

    1. Red-Boxing: The website is talking to PACs, not to you

    Jones’s campaign site has a page — not in the main menu, you have to know where to look — that reads less like a pitch to voters and more like a memo to an ad-buyer. It tells you what you “need to see,” what you “need to hear,” on what timeline. That’s a known, legal-but-gray tactic called red-boxing: campaigns aren’t allowed to privately hand a Super PAC their ad copy, so instead they post it publicly and let the PAC “discover” it — no phone call required, no coordination on paper. It’s used by both parties nationwide, so it’s not unique to Jones. What is fair to point out: he’s built his brand on refusing PAC money, while his own site is doing PAC-facing work in plain sight. That is red-boxing.

    2. Follow the money, follow the name, follow the family

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