With a litigator and a dentist as Greeters today, there was much merry confusion at the door.  Thank you, Hank Heuer and Dr. Eric Loberg!  Maybe it was the profusion of menu choices or the hot weather.  Happily, we all rose for the pledge by PP Ron Lyster.  President Dwight reached for his back-up plan, but VP Leah rushed in just in time to deliver our invocation.

Guests: Diane Good (to be inducted next week) brought an associate from the Salvation Army and will bring another next week.  John Heidt gave us a community update and PP Chris Bradford described the new Rotary Scholarship which will replace the Ambassadorial Scholarship.   It is larger—at $30,000—and only for graduate studies.  He needs a few more volunteers for the selection committee—I highly recommend the experience.

Announcements:

·         Marsha Hunt brought back stories of Uganda.  She presented us with the banner of the Rotary Club of Kanungu (Bwindi Forest) last week.  This week, we learned that the club president had died of Malaria.  We counted our blessings.  She got excited telling us how the high school students she had met as tykes had become bright and motivated high-schoolers ready to contribute to society.  Some of them, she had first noticed abandoned in the bush, with no family nor prospects. It costs, by the way, $250 to sponsor a child at the school she supports in Uganda for a year.

·         Pres Dwight reminded us of the upcoming Fun Party with a Harvest theme planned for October 6.  Save the date and wait for details!

·         John O’Keefe reminded us of the memorial for Ernie Wolfe at Magnolia Elementary School this Saturday at 11:15, after the reading program finishes.  Volunteer readers must be vetted on the website and arrive before 9:00 AM.

Pres Dwight introduced our speaker, Assemblyman Mike Feuer, who is terming out in Sacramento in three months (six year limit).  A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law, he has written a good deal of legislation these past years, covering transportation, gun violence, drunk driving, and much more.  Clearly, if all our legislators had his smarts and energy, California would be a much better state.  Pres Dwight charged him with the task of explaining what’s going on in Sacramento in terms a six-year-old would understand. 

The Assemblyman, at our request, gave us a basic understanding of where our tax dollars are going (50% education, 25% medical and other aid to poor, 12% to keep the courts, etc. going, etc) and where they come from (too little from real estate tax due to Prop 13 shielding commercial buildings).  It seems even today, most Californians who voted for Prop 13 think it only shields residential properties.  This would not have happened if the legislature and provided the real estate tax bill that we needed back in 1978.   He faults the legislature for not providing the vision and leadership we’ve needed these past few decades.  He also faults the “Grover Norquist pledge” (to never raise any tax) that all but one Republican member has taken in Sacramento—which denies compromise in a state where tax increases require a 2/3 majority vote. 

Ideology aside, Mike did an excellent job of describing the problems we asked him about—those years of teaching public policy and law at UCLA were evident.  Facing unemployment, he is running for City Attorney next March, and probably picked up a few votes today with his professorial manner.  With the questions coming fast, he ran overtime, but no one left their seat.

Thought for the Day:  “Many live under the illusion that they have none.”

                                                        -Huber Ries (composer)

—YOE Dwight Heikkila