North Coast Journal Stuff

All kinds of stuff in the North Coast Journal this week, and I'm just looking at the online version.

Our very own Hank Sims is back with his Town Dandy column after a one week hiatus. He's ragging on Howard Rien and the Humboldt Taxpayer's League again- The Taxpayer's League for their somewhat low key campaign against the extension of Eureka's Utility Tax.

Sims laments that the League doesn't have a spiffy campaign slogan this time around like they did back in their campaign against the county wide sales tax, Measure L. He suggests the League use something like F**k U! as the campaign slogan.

Cute Hank. Real cute. Do we really need the nasty language though? Hey, I've got a dirtier mouth than most but I still think swear words look bad in print, most of the time anyway. How about Poo On U instead?

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Then the Journal almost witnesses an elections test snafu involving County Elections dude, Lindsay McWilliams, testing the our voting machines. Turns out it wasn't a malfunction of the machines but he'd inserted the wrong test ballots. Wonder if Dave Berman was there?

I'll be the first to admit I'm not all that fired up about either elections reform or issues of accuracy in tabulating votes. As long as they're run by people, things are going to get screwed up. Still, I want to have accurate vote counts as much as anybody else.

Here's an interesting, albeit lengthy article on voting problems around the country. It mentions, in a sidebar, the suggestion by some that voting officials, like our Secretary of State position, be "non- partisan professionals".

Come on now. Does anyone really think that making a position non- partisan makes the person holding that office non- partisan? Sorry. You're just kidding yourself. Sure, there are people that are even handed and don't take partisan sides on issues, but just making the position non- partisan doesn't really do anything in ensuring that.

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Now here's one that caught my eye: The Journal is looking for freelance journalists to submit items for publication, and they'll pay you for them. I'll have to see if I can come up with something. Maybe I can make a few extra bucks?

I always hated having to write stuff in school. Didn't know what to write about and hated the deadlines. Doesn't look that this deal would really require a deadline, unless you were writing about something that required timeliness in publication. I'll have to keep this in mind, although not sure that I write well enough for the Journal's high standards.

So how much money could I make doing this? I just counted the words I've written above and that's 433. Boy, that doesn't even make it to their Short Story category, which pays $40 for five to six hundred words. Oh well, I'm sure that's not cast in stone. Besides, I've written stuff way over five hundred words here before.

I'll find something to send in one of these days.