GEORGE ROTHERT – Page 18 – George’s slightly off-center view of the world

Surfin’ Safari with Junior & Eric

The Beach Boys will be performing in Reno, at the Safari Club International Convention. Brian Wilson, creative genius behind the group, and long-time Beach Boy Al Jardine want their fans to know that they have no part in it. Brian tweeted, “This organization supports trophy hunting, which Both Al and I are emphatically opposed to.”

Keynote speaker at the gathering is the estimable Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Junior and his little brother Eric are noted trophy hunters. Unlike trophy wives, who are discarded when they reach a certain age, big-game trophy-hunters’ prey are killed.

Co-founder and cousin Mike Love owns the rights to the name “Beach Boys.” (Brother Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983; brother Carl succumbed to cigarettes in 1998.) Brian and Al do not perform with the touring group.

“There’s nothing we can do personally to stop the show,” Brian Wilson continued. so please join us in signing the petition at https://www.change.org/p/beach-boys-stop-supporting-trophy-hunting. The petition reads:

“We the undersigned, pledge to stop buying or downloading all Beach Boys music, going to Beach Boys concerts, and purchasing any Beach Boys merchandise until the Beach Boys withdraw from the SCI Convention and publicly state their opposition to this sick ‘sport’ of killing animals for ‘fun.’”

Mike Love is in it for the money — and presumably the attention. He attended the inauguration of the current occupant of the White House in 2017. Love said at the time, “I understand there are so many factions and fractious things going on — the chips will fall where they may. But Donald Trump has never been anything but kind to us. We have known him for many a year. We’ve performed at some of his venues at fundraisers and so on.”

More Bad News for Bees

“It’s like sending bees to war.”

Americans spent $1.2 billion on almond milk last year. Sales are two-and-a-half times what they were five years ago. Per capita almond consumption in the U.S. is two pounds per year. Eighty percent of the world’s almonds come from the Central Valley in California. Acreage planted to almonds has doubled since 2000. Giant corporate-owned farms predominate. Almond trees are thirsty and the subterranean aquifers underneath the fertile Central Valley are being sucked dry.

And almonds are killing the bees.

Black History: from the Great Pumpkin to Ellen DeGeneres

“The fad started with the hippies. I saw them in Haight-Ashbury. Wearing a beard or a mustache or long hair doesn’t necessarily make anyone look like the scum I saw there but it gives an empathy for a movement that certainly is the direct opposite of what we strive for in college football.”
– Ara Parseghian, Notre Dame

February is Black History Month. Ellen DeGeneres kicked it off a couple days early with DeAndre Arnold as her featured guest. The high school senior from a small town near Houston Texas has been in the national news for refusing to cut his dreadlocks. School officials told him that if he didn’t cut his hair they would not allow him to participate in graduation. Arnold said no, dreadlocks are part of his Trinidadian heritage.

To show support for the student, who — depending on whose story you believe — may or may not have been suspended from attending class, DeGeneres introduced Alicia Keys who came onstage carrying a giant check for $20,000, payable to Arnold, as a scholarship contribution for his college education. (DeAndre Arnold obviously is a student of history, one of the few in his generation who wouldn’t need to ask “What’s a check?”)

AT&T: Money for Nothing

AT&T, Verizon and other Internet service providers (ISP) bombard us with advertising touting their fast download speeds. (Upload speeds, not so much.) The boasting always comes with an asterisk, though. The fine print gives reasons and circumstances when they might not deliver the speed we think we’re paying for.

The Federal Communications Commission has a plan, and funding, to upgrade Internet service in rural areas where consumers receive less attention from ISPs than in more densely-populated areas. Subsidizing services to rural America is historically in the purview of the federal government, as in delivery of mail and electricity. The F.C.C. has $20 billion to spend over ten years for areas underserved by ISPs. The money for this “Rural Digital Opportunity Fund” comes from fees on telephone bills.

AT&T thinks this is a great idea. They’re ready to take the money. But they don’t like the part about providing faster download and upload speeds. USTelecom, the lobbying organization for AT&T, CenturyLink, Verizon and others, argues that it’s too hard to provide the speeds required and it would cost them too much. They say that higher speeds, particularly upload speeds don’t make all that much difference anyway. They want the federal money without making significant network upgrades.

(The USTelecom public web site is full of innocuous prattle about their wanting the best for everyone but it’s very light on details.)

Oddly enough, groups representing small ISPs are exhorting the F.C.C. not to lower the download/upload requirements. The Fiber Broadband Association, which represents equipment vendors, ISPs, and others also is urging the F.C.C. to not lower the standards required for federal funds. The small guys apparently see it as an opportunity for them; the big guys contend they should get the money, well, because they should get it.

The Good That Bugs Do

It can be disheartening to go out to your carefully-tended garden to find that bugs have been feasting on your organically-grown produce. The chewed-up leaves might cause anger to rise up and make you begin to question whether chemical insecticides are really so bad.

Take heart! Those bug bites are a good thing.

Scientists at Texas A & M University tell us that a bug chomping on leaves triggers a defensive response in organic fruit or vegetables. The stress created by the injury causes the plants to increase production of antioxidant compounds. The antioxidants make the produce more beneficial for you to eat.

“In our study we proved that wounding leaves in plants like those caused by insects produce healthier organic fruit,” said a researcher.

Just thought you would like to know.

The Lawyers Always Win

“The civil service is under greater assault than at any time since reforms of the eighteen-eighties.”

Fiona Hill, a coal miner’s daughter from northern England, earned master’s and PhD degrees in history from Harvard University. She became a U.S. citizen in 2002. Hill worked in the research department at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and as a national intelligence analyst for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. She was was an intelligence analyst under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Early in 2017 the current occupant of the White House appointed Dr. Hill to the National Security Council as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs. She served in that position until she resigned in July, 2019.

Responding to a subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee, Fiona Hill testified for ten hours in a closed-door hearing on October 14, 2019 as part of the impeachment inquiry. She testified publicly before the same body on November 21, 2019. For her trouble, she received insults from the president, death threats from his supporters and six-figure bills from attorneys. Those who supposedly know estimate her legal fees at somewhere between four hundred and five hundred thousand dollars.

Other State Department career employees who provided such riveting testimony during the House impeachment hearings face similar lawyers’ fees.

The State Department announced that it will provide relief to its employees. The Department will cover attorney’s fees of $300 per hour up to 120 hours a month – $36,000.

Partners at top firms experienced in these matters charge up to $1,200 per hour, “associates” $800 or so. When one needs to engage a team of lawyers, well, it gets expensive.

The American Foreign Service Association, the union representing State Department employees, has set up a legal-defense fund. So far a bit more than $250,000 has been donated. Some public-spirited attorneys from both political parties are working for reduced fees and, in some cases pro bono. The lead lawyer for Marie Yovanovitch, former Ambassador to Ukraine, said, “Unless you’re a full-time public-interest lawyer, you get only a few chances to take cases that you strongly believe in. I took the case because this is why I went to law school.”