Tag Archives: Stephen Golub

Benicia Mayor Steve Young, Stephen Golub

Benicia Mayor Steve Young on the record…

Stephen Golub Interview with Mayor Steve Young

By Stephen Golub, March, 2023 (About Steve Golub). Previously appearing in the Benicia Herald, no online presence.

INTERVIEW PART 1   (…and when you’re done, here’s Part 2)

SG: Where are you from, originally?

Benicia Mayor Steve Young… More about Mayor Young.

SY: I grew up in Burbank, in the San Fernando Valley.

SG: What kind of work have you mainly done during your career?

SY: I managed a variety of local government programs in the fields of affordable housing, neighborhood improvement and military base conversion in California and Virginia.

Benicia author Stephen Golub. More about Steve below.

SG: I understand that some time ago you and your family lived in Costa Rica. Could you say something about why you moved there, what you did while there, and why you returned to the United States?

SY: We moved to Costa Rica primarily to give our daughter the experience of going to high school in a foreign country, living in a different culture, and learning a new language; while we spent time exploring all of the beautiful country as well as some of the rest of Central America, much time was spent trying to become established as residents and becoming comfortable with the uniqueness of the country. We returned after four years when my daughter entered college in the US and to help care for my aging parents.

SG: When and why did you first move to Benicia?

SY: We moved to Benicia in 2012; we fell for it for the same reasons most do: small town, waterfront setting, open and friendly people.

SG: I believe that your first major involvement with Benicia’s city government was on the Planning Commission. What made you decide to apply to join it?

SY: Knowing literally no one when I moved here, and having spent my career in local government, I hoped to both meet new people and use my government experience to help serve in a volunteer position.

SG: When you were on the Commission, what was your reaction and actions regarding Valero’s Crude by Rail plan? (For those new to Benicia or otherwise unfamiliar with this issue, for four years until ultimately defeated by a unanimous 2016 City Council vote, the Valero Refinery sought to bring two 50-car trains a day carrying up to 70,000 barrels of crude oil into Benicia from Canada and North Dakota.)

SY: Given the long time between hearings on this project, I had ample time to research a number of issues related to rail cars, fracked oil, and the possible impact of these train cars on backing up traffic in the Industrial Park. I eventually had the chance to ask a variety of detailed questions of the staff and Valero, not all of which were answered to the satisfaction of the Planning Commission. My questions triggered other questions from Commissioners and helped lead to the unexpected unanimous rejection by the Planning Commission of the Valero request and the EIR [Environmental Impact Report].

SG: What made you decide to run for City Council and then for Mayor?

SY: My exposure to local government on the Planning Commission motivated me to step up and run for Council in 2016. And I saw an opportunity in 2020 to add my experience, ideas, and leadership.

SG: What are you most proud of from your two years in office (so far) as Mayor?

SY: Working with the City Manager to help navigate the COVID pandemic through a contentious time and helping bring back our civic celebrations. Also adding a new level of transparency and communication with the community with my extensive use of social media.

SG: What has been your biggest challenge(s) as Mayor?

SY: Internally, trying to get the City to be more communicative with the community as well as our upcoming fiscal challenges. Externally, trying to get people to understand that maintaining the level of services like they have come to expect comes with rapidly increasing costs that the City is not able to meet with existing revenue.

SG: One of Benicians’ biggest concerns is the state of our roads. Measure R, which would have funded road repair, narrowly lost when on the ballot in November. What, if anything, do you think should be done now to address the situation with the roads?

SY: There is a citizen driven sales tax initiative being proposed by a variety of community leaders that would set aside the same amount of funds strictly for roads and related infrastructure. It is our best chance to actually fix all our roads over a 10 year period.

SG: Another challenge is water charges. What, if anything, should be done to address that?

SY: Unfortunately there is not a magic bullet for this that will bring down water charges. Treating water and wastewater is highly regulated and expensive, and requires a number of employees with specific skills and licenses. And many of our pipes are quite old and failing. There are too few ratepayers to spread (and lower) these costs. More growth and customers may lead to more ways to spread those costs.

SG: There also is the question of Benicia’s large stretch of land known as the Seeno property (named for the land owner). What are your thoughts on whether and how that should ever be developed for housing? Do you see alternative uses for it? 

SY: I would like to withhold my specific preferences on that in deference to the planning/visioning process that is currently underway, and that may eventually come to Council for decisions. But I can say ,that, as one member of the community, I would hope to see a mixed use development including multifamily and single family housing, in addition to some localized commercial development. Ideally, we would have direct micro transit options to downtown and a few locations in Vallejo.  And perhaps some office or R/D uses along the East 2nd street frontage.

INTERVIEW, PART 2
Stephen Golub, Benicia – A Promised Land: Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

Benicia resident Stephen Golub offers excellent perspective on his blog, A Promised Land:  Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

To access his other posts or subscribe, please go to his blog site, A Promised Land.

Gun Violence Archive, Mass shootings, Stephen Golub

Stephen Golub: Guns: Here We Go Again… and again…and again…

Unhappy New Year

A Promised Land, by Stephen Golub, January 25, 2023

Benicia author Stephen Golub, Benicia CA, A Promised Land

California has kicked off 2023 with a bang: two mass shootings in 72 hours. (Mass shootings constitute events in which four or more people are injured or killed, not including the murderer.) This has probably been the country’s most massacre-intensive January ever – and certainly since the Gun Violence Archive started tracking this data in 2014. Only a small fraction of these nearly twice-daily horrors (647 in 2022) gets much media coverage. Still, this seems like a nightmarish Groundhog Day.

Over the course of nearly nine years, the satirical, fake news outlet the Onion has regularly summarized such slaughters 30 times with the same headline,  “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

I won’t regurgitate most of the grisly statistics you’ve heard before. But it’s worth noting a few:

Family Values

Here’s one more statistical nugget: America is the only wealthy country in which gun violence is the top cause of death for children and teens.

The comparative data leaves other rich nations buried (so to speak) in the dust. Firearms killed 4,357 young people here in 2020. The next highest nations, based on a recent research review of selected similar societies: Canada and France, with 48 each. Correcting for Canada’s far smaller population, its gun mortality rate for folks aged one to 19 is still less than 10 percent of ours.

Even that shameful ratio under-represents how bad our relative situation is. Canada and France themselves have much higher rates than other wealthy nations. The next highest number on the list is that of Germany, where only 14 young people died due to guns in 2020. Given that its population is one-quarter of ours, that figure would extrapolate to just 56 if we were the same size.

Why?

Now, this is not to say that most gun-owners are fanatics about their weapons. Many are responsible, or support at least some gun safety measures, or legitimately use firearms for protection or hunting.

Still, why are so many Americans (though by no means the majority ) so dedicated to deadly weapons, including assault rifles?

Pick your poison. The National Rifle Association. Our distorted democracy. The self-perpetuating cycle of easy access and ease of use making for a way of life. The legacy of racial animus. The fear of guns being taken away, which drives the purchase of yet more. The related conviction that more guns equal more protection from more guns. Gun collection as a hobby. Americans loving (ahem) Freedom, as long as it’s that of a gun owner and not a gun victim. The reliance on a Second Amendment adopted at a time of muskets and citizen militias. Or maybe all of the above.

There’s yet another view of what drives our gun culture and gun deaths, courtesy of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film Terminator 2. Though the context for this clip was the threat of nuclear holocaust, it works equally well for a different kind of self-destruction:

Another answer is even simpler and better than the one Ahnold offers. It’s asserted by the Australian comic Jim Jefferies, in mimicing a hypothetical American gun devotee:

“I like guns!”

Here are the two parts of Jeffries’ brilliant commentary on Americans’ penchant for firearms – though be forewarned, he’s very profane, is politically incorrect, and employs a word that’s apparently much more commonly accepted in Australia than here:

A Shot at Success?

Is there any light at the end of the gun barrel? There are glimmers of hope.

In 2022, the United States adopted the first national gun control law in decades, with even a bit of Republican buy-in. It looks like legislators voting for the bill suffered few if any negative electoral consequences. Though an increasing number of states have adopted “open carry” laws – which allow gun owners to carry firearms in public without the need for permits – last year also saw a range of state-level victories for gun safety.

As I’ve noted, loads of evidence indicates that countries and states with stronger gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths; maybe someday such data will mean something for our nation’s public policy.

In fact, we’ve seen instances of public opinion or legislation shifting on other issues more than previously thought possible. The examples range from acceptance of gay and lesbian marriage to last year’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which for all of its flaws was an unprecedented environmental step forward.

Still, manyof us have remained politically unmoved by the Sandy Hook and Uvalde school massacres, by a lone Las Vegas gunman murdering 60 concert-goers and injuring over 400 others, and by so many other atrocities that we lose count.

Now, the sure way to lose the fight is to lose hope. But for now, Americans face the reality of constantly shooting ourselves in the foot, the head, and everywhere in-between.

Stephen Golub, Benicia – A Promised Land: Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

Benicia resident Stephen Golub offers excellent perspective on his blog, A Promised Land:  Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

To access his other posts or subscribe, please go to his blog site, A Promised Land.

Peace, Russia, Stephen Golub, Ukraine, War, World

Benicia author Stephen Golub: He’s Back: The Terminator Takes a Star Turn in the Ukraine Information Wars

It’s the role of a lifetime

A Promised Land, by Stephen Golub, March 19, 2022

Let’s talk

Your lives, your limbs, your futures…

In the 1984 film, The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger played a robot sent from the future to the (then) present, to try to condemn the human race to a horrible fate. In its 1991 sequel, he reversed the role, seeking to save the world. His iconic line from both movies was, “I’ll be back.”

In 2022, Arnold’s in fact back again. This time, to try to help save us in real life.

As part of the information war raging in connection with the actual combat in Ukraine, on March 17 Schwarzenegger released a stunning anti-invasion video, aimed at Russians and with Russian subtitles.

His core message: “Your lives, your limbs, your futures are being sacrificed for a senseless war condemned by the entire world.”

He brilliantly prefaces that by starting with praise for a Russian weightlifter whom he idolized as a boy. He highlights Russians’ heroic defense of Leningrad in World War 2 against a Nazi force that included Arnold’s own father, turning what would seem to be a counterproductive fact into a very personal, very persuasive point.

He ridicules Russian President Vladimir Putin’s absurd claim that his country’s so-called “special military operation” seeks to unseat a cabal of neo-Nazis in Kyiv. Arnold emphasizes that the supposed head of that supposed cabal, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a Jew who lost three uncles to the Holocaust.

And he says so much more, so splendidly, with words for Russia’s people, soldiers, leaders and protestors.

But please see for yourself. It’s absolutely worth nine minutes of your time:

Will it matter?

The crucial question, of course, is whether Russians consider it worth their time. Will many see the video?

It seems so. Within a day of the clip’s appearance, it was viewed more than 28 million times globally on Twitter and shared more than 669,000 times on Telegram, an encrypted social media platform that’s one of the only ways for Russians to get uncensored information.

Though Twitter is engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the Russian government, which is trying to restrict its citizens’ access to the platform, at least one Russian may have used it to view the video: Putin himself. Schwarzenegger’s Twitter account is one of only 22 followed by the President of Russia’s account.

Even if they see it, though, will many Russians’ believe it? Maybe.

Certainly, here in America we know something about people clinging to the lies they want to believe, a problem compounded in Russia by Putin’s crushing of public and media dissent. But Schwarzenegger’s movies – including 1988’s Red Heat, partly filmed in Moscow – established him as a star in the former Soviet Union. He also visited there in 2010, as California’s governor. The head of a U.S. center that studies political extremism and national security claims that the he has significant credibility and popularity in Russia, particularly with the older generation there.

What a war, what a world

Schwarzenegger’s talk to the Russians comes on the heels of Zelensky’s virtual address to the U.S. Congress the previous day, persuasively seeking sustained and even increased support. Neither the translation of his Ukrainian words nor his own English coda will count as Churchillian. But he got the message across:

The video Zelensky presented toward the end of his talk was even more powerful. The title might as well have been, “War is hell.” It’s that disturbing. But again, it’s well worth viewing to grasp in a gut way what the Ukrainians are enduring: [video above, at minute 11:23]

What a 21st century war, when a leader broadcasts to our Congress from a bombarded, besieged capital, wielding a video as an astoundingly effective weapon. More than ever before, an information war is a key part of a literal war. It’s something defenders of democracy everywhere will hopefully keep in mind in the looming political, and hopefully non-lethal, struggles ahead.

And what a world, where an Austrian former bodybuilder brilliantly backs a Ukrainian former comedian against a Russian former spy praised by an American former TV host, all of them elevated at various points to be presidents or a governor.

I’ll close with something else to keep in mind, another line from the Terminator franchise: “The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”

Stephen Golub, Benicia – A Promised Land: Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

Benicia resident Stephen Golub offers excellent perspective on his blog, A Promised Land:  Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

To access his other posts or subscribe, please go to his blog site, A Promised Land.

Peace, Russia, Stephen Golub, Ukraine, War, World

Benicia author Stephen Golub: If the Russians Love Their Children Too

If the Russians Love Their Children Too

Sting’s 1985 masterpiece proves tragically appropriate in 2022.

One of the most moving, powerful songs I’ve ever heard – yes, for those who know me, powerful even in comparison with Springsteen’s stuff – is Sting’s 1985 composition, “Russians.” Released as part of his first solo album, near the height of the Cold War, it’s a plea for peace at a time of intense international tension.

Here’s the original version, with lyrics:

As we enter a new/old era, a Great Leap Backward in geopolitical relations, “Russians” haunts me yet again. Not all of the tune’s lyrics resonate quite the same way these days. It was, after all, a pacifist appeal, whereas today we applaud Ukrainians’ heroic fight against Putin’s horrific onslaught.

But the underlying, overwhelming message remains the same. As Sting puts it in his introduction to a beautiful, stripped-down version in his March 5 video, “I’ve only rarely sung this song in the many years since it was written, because I never thought it would be relevant again. But in the light of one man’s bloody and woefully misguided decision to invade a peaceful, unthreatening neighbor, the song is once again a plea for our common humanity.”

His introductory words in the video are as eloquent as the song itself:

These are indeed worrisome times, to put it mildly. Whatever the flaws of the Soviet Union’s Cold War leaders, they displayed a degree of rationality in their cold calculations. Until recently, Putin too had a reputation as an icily rational ruler. Now, his “woefully misguided decision to invade” couples with other actions and words to make a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, a former U.S. director of national intelligence and many other analysts worry about his becoming unhinged – though some speculate that this is just a negotiating ploy on Putin’s part.

But there’s good news as well, amidst this horror. One foreign policy analyst may be speaking for many of us when he proclaims, “I’m not a praying man, but if I were, I would be on my hands and knees thanking the Almighty that during the worst crisis in Europe since 1945, the United States is led by Joe Biden, not Donald Trump,” adding that he has been “masterful in his handling of the Ukraine war.”

Indeed, in leading NATO, mobilizing massive military aid for Ukraine, uniting with our allies on stringent economic sanctions against Russia, refraining from trading inflammatory nuclear rhetoric with Putin, and dozens of other ways, Biden is handling this incredibly complex crisis astutely. The contrast between his invasion response and that of his predecessor, Putin’s poodle, is like day and night.

Many factors may sway how this catastrophe plays out. Ukraine’s resilience and resistance. Our allies’ determination. Whether Putin’s generals and oligarchs keep backing him. How his country’s populace reacts to the sanctions’ bite. Whether the brave anti-war demonstrators among them can spur more opposition to Putin’s folly. Whether Americans weather the storms of sanctions-induced inflation and other harms that vastly pale in comparison with what the Ukrainians face, but that will test us nonetheless.

But one key consideration may be, as Sting’s song says, “if the Russians love their children too.”

We know they do. Let’s hope their love makes a difference.

Stephen Golub, Benicia – A Promised Land: Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

Benicia resident Stephen Golub offers excellent perspective on his blog, A Promised Land:  Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country.

To access his other posts or subscribe, please go to his blog site, A Promised Land.