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  • Complaint Filed Against Vanguard Non-Profit

    Envelope pic)_croppedThe Davis Vanguard is alleged to have participated in a political campaign in violation of it's non-profit status. A form 13909 Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service Complaint against the Davis Vanguard was given to the Davisite by The Flatlander. The Flatlander received an anonymous envelope in its PO box containing the forms and other documents which appear to have been filled with the IRS.

    The complaint is anonymously filed and the cover letter CC's The Sacramento Bee, The Davis Enterprise, The Daily Democrat, and The Flatlander.

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  • Happy 4th of July Annoying Uncle and Everyone Else

    FlagBy Tom Owczarzak

    I woke up this morning to fireworks.

    And it got me thinking about my complicated relationship with my country. Big national holiday and all that.

    I have never been able to fully understand how I feel about it all. Partly because I just learned too much in college that I was not able to ignore. When the image got cracked by knowledge but was never really replaced.

    And that made me think of my equally complicated relationship to religion – which feels the same.

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  • UCLA School of Public Health conducting a smoke free housing (apartments) evaluation for the City of Los Angeles

    This is a link from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research…… where this study is described.  Seems like a good piece of applied public health research.  https://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/newsroom/press-releases/pages/details.aspx?NewsID=297

    The City of Los Angeles wants its residents to be healthy.  Imagine that!

    John

    PS  I am wondering if the developers at NISHI would consider making that development "smoke free"?  The UC Davis campus is…. how about off campus student housing?

  • Davis Flow

    IMG_7140

    Photo by Iggie Walsh 

    By Michelle Jillian Bailey

    As I sit here, in my air-conditioned home, the high will reach 106* today. I am reminded of other hot summer Saturdays of my youth. My summers, ages 10- 12 (that’s too many years ago to attempt the math!), consisted of lessons at Happy Horse Riding School. Happy Horse was located on Road 96 and was the idyllic camp for young horse lovers. It consisted of riding lessons in a covered arena, vaulting lessons (gymnastics on horseback) and even written horse education.

    If you are familiar with Davis, you know that Road 96 is way out there. Even today, on Google maps, there is Davis, and then there is a lot of blank lines before you reach Road 96. In fact, it is just shy of six miles from my childhood home. Six miles. In 106*. For a 10-year-old. On a bike. Let that sink in for a minute.

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  • Child Separation: CUCFA Demands End to UC Relationship with General Dynamics

    UC General DynamicsThe Council of University of California Faculty Associations, an umbrella organization for the Faculty Associations (FAs) at each UC campus,  Joins the Call for University of California to end relationship with General Dynamics over GD's role in immigrant minor separation camps. 

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  • The June 5th election vote continues!

    By M E Gladis

    On Friday of the week after election night an interim report was made of about 10,000 VBM scanned ballots. Let me inform you that one or two pairs of processors set up in the scan area at tables for duplication of the ballots that cause certain trouble for the scanners. The scanned ballots go vertically into clear plastic bags with labels of batch and initialing by two staff, usually a scanner and a support staff.

    Then there are voters who mark two spots on a one choice office, over voting. That results in no vote because no one in the office can say what the voters true intention was on that office. There are undervotes when two or more choices are available for the office and only one vote is marked. That vote is qualified and counted. There are stray marks that interrupt the scanning process. All these issues must all be reconciled.

    Next there is the Write-in. News to me: a valid write-in candidate must register with the Secretary of State (SOS) office and list the name(s) by which the candidate is known. In order to write in a candidate a voter must fill in the write- in box and clearly enter the validated candidate’s name. No random non- registered name is counted.

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  • Why it takes so long to count the vote!

    By M E Gladis

    Well, first let’s congratulate the Yolo County Election staff! Yolo County was the first of 58 counties to certify the voting outcome. That distinction is due to the office staff and recurring temporary election staff being experienced, professional, and dedicated to counting every vote. These busy staff also courteously greeted and answered numerous questions from the public observers.

    In my daily attendance as an observer, including the Tuesday of the week before election when the testing of the scanners was performed I learned why it takes so long to count the vote. I was there on election night to observe the dock where incoming poll materials were delivered. The dock staff stayed until 3:00 a.m. Supervisors stayed later, and all back to work by 8:00 a.m. They intentionally wait another day to process anything that requires astute attention. Staff save and label all items from the Jun 5th election; every ballot, tally sheet, every envelope, every ballot is labeled and saved for 22 months. Also each and every item received by mail or delivery service in the election department is recorded in a log by a front office staff. So the number of Vote By Mail (VBM) ballots that arrive by postal delivery are recorded each day.

    Election night after staff processed the poll ballots to inspect the barcodes, the IT staff scanned the poll ballots along with the white VBM envelopes that were received by the election department enough ahead of election night that staff could process and have those VBM ballots ready for scanning, waiting in clear plastic see-through bags with their designation on a large sticker. The few ballots the scanners rejected election night were placed in a tray labeled for later duplication.

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  • Child Separation: End UC Contracts with General Dynamics

    UC General DynamicsUC-AFT Demands End to UC Contract with General Dynamics Over Role in Child Separation

     
    Published by UC-AFT June 19, 2018
     
    Dear President Napolitano,

    As contingent faculty and librarians represented by UC-AFT, we work with undocumented students at the University of California on a daily basis. Your initiative to support the UC’s undocumented students and your lawsuit against the Trump administration’s rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) have been powerful advocacy for some of our most vulnerable community members.

    Today, we ask that you extend that leadership to immediately canceling the UC’s contract with General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), a defense contractor. The UC currently contracts out the management and administration of the Analytical Writing Placement Examination (AWPE) to GDIT. Many UC faculty, including a number of our members, score more than 16,000 AWPE exams taken by admitted first-year students every year. During that process, we are in regular communication with GDIT employees. GDIT is also a contractor for the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and employs staff who support and facilitate the forced separation of children and parents seeking asylum at the U.S. border.

    Contracting out an educational process is a questionable practice for a university to begin with. Contracting out to a defense contractor forces faculty to be complicit with war profiteering. Contracting out to a defense contractor that enables the U.S. government to rip children away from their parents and place them in concentration camps is an unconscionable moral failing.

    In the strongest possible terms, we urge you to halt the UC’s participation in these abuses by immediately withdrawing from any and all agreements between the UC and GDIT.

    Sincerely,

    UC-AFT Executive Board
    Mia L. McIver, UCLA
    Axel Borg, UC Davis
    Ben Harder, UC Riverside
    Roxi Power, UC Santa Cruz
    Miki Goral, UCLA

     

    https://ucaft.org/content/uc-aft-demands-end-uc-contract-general-dynamics-over-gd-role-child-separation

     

  • “How do you deal with the political propaganda?”

    That's the question I asked one of my classmates from China when I was in grad school at Berkeley.  You know, the huge, pervasive portraits of Chairman Mao and other political leaders over the years… just popping up everywhere I understood.

    She smiled and said, "Well, probably the same way you deal with the commercial propaganda here in the United States".  Good answer!  Quite insightful.

    As a card carrying capitalist I know the purpose of marketing is to ask the customer what they want and communicate to them that you are going to give it to them.  But "sales" sometimes deviates from true marketing and ventures into persuasion and dare I say it, manipulation.  

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  • I have always believed in your magic

    HospitalBy Tom Owczarzak

    Last night got – complicated.

    We are not leaving this hospital anytime soon.

    I am here alone in the silence – this is becoming way too familiar.

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