Hypocrisy seems to be a cornerstone of GOP reasoning these days. Be it the price of gas, the murder of school children, the intrusion of government into our private lives, or a myriad of other issues, GOP candidates are serving as contortionists to justify their platform positions.

Representation matters…Immigrants are often left out of voting because of federal election laws. Representation for us has been very limited or non-existent at all until recently.

There are days in our lives when we know, for better or worse, our lives have been changed – not by our actions but by “others”. Pearl Harbor, the Twin Towers, Sandy Hook…events that shocked us to the core. Our U.S. Supreme Court has also changed lives…“Obergefell”, a decision that changed the lives of our gay population, Brown v Board of Education, that advanced the climb from blatant segregation, and Roe v Wade, that freed women from back alley abortions.

Communicating with voters directly is the best way to get them to support your candidate or position. Placer DCC offers several ways to help get our message out to voters. For all of these, volunteers are needed to deliver the message in any successful Get Out the Vote (GOTV) campaign.

Feeling emboldened, many conservative legislatures across our nation have already introduced or strengthened legislation intended to severely restrict or outright abolish this access to safe care.

I personally believe there is something fundamentally wrong about giving any human being a job for life. Every paid human should be subjected to performance reviews and allowed to stay or move on. Maybe the guaranteed gig has made our Court less Supreme.

Are you trying to figure out what the latest redistricting boundary changes mean for your June 7 Primary Ballot options? By the time you get your sample ballot in mid-May, it will all be clear. Good luck if you go online now, because many of the websites, including the Placer County Office of Elections have not yet been updated to allow you to enter your address to find the new districts.

If you want to preview it for the Congressional, State Senate and State Assembly races, I recommend you check out this link at Cal Matters:

https://calmatters.org/politics/2022/01/california-election-new-districts-lookup/

After you enter your voter residence address, it will show you both your “old” and “new” districts.

Three School Board members in San Francisco have been recalled by voters. A Republican District Supervisor was recalled because he wasn’t far enough to the Right. A local high school district in Placer County has defied Governor Newsom’s mask mandate.

A November, 2021, NPR story by Deepa Shivaram reminds us that “Book burning was a practice perpetuated in Nazi Germany”. Kristallnacht – the ‘night of broken glass’ and burned books signaled to the world the horrors that were to come in World War II. Our moment of Kristallnacht could be the increasingly strident fight over JEDI – the teaching of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) concepts to all children and Critical Race Theory.

Editor of the Cook Political Report, Amy Walter, has warned Democrats “are not listening” to the Republican message. She states their message is gathering new voters to the Republican Party, especially minority populations who are always fearful of how their children are treated in schools. She added they “feel the continued masking (of children) means we’re still not safe and they’re turning to the Republican message”.

The current 2021-2022 Federal and State legislation sessions is in its second and final year.

Federal and California State legislation sessions have opened their second year as of January 3, 2022. In September 2021, California State legislation acted upon and passed during the first year was submitted for the Governor’s signature and finalized in October. Starting in January 2022, our California State Legislature has been actively determining which first year legislation session (2021) bills will be continued for consideration in 2022. This process has been completed and the introduction of new California State legislation is underway.

Federal legislation introduced and still active at the end of 2021 is carried over into their second-year session.

The PCDCC Legislation Committee finished its analysis process in November 2021, completing a very productive year in engineering both Federal and State legislation through our committee’s Endorsement Process. Nine Federal bills and five State bills were endorsed by the PCDCC. The Legislation Committee set a new precedent in its analysis process to consider those legislation issues our PCDCC membership should oppose.

In previous articles, I have written about the differences between misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information—each a component of information disorder. Disinformation is the most common form of information disorder we encounter, and it is deadly. Usually we contend with it online and in social media, but it creeps into conversations and the mainstream. On just one topic, Covid-19, think of the ever more absurd claims about its origins and purported treatments and cures. The crusades against wearing masks and vaccinations have convinced formerly reasonable people that these life saving measures bring them harm. We see that rhetoric infecting our school board meetings as well. We’ll never know how many lives have been lost to Covid disinformation, nor do we know how many others are lost down the disinformation rabbit hole. But we know disinformation is all around us, even if we don’t always know how to detect it.

So, what should we look for? Disinformation comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s information that’s incomplete, distorted, reported out of context, or is outdated. It can also take the form of faulty logic or unsubstantiated conclusions. Hate speech and dog whistles are also a form of disinformation as is the escalating presence of conspiracy theories in our daily lives.

While there is no magic formula, there a few strategies you can use to detect and deflect disinformation. In a 2020 Washington Post article, Geoffrey Fowler outlined a series of steps that we can use to not only identify disinformation but stop its spread.

Governmental redistricting is an important process with a 10-year impact, especially in areas of population growth (or loss). Overall, Placer County is increasing in population, especially in the South Placer cities of Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln.

Here’s a brief recap and analysis of two local jurisdictions’ approach to the mandated boundary realignments after the 2020 census. Each governing body took a legally available option. The Placer County Board of Supervisors chose an Advisory Redistricting Commission to create the new boundaries for the 5 supervisorial districts. The Roseville City Charter requires an Independent Redistricting Commission due to voter approval in its latest charter review process. Both Redistricting Commissions had to adjust boundaries due to growing populations.

The City

The city of Roseville began its initial process when the City Council determined that, to comply with the Voter Rights Act, it was necessary to establish 5 districts, each electing a council member living within their district. The adopted map was based, as legally required, on the 2010 census.

We are tired-- sometimes disappointed, frustrated, and discouraged. Since the dark days of 2017, we have been calling, texting, writing letters and postcards, posting on social media, canvassing, protesting, and reaching out to voters to get them to the polls. We helped build the Blue Wave in the 2018 midterms. We did it all again in 2020 under unexpectedly challenging circumstances only to see the election results questioned and used as a rallying cry for domestic terrorism. We thought we’d get a respite in 2021, but that wasn’t meant to be. Now here we are in 2022 with another demanding election season ahead of us, where losing the majority in Congress could imperil democracy as we know it.

But there have been moments of intense joy and satisfaction. Watching Nancy Pelosi again assume the speakership of the House, surrounded by the many young, diverse newly elected members of Congress was gratifying in a way I can’t explain. Listening to Amanda Gorman’s poem during the Inauguration filled my heart with joy and gave me much needed hope. Beating back a partisan recall with numbers that mirrored Newsom’s 2018 victory gives me confidence that we can keep our state blue. Closer to home, the astonishing 79% success rate of our 2020 first time voter texting project provides a solid base upon which to build. And if we needed a reminder that activism works, the collaborative effort resulting in the approval of the citizen-drawn maps for redistricting in Placer County has given us a much needed boost. None of these accomplishments happened in a vacuum. They happened because of YOU.