Category Archives: Stephen Golub

Stephen Golub: From a Glass House to a Courthouse

[Note from BenIndy Contributor Nathalie Christian: Public Citizen and other allies are organizing rallies around the country for this Thursday, August 3 — the day of Trump’s arraignment — to demand accountability and support the rule of law. I looked and the closest rally (that I can find, so far) is in Petaluma, at 5:30pm. If anyone local catches wind of a more local rally, or wants to initiate one, please email me and I’d be happy to promote it. From Public Citizen: Find a rally near you.]

This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

A US Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. | Image uncredited

Jack Smith is doing his job. The rest is up to us.

By Stephen Golub, July 3, 2023

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

Finally.

Yesterday, a grand jury indicted Donald Trump for, in essence, trying to gut American democracy. In securing that indictment, Special Counsel Jack Smith launched a case of unprecedented importance to our country.

I’d thought that I might greet the news with relief that the inevitable has come to pass, or despair over what Trump’s abuses signify, or trepidation over the societal ruptures that await us.

But I feel something far more stirring. Not quite elation.

Pride.

I’ve spent my career working to promote democracy and the rule of law across the globe. As I’ve written, the effort has largely flopped, though there have been powerful exceptions to that unfortunate rule.

One of the heartbreaking aspects of this endeavor has been how blind America has been to our own failures here at home. Even as the United States has sought to teach, train and tut-tut other societies about their democratic and legal shortcomings, we’ve ignored our own glass house.

But at this one historic moment, this country has lived up to its promise.

On this one day, we’re seeing the rule of law in action in its most vital sense: No one is above the law.

The indictment, practically free of legalese and packed with persuasive detail, makes for compelling reading. It portrays how Trump and six so-far unindicted and unidentified co-conspirators undertook a multi-stage drive to undo the election results. It superbly illuminates how they sought to pressure state and federal officials, line up fake electoral college electors, bulldoze then-Vice President Pence and ultimately ignite a mob, all in order to block Joe Biden from being certified as president-elect on January 6.

By citing abundant incriminating evidence from Trump’s own top aids and allies, including contemporaneous notes by Pence, it also shows how Trump knew that his allegations of electoral theft were lies.

In an irony that perhaps will not go unnoticed by Trump’s nativist and white nationalist fans, both the federal magistrate to whom the indictment was presented and the federal judge who will oversee the case are immigrants, respectively from India and Jamaica.

Now, none of this is to say that any of this will play out well, even if Trump is convicted. Things will get ugly, vicious, maybe even violent.

Nor does it compensate for what got us here, from Trump’s depravity to his followers’ tribal loyalty to Republican leaders’ craven acquiescence to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s ill-advised delay in approving the Trump insurrection investigation.

Furthermore, as I’ve previously suggested, the ultimate forum that will decide Trump’s legal fate will be the court of public opinion. That is, whether he will be held legally accountable for his alleged crimes against this country will probably hinge on whether he wins next year’s election.

But this first step had to happen. At this pivotal point in our history, we had to move from a hypocritical glass house to a literal, crucial courthouse. Smith and his team will do their best to hold Trump accountable for his crimes.

Now, the rest of us must do our part to ensure that Trump loses in the court of public opinion as well.


This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

Read more from Steve by visiting his blog or clicking any of the links below.

RECENT POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB:

Stephen Golub: The U.S. has a mixed record of promoting American-style democracy abroad

[Note from BenIndy Contributor Nathalie Christian: While I think all of Steve’s posts are well worth the time it takes to read them, I really encourage everyone to sit down with this one, especially because we’re still very close to Independence Day. The seeding, care and feeding of democracy abroad is a complicated undertaking at the best of times. Keeping it alive and thriving in our own garden has become a surprisingly fraught enterprise, too. Steve’s thoughtful analysis of what has and hasn’t worked provides a reasonable framework for the cultivated endurance of democracy and, perhaps more importantly, it provides at least me with very welcome hope.] 

This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub and originally appeared in the Washington Post‘s ‘Made by History’ section. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

For 40 years, the U.S. government has ignored what sorts of democracy promotion work — and which ones don’t

Image uncredited.

By Stephen Golub, July 4, 2023

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

As America celebrates Independence Day, we find our democracy not nearly as strong as we’d once thought. Authoritarian challenges threaten our institutions, our rights and the rule of law.

Ironically, this sobering reality confronts us after the United States, along with affluent allies, has devoted decades and massive resources to trying to build democracy in the world’s poorer and post-communist societies, including via rule of law, good governance, human rights and anti-corruption programs. With some exceptions — mostly centered on providing electoral assistance and fortifying civil society and media — these efforts have largely fallen flat. Data from Freedom Housethe World Bank and the World Justice Project confirm the decline in democracy and associated fields across the globe.

Why the widespread failure? First, we hubristically bit off more than we could chew. The United States mistakenly assumed that foreign aid for training and equipping recipient nations’ government institutions could overcome the deep-seated political, historical, economic and cultural forces permeating them and could thus build democracies in our image.

Second, in focusing most democracy aid on such government institution-building, the United States put a relative paucity of resources into nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other civil society forces that modestly but more effectively strengthen specific policies, processes and populations.

In some ways, the roots of this failure reach back to our experience in the Philippines at the outset of the 20th century. At that time, America’s imperialist endeavor drove the Spanish from the archipelago and brutally crushed an indigenous independence movement. During the next half-century, we built corrupt, elite-controlled government institutions instead of strengthening grass- roots participation in representative government. This became an unintentional template for our subsequent democracy-building abroad decades later.

That template became salient when, in the 1980s, a host of actors and factors combined to make democracy a U.S. foreign policy priority.

Providing political cover for its wars in Central America and right-wing allies throughout Latin America, the Reagan administration funded government-focused, ostensibly democracy-promoting programs in the region. The unfortunate upshot was, for example, partnering with human rights-violating governments on major and, ultimately, unsuccessful administration of justice initiatives to which officials in our partner nations were actually resistant or indifferent. Similarly flawed and government-focused U.S. democracy programs arose alongside backing for authoritarian Cold War allies elsewhere.

In a more promising development, the 1980s also saw bipartisan support for the new National Endowment for Democracy, new U.S. Agency for International Development projects and other U.S. initiatives that provided small grants to civil society and media initiatives around the world. But such funding was (and is) dwarfed by major USAID programs and related support for government institutions.

This funding disparity meant that, as the United States started pouring money into top-down programs geared toward building American-style government institutions abroad, it tended to downplay support for civil society programs that could directly benefit and strengthen populations poorly served by those institutions.

By contrast, various private funding sources prioritized civil society. The Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corp. and other donors made grants to South African NGOs pursuing anti-apartheid legal activism. Financier George Soros began providing funds for innovators, budding democracy activists, journalists and international exchanges as Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union slowly started to liberalize. The partly U.S.-funded but private Asia Foundation supported Bangladeshi NGOs’ innovative local dispute resolution work. (I worked for the foundation elsewhere, and later evaluated and researched that work.)

These privately supported efforts exhibited promising results as they expanded their operations and impact in the 1990s. They contributed to significant health, housing and other victories in South Africa after the racist regime stepped down. Bangladeshi NGOs’ local dispute resolution models gathered steam — and support from additional donors and the Bangladeshi government itself — by ameliorating gender inequities and providing the poor with alternatives to a distant, corrupt and incomprehensible judicial system.

Around the world, both foundations and donor nations alike funded a growing array of NGOs featuring paralegals who, unlike those working in U.S. law offices, were typically community-based volunteers whom NGO attorneys trained and collaborated with. They advocated for and with their communities and fellow citizens to address health, housing, land, gender and other issues.

These programs thrived at the same moment that the United States and other affluent nations began pouring greatly expanded sums into seeding democracy worldwide in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Eastern European communist regimes and the Soviet Union. Books on “exporting democracy” — even presenting it as America’s destiny — assumed it was the wave of the future.

Yet, the United States ignored the success of the projects funded by foundations and clung to the notion that foreign aid to governments could secure dramatic democratic transformations. This partly stemmed from foreign policy priorities, including the post-Cold War perspective that fortifying U.S.-friendly capitalist democracies was in our own economic and political interest. But it also flowed from a bureaucratic reality: It was easier to secure funding in Washington for ambitious programs that promised to build up national ministries, legislatures and judiciaries than for local programs that worked with farmers, women or other disadvantaged groups.

Maintaining this unfortunate focus, George W. Bush linked his post-9/11 military and political programs to both defeating terrorism and installing democracy, stoking cynicism in many circles about that latter effort. Even if viewed in the most charitable light, U.S. democracy-building efforts in Afghanistan proved no match for the dominance of warlords and — as with some other aid recipient nations — entrenched corruption networks that permeated the government.

The past two decades have seen U.S. democracy aid flow and ebb, in response to such events as the Arab Spring and its demise. This aid has continued to feature a blend of foreign policy priorities, immense bureaucracy, hubris, cynicism and idealism. Its misplaced priorities have endured: Despite the documented success of paralegal programs, for example, many have suffered funding cutbacks from American and other sources.

All of this helps explain the mediocre record for U.S. democracy promotion: The United States has focused too much on working with change-resistant institutions and too little on supporting the civil society and media change agents that might gradually affect such institutions over the long haul. Even in the short term, these shortchanged programs have a record of helping citizens bring about concrete results — improving farmers’ land tenure, combating corruption, reducing violence against women, enhancing communities’ health or strengthening inputs into local governance, among other goals. They may not be as sexy as transforming a country’s government, but history indicates such programs actually work.

All told, the United States has poured about $100 billion into democracy aid over the past 40 years, mostly for large-scale, government-focused programs, often designed and implemented by international consulting firms.

However, despite far less funding, homegrown projects that draw on local knowledge — which foreign consultants and aid officials lack — and that help partner populations pursue economic, health, political or human rights priorities have proved far more successful.

In a related vein, U.S. support for free and fair elections — programs often carried out by American NGOs that provide election-oriented monitoring, advice and training — has yielded notable achievements. Such programs have protected electoral integrity in some instances and fueled successful drives to challenge corrupt results in others, including Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution.

With the exception of such dramatic electoral results, civil society support may not produce the seismic shifts that American officials seek. But neither has the top-down, institution-building approach that has fruitlessly gobbled up vast resources.

Authoritarians are strong until they’re not. History is littered with the downfalls of repressive regimes that once appeared firmly entrenched. Just recently, the world saw Vladimir Putin’s seemingly iron hold on power shaken by the corrupt forces he himself enabled.

Thus, the global pendulum may yet swing back toward democracy. Helping to make that happen, in however modest a manner, demands supporting the kinds of efforts that have worked in the past and rethinking those that have not.

These lessons apply at home as well. Even as we honor Independence Day, the health of our government institutions seems in question. But a vibrant civil society, a thriving free press and safeguarding elections can protect those institutions’ integrity, keeping the flames of political accountability burning and ensuring that our democracy endures.


This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

Read more from Steve by visiting his blog or clicking any of the links below.

POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB:

Stephen Golub: The One Court That Will Decide Trump’s Fate

This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

The One Court That Will Decide Trump’s Fate

A US Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. | Image uncredited

It’s Not Any of the Usual Suspects

By Stephen Golub, July 3, 2023

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

It seems like you can’t tell a Trump trial or investigation without a scorecard these days. There are dozens of them.

Regardless of what you think of him, you’d think that courts in Washington, Florida, Georgia or New York would determine Trump’s ultimate legal fate.

Think again.

Let’s Be Civil

To start with, two upcoming New York City trials are both noteworthy.

The New York State Attorney General’s suit against him for massive financial fraud is set for October. She’s seeking a $250 million fine and to bar him, his family and his firm from doing business in the state that serves as his headquarters.

Following the favorable verdict for E. Jean Carroll in May, in which she won a $5 million judgement against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, he verbally slammed her for her victory. This in turn will be a focus of her related $10 million defamation suit against him, which is slated for trial in January.

However, as civil lawsuits, the fraud and Carroll cases don’t carry that ultimate penalty of potential imprisonment. There’s even the possibility of Trump raising enough funds from his followers to at least partly offset his financial penalties if found liable. Nonetheless…

The Current Criminal Cases

A threat of incarceration faces the ex-president, through two current criminal indictments.

There’s the Stormy Daniels hush money prosecution, brought by the Manhattan District Attorney in connection with Trump paying the adult film star on the cusp of the 2016 election, in return for her not revealing their affair. It starts next March in New York City.

Then there’s the pending trial most in the news recently: U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s national security documents case, which will be held in Florida at some point. The DOJ has charged Trump with lying about and otherwise obstructing the return to the U.S. Government of classified materials.

As the indictment states, those papers pertain to “defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to foreign attack.”

Furthermore, “The unauthorized disclosure of those classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Not exactly bathroom reading, eh? Though that’s where Trump reportedly stored some such items.

But Wait! There’s More!

Finally (for now, at least), there are two additional investigations which quite possibly will see Trump indicted this year.

It appears increasingly probable that, within the next several months, Special Counsel Smith will charge Trump in Washington, D.C. for activities connected to the January 6th insurrection or various other kinds of electoral interference pertaining to the 2020 election.

The Fulton County District Attorney, in Georgia, is expected to announce in August a decision regarding whether and whom to indict regarding 2020 electoral interference, possibly including multi-state racketeering chargesrelated to Trump pushing for the selection of “alternative electors” who could have subverted the Electoral College vote.

Image uncredited.

How Many Trials Was That?

From four to very possibly six major trials loom in Trump’s future.

Nonetheless, none of them seem likely to determine Trump’s legal fate and accountability in the most fundamental manner possible: whether he goes to prison. That decision rests in the hands of another court. Here’s why.

As I’ve noted, prison isn’t an option in a civil trial.

The New York hush money case is nothing to scoff at. But it’s arguably the toughest criminal case to win against him, and the one least likely to get him imprisoned even if he’s found guilty.

Instead, what becomes of Trump could conceivably hinge on the national security, insurrection and electoral theft trials that could consume much of next year. But whether the ultimate outcomes of those cases will actually be decided in Florida, Washington or Georgia courtrooms is another matter.

There already are indications that the national security documents case could be pushed back until after Election Day 2024. For one thing, the Trump-friendly judge presiding over the trial simply could decide to finalize the date for then or otherwise stymie the prosecution. For another, special considerations regarding national security trials also could delay the proceedings. And of course, there are the delaying tactics that Trump attorneys exploit in any litigation involving him.

The complexity of the potential, election-related federal and Georgia prosecutions could also delay the prosecutions of Trump for those crimes.

But such considerations are not the fundamental reasons why the courts hearing those cases might not decide Trump’s fate, unless of course they find him not guilty. This, it must be emphasized, is certainly possible. Such a verdict could be a legitimate outcome in a given case, as much as some might think or wish otherwise. Or, in a less legitimate vein, it could prove more probable by virtue of rulings that the Trumpist judge in the Florida documents trial could make.

Democracy in Action

But let’s put aside the potential “not guilty” outcomes for now.

Rather, Trump’s dodging the legal bullets rests on his getting re-elected (or perhaps another Republican winning in 2024, and then doing Trump some very big favors). Here’s how:

  • President Trump could in effect halt federal trials that haven’t started or been completed.
  • He could pardon himself if convicted.
  • He could similarly exert pressure to get a Georgia verdict in effect negated.

More specifically, Candidate Trump has made no secret of his plan to appoint an attorney general who will do his bidding, including halting a federal prosecution. If already convicted by the time he’s elected, he’ll seek to use his pardon power to spare himself.

Now, such scenarios are not a lock. Trump could of course lose the Republican nomination or the general election. A Democratic-controlled Senate could refuse to confirm his kind of compliant Attorney General, though that might only prove to be a stopgap measure. The Supreme Court could decide that a president can’t pardon himself. Many other twists and turns could take place.

Georgia on My Mind

But what about the potential Georgia case? It should be on our minds partly because the state prosecution there would not be controlled by the (potentially Trump-appointed) U.S. attorney general and a conviction there would not be subject to the possibility of a presidential pardon. But…

In May, Georgia’s governor signed into law the establishment of a commission with the power to remove local prosecutors who “refuse to uphold the law.”  There also is the possibility that a different Georgia law could be amended by the Republican-dominated state government to allow for a speedy state pardon of Trump even if he’s convicted.

Image uncredited.

The Court That Counts

So, both federal and state prosecutions could conceivably be halted, or their convictions effectively negated.

Which brings me back to my original point. As crucial as the actual and potential Trump trials are, they probably won’t ultimately determine whether he goes to prison. As much as we yearn for the rule of law to trump politics, these crucial outcomes might not be the product of what judges and juries decide.

Rather, Trump’s legal future hinges on the November 2024 election, and on all of the intensity that will entail. That’s so sobering for a nation that prides itself on its rule of law, on no person being above the law and on justice being beyond vote counts.

In other words, the crucial verdicts regarding these profoundly serious charges will not be decided by courts in Washington, Florida, Georgia or New York.

The verdicts will be rendered by the court of public opinion.


This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

Read more from Steve by visiting his blog or clicking any of the links below.

RECENT POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB:

Stephen Golub: Despite Its Problems, Benicians (Mostly) Really Like Benicia

Despite Its Problems, Benicians (Mostly) Really Like Benicia

Benicia’s Capitol State Historic Park. | Uncredited image.

By Stephen Golub, posted June 2, 2023

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

If you’ve been following Benicia news and social media lately, you’d probably think that our city has a number of serious problems to contend with. And you’d be absolutely right. But there’s good news as well.

First, though, the bad news:

The Budget Challenge. It entails painful cuts and revenue-raising measures in order to balance our books. There have been City Council and other meetings on this in recent months. There doubtless will be more in the months to come.

The ‘La Migra’ Challenge. Named for a slang term applied to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, it’s a game that’s been played by Benicia high school students annually for years. But the very name has clear racist connotations. And while some students may play willingly, not all do so. Even worse, there have been reliable reports – including in the May 12 Benicia Herald and more recently on the Benicia Independent – of minority students being harassed and even subjected to attack. For a  discussion of the problem (including TV links), go to Sheri Leigh’s superb Benicia Independent post, which was also shared on Nextdoor. A couple of useful comments suggest that the “game” was somewhat limited this year due to police and school actions this year, but it remains a horrid pastime.

The Environmental Challenge. For one thing, there was the Thanksgiving release by the Martinez Refining Company of a toxic plume that drifted over parts of Benicia. The nature and danger of the residues in Martinez and here are now being tested. On a more regular basis, there are repeated violations by Valero, including but by no means limited to pouring toxic chemicals into our air for at least fifteen years without telling us. Valero has been compounding these actions, in a sense, by pouring many hundreds of thousands of dollars into our city council and mayoral elections in recent years (though unsuccessfully in 2020 and 2022), presumably to help elect Republican and Democratic candidates it finds favorable. Though we appreciate the jobs and donations Valero provides, being a good neighbor does not include polluting our skies, politics and perhaps even health.

So why the cheery title for this column, despite these challenges? Because Benicia has the community strength, resilience and pride to hopefully overcome or at least mitigate them, as suggested by a recent survey of Benicians’ attitudes and experiences, as part of the National Community Survey (NCS). Both Mayor Young and City Manager Giuliani have recently reported on the study. I’m here to supplement their efforts by summarizing some of its results.

For a link to the NCS methodology and findings, here’s Steve Young’s very useful Nextdoor post on the topic.

The survey focused on hundreds of communities across the country. It was conducted here in Benicia from January 20 to March 3 of this year.

Overall, the NCS found a good deal of satisfaction with our city’s “livability.” That all-purpose term includes survey results for numerous different categories of life here, including Economy; Mobility; Community Design; Parks and Recreation; Education, Arts and Culture; and Inclusivity and Engagement.

Benicia came out quite well, in many respects scoring at least 10 percent higher than the national “benchmarks” – basically the national average, though the study’s Methodology section does not make that clear.

For instance, “Over 9 in 10 residents favorably evaluated the overall quality of life in Benicia (95% excellent or good), Benicia as a place to live (96%), and Benicia as a place to raise children (94%); each of these ratings were higher than the national comparisons.” The same applies to the 95% who would recommend Benicia as a place to live. Eighty-eight percent plan to remain here for the next five years.

More from the report: “About 9 in 10 respondents were pleased with the city’s overall appearance, surpassing comparison communities around the country. In addition, 8 in 10 offered above-average reviews for both the preservation of the historical or cultural character of the community and Benicia’s public places where people want to spend time. Cleanliness (92%), water resources (80%), Benicia’s open space (87%), preservation of natural areas (86%), and the availability of paths and walking trails (84%) all received ratings that were higher than the national benchmarks.”

A smattering of other results:

  • In a result that obviously spans generations, Benicia scored at least 10% higher than the national benchmarks as a place to raise children (94% positive survey replies, ranking 51 out of 378 communities asked a similar question) and to retire (78% positive, ranking 59 out of 374).
  • Benicia is a happening, hopping place! (Well, at least in some ways.) We ranked at least 10 percent higher than the benchmarks regarding vibrancy of the downtown/commercial area (71% positive, ranking 65 out of 291), opportunities to participate in social events and activities (78% positive, ranking 37 out of 311), opportunities to attend special events and festivals (83% positive, ranking 18 out of 308) and community support for the arts (80% positive, ranking 22 out of 212).
  • For the many information-oriented folks among us, the library gets good ratings too (89% positive, ranking 109 out of 332). Though it’s interesting that only 24% of us share our opinions online (ranking 173 out of 211).
  • Benicia is a great place to drive! (At least according to the survey.) Traffic flow on major streets had an 83 percent positive response, ranking 6 (!) out of 341.
  • It’s fair to note that for the majority of the approximately 150 categories, Benicia was rated similarly to other cities. Still, the categories for which it was rated 10 percent higher than other communities greatly outnumbered the six categories for which it was rated 10 percent lower.
  • The leading negative category? You guessed it: street repair (26% positive, ranking 311 out of 357 -ouch!). Also, air quality (60% positive, ranking 271 out of 302 – wheeze! – which brings us back to the environmental challenge).
  • The other four negative categories? Utility billing, garbage collection and (for results that probably don’t reflect on Benicia itself) health care costs and preventive health services.

Finally, I should note that while I’m providing comparisons to national results here, Benicia scores similarly well when compared to other Western states’ cities with populations of 15,000 to 40,000.

Having said all this, I’m not saying that we’ll solve our problems simply by virtue of liking our city. And I’m certainly not saying that our financial, racial and environmental challenges become any less severe because, for many of us, Benicia is a fine place to live.

Quite the contrary: Cities inevitably change. We lose it if we don’t improve it. It’s up to us to address the problems that plague Benicia, precisely in order to make our catchphrase, “A Great Day by the Bay,” something to honor and preserve.


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.


RECENT POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB: