Wading In

Friday, December 28, 2012 Another Wade Christmas is in the books By Kelvin Wade From page A7 | December 27, 2012 | 2 Comments Another Wade-style Christmas is in the books. Brace yourselves. I admit I have a screw or two loose. There’s something about Christmas that brings out the prankster in my brothers and me. To a kid, Christmas is a time of wonderment and presents they’ve been wanting for a long time. My friend Nedra Polk posted a picture of her son Omari on Facebook that perfectly captures the wonder of a child on Christmas morn. There he is, holding his Christmas presents with his eyes sparkling and a smile so big it’s bursting off his face. In my family, opening a gift is sometimes met with a feeling of dread. In Christmases past, we’ve seen half-eaten hamburgers, Monkey breath, various Barbies, chocolate cakes, love letters from pets and cat poo given as gifts. We’ve also seen a fair amount of regifting. I once achieved the regifting record by surreptitiously opening a gift m...

Here’s how to stop mass murder By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | December 20, 2012 | 13 Comments A national conversation on gun violence has exploded in the aftermath of the ghastly Sandy Hook slaughter. But while we talk about stopping gun violence in general, our immediate focus should be on how to prevent mass shootings. In the two most-recent major shootings, Portland, Ore., and Newtown, Conn., the perpetrators stole legally purchased weapons. No matter how stringent gun-purchasing procedures get and no matter what kind of mental exam may be required to purchase firearms in the future, neither improvement would’ve prevented these tragedies. In 1989, a drifter named Patrick Purdy gunned down five children at Cleveland Elementary in Stockton with an AK-47. The public was so outraged the California Legislature passed the assault weapons ban. The problem was Purdy purchased his weapon in Oregon. If the ban had been in place prior to his shooting, it still would not have prevented ...

Sandy Hook wasn't God's Right Hook by Kelvin Wade             The nauseating Westboro Baptist Church plans to picket Sandy Hook Elementary school and the funerals of the victims of last Friday's massacre. The "church" pickets funerals as a twisted way of showing that God is judging America for the sin of homosexuality. The Ku Klux Klan then announced it would counterprotest the Westboro Baptist Church leading many Americans in the peculiar position of being on the same side as the KKK for the first time in their lives.             Truth is stranger than fiction.             The thought of a church trying to gain cheap media attention by picketing the funerals of innocent children who were murdered is both sickening and infuriating. But, then again, millions of Americans agree with the Rev. Fred Phelps and his...

Mass Shootings: What To Do? by Kelvin Wade     I wrote a column following the Oregon mall shooting for iPinion and then the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting occurred. I wanted to expand upon my earlier column. I'm sick of feeling sick about the latest shooting in Connecticut. What is going to be done? Are we just going to express our sorrow and outrage and go back to business as usual until the next shooting? Then we'll wring our hands some more.     I'm sick of reading things like this shooting happened because God isn't allowed in the schools. That's asinine on so many levels. First, if you believe in God, do you really think there's a place in this world that God cannot go? Secondly, it's offensive to posit that if the Ten Commandments were hanging on the wall in a schoolhouse that it would act as some kind of anti-shooting talisman. Third, the same people who are so eager to violate the First Amendment by having state endorse religion are usu...

State workers blow other people’s money By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | December 13, 2012 | 3 Comments After my parents divorced, my dad would still come by every so often and organize a Wade family breakfast on a Saturday. With seven Wades around that table, these would be grand affairs with tons of grub (that I usually cooked). The breakfasts would begin with my dad taking me, Scott or Tony to Safeway or Lucky to acquire the mass quantities of grub. The beauty was if you helped him shop, you could slip all kinds of things into the cart and he’d be none the wiser. At the checkout, he’d suddenly see paperback books, magazines or toys riding the conveyor belt along with the eggs. I’m telling this story because the way we treated our dad’s wallet is similar to the way some California state employees have been treating your tax dollars. In a new state auditor’s report on whistle-blowing investigations covering the past two years, California workers misused $613,000. In one case, an emplo...

Thursday, December 6, 2012 Gun debate obscures real issue By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | December 06, 2012 | 1 Comment In a halftime rant on NBC-TV’s Sunday Night Football, Bob Costas set off a firestorm of controversy when he commented on Kansas City Chiefs’ linebacker Javon Belcher’s murder-suicide by blaming guns. Costas quoted sportswriter Jason Whitlock’s column that blasted guns as the main culprit in Belcher’s horrific act. Both Whitlock and Costas amplified their remarks, with Whitlock comparing the National Rifle Association with the Ku Klux Klan. Some commentators wrote about the deaths through the prism of a violent football culture. Still others mused whether concussions, a brain condition like chronic traumatic encephalopathy or drugs and alcohol played a role in the violent events. This isn’t a story about lax gun laws, NFL culture, brain injuries or substance abuse. What’s been lost is this is a story about domestic violence. It’s been reported that the Chiefs knew the r...

Thursday, November 29, 2012 Don’t be a Scrooge this Christmas By Kelvin Wade From page A9 | November 29, 2012 | Leave Comment We lived through another embarrassing Black Friday. Only in America would we pair a day of national thanks with a day of wanton greed, violence and commercialism. Perhaps Feb. 15 should be National Breakup Day. Dec. 30 can be National Sobriety Day. It makes as much sense. In Tallahassee, Fla., two people were at a Walmart and fought over a parking space. At a Sears in San Antonio, a man pulled a gun to discourage line jumping, while angry shoppers used their fists to beat a line jumper at a Bowling Green, Ky., Target. Several videos of a massive brawl at the Walmart in Moultrie, Ga., went viral as customers treated the big box store like a mosh pit at a speed-metal concert. The fight apparently was over cellphones. The violence was closer to home as well. A brawl erupted over a pair of panties outside Victoria’s Secret in Westfield Galleria in Roseville, while...

Thursday, November 22, 2012 This is how I do Thanksgiving By Kelvin Wade From page A13 | November 22, 2012 | 2 Comments This is a stream of consciousness about a truly great American holiday, Thanksgiving. If you can’t think of anything to be thankful for, let’s start with the fact that there’s air in your lungs and you’re not 6 feet under. Too often, especially in today’s shaky economy, we focus on what we don’t have instead of valuing what we do have. So if you go around your table this Thanksgiving, asking each person to mention something they’re thankful for and someone hesitates, smack him or her upside the head because there are lots of folks who’d love to be sitting at that dinner table in their place. I caught myself once thinking about what a hassle cooking dinner was going to be. It’s hard preparing so many dishes and having them all hot and ready at the same time. But then I had to smack myself upside the head. That’s a First World problem if there ever was one: How am I ...

Thursday, November 15, 2012 ICU clarifies what’s important By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | November 15, 2012 |  Last month, my gastroenterologist persuaded me to undergo a colonoscopy and upper GI endoscopy to try to find an answer to my anemia. He’d been trying to get to the bottom of it for weeks with various tests. I had the procedures done and felt fine the rest of the day. That night I started having chills and pain in my leg. I have a chronic incurable medical condition that makes me prone to frequent infections. If I catch them early and I have the right medications in my medicine cabinet, I can usually treat it at home. If I don’t have antibiotics or it’s a particularly severe attack, I find myself in the hospital. I’ve been hospitalized more than a half-dozen times. The next morning, a Saturday, while Cathi made breakfast, I was huddled under a blanket in my recliner. When she brought me a plate and I fell asleep rather than eat, she started to worry. She woke me, pulled ...

Thursday, November 1, 2012 Brace for the coming storm By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | November 01, 2012 | 7 Comments Many news organizations ran a photo of 72-year-old Elaine Belviso being rescued by Suffolk County police via boat from her home in New York, where Hurricane Sandy trapped her overnight. First-responders going into harm’s way to help folks is a reminder that we Americans are at our best in a crisis. More than 300 blood drives were canceled because of the hurricane so the Red Cross is urging people to donate blood. Also, to make cash donations, visit www.redcross.org, call 800-RED-CROSS or text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. I have no doubt Americans will rise to the need and provide help for their fellow citizens. This week, we’ve seen the spirit of bipartisanship embodied by New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie and our Democratic President Barack Obama. Christie told NBC, “The president has been outstanding in this and so have the folks at FEM...

I need an i Pad Mini By Kelvin Wade From page A2 | October 25, 2012 | Leave Comment Apple came out with new gadgets and gizmos this week and I feel like a dieter at a buffet. I’m a tech guy. I love all things electronic. I could spend hours in Best Buy. My significantly better half Cathi thinks I have enough laptops and tablets and gadgets, but what is enough? When the iPhone 5 came out recently, I instinctively wanted it. I’d had the original iPhone and a fourth-generation iPod Touch. Since then, I’d cheated on Apple with a Blackberry and then an Android phone. Now was my chance to go back to Apple. It was going to be like a tribute to the memory of Steve Jobs. Of course, Cathi was opposed to me laying out 200 bones on a new phone. So she talked me into getting a nice free Android phone. Free is always good, so I got the Android phone. (Not because I don’t wear the pants in the family. I just like to let Cathi think she runs things. I think.) Since then, I can’t help but think I’ve ...

Give Lori Wilson a look for Suisun City Council by Kelvin Wade October 25, 2012     How many times have you been looking for something and you call someone over to help you and they find what you're looking for almost instantly? Sometimes it pays to have a fresh pair of eyes look at a given situation. After looking into the Suisun City Council race, I think it could pay off for Suisun to invest in a fresh pair of eyes in the form of Lori Wilson. Wilson is the only challenger to the two seats currently held by incumbents Sam Derting and Mike Segala.     Lori Wilson is a wife and mother to two teenagers, the oldest of which is going into the U.S. Marines Corps the day before the election. Brining the perspective of a young mother to the council will be a valuable addition. She can speak to issues facing young families in Suisun.      Beyond that, Wilson, a financial analyst, brings intellectual heft and know-how to the Council. She ...

Monday, October 18, 2012 Dump the death penalty By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | October 18, 2012 | 2 Comments Proposition 34, on the November ballot, would end capital punishment in California and convert all death row inmates to life in prison without parole. Surveying the death penalty in California 2012, I think it’s time to abolish the death penalty. The pathetic reality is we don’t have capital punishment in this state. Thirteen people have been executed here since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. The Los Angeles Times reported last year that we’ve spent $308 million per execution and that just prosecuting a capital case can cost up to 20 times more than a life without parole case. Talk about no bang for your buck. Beyond the cost, there’s the cost to justice. We have 752 inmates on death row with convictions going back to the early 1980s. What has this done to the families of the victims who’ve had to live with this farce this whole time? Many relatives of murder victim...

Thursday, October 11, 2012 Are councilwoman’s husband's finances fair game? By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | October 11, 2012 | 3 Comments The recent article “Councilwoman named as defendant in lawsuit” on Oct. 5, 2012, in this paper disturbed many readers. They’ve responded to it on the Daily Republic website, on Facebook and to me personally. The gist of the article was that Discover Bank has named City Councilwoman Catherine Moy’s husband primary defendant in a lawsuit and that Moy was also listed in the suit. The fact that Discover was suing her husband didn’t seem like it was a newsworthy event. That she was also named in the suit along with her husband isn’t surprising. Moy explained that her husband had become disabled and she’d lost her job and they fell behind on their bills. It makes me uncomfortable even writing about this now. So many people who have struggled during the Great Recession can identify with their situation. We’ve had misconduct from City Council members an...

September 27, 2012 FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA Get registered and get ready By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | September 27, 2012 | Leave Comment Sadly, there is a widespread vote suppression effort under way in this country where 37 states have enacted or are contemplating voter ID laws and other restrictive voting measures. As was reported recently in The Washington Post, “News21, a Carnegie-Knight investigative reporting project, found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter impersonation since 2000. With 146 million registered voters in the United States, those represent about one for every 15 million prospective voters.” There are more cases of alleged alien abduction than in-person vote fraud. Yet the efforts that mostly Republican legislatures have led to combat this “problem” could result in millions of voters being disenfranchised. Most of the voters likely to be wrongly prevented from voting will be black and Hispanic. Gee, what a surprise. Fortunately, California isn’t trying to su...

Thursday, September 20, 2012 Pay attention to man behind curtain By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | September 20, 2012 | By now, most have seen the video of Mitt Romney speaking at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in which he writes off 47 percent of Americans as thoughtless victims who pay no income taxes and are dependent on government. It was a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the real Romney. He has since stood by his remarks. The idea that “47 percent of Americans pay no taxes” is a staple on right-wing radio and blogs. It fits the belief that half of Americans are working to support the other half. That other half is derided as a bunch of freeloaders, welfare and food-stamp recipients. This is vintage conservative class warfare and now its been confirmed that Mitt Romney accepts it as his worldview. But I like to deal in facts, not ideology. According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, it’s true that 53 percent pay federal income tax. Of the rest who don’t pay federal income tax, 28....

Thursday, September 13, 2012 ‘No Easy Day’ an easy, if familiar, read By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | September 13, 2012 | Leave Comment I spent the anniversary of 9/11 reading the newly released book “No Easy Day” by “Mark Owen,” the former Navy SEAL Team Six member who defied the Pentagon by publishing his firsthand account of the Osama bin Laden raid without their blessing, although under a pseudonym. A book like this is obviously review-proof, but can it possibly live up to the hype? The book tells the story of “Mark Owen,” a guy who grew up in Alaska dreaming of being a Navy SEAL. After finishing college, he enlists, fulfills his dream and works his way into the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the elite SEALs unit formerly known as SEAL Team Six. The book is obviously essential reading for anyone who wants to read the only firsthand account of Operation Neptune Spear, the operation to kill or capture Osama bin Laden. Those who are just interested in reading...

Pick your friends wisely By Kelvin Wade From page A10 | September 06, 2012 | Leave Comment This week a person in a gold SUV shot at three people walking on East Pacific Avenue, wounding one person. One of the most shocking things about drive-by shootings in town is that they do not shock us anymore. Growing up in Fairfield, one of the things I never had to worry about was slow-moving cars rolling up alongside me and the passenger opening fire. When I was a kid, it was nothing to ride my bike from my house on Davis Drive to friends who lived near the Suisun marina or friends who lived off of North Texas Street. My friends and I would take the DART bus to the library or to the mall. Walking up to the Short Stop on Walters Road or EZ-Mart on East Tabor Avenue wasn’t a hazardous thing to do. Then, in 1984 when Stanley Verketis shot and killed Fairfield police officer Arthur Koch, it rocked the community. Shootings were just unheard of back then. Fairfield is now a different place. I can’t ...

Thursday, August 30, 2012 No sympathy for clueless landlords By Kelvin Wade From page A11 | August 30, 2012 | 2 Comments I don’t like solicitors at my door because, chances are, if I don’t know you, it’s a waste of time. If you’re not wearing a uniform, holding a package, holding a pizza, selling Thin Mint Cookies or have a fistful of balloons and an oversized check, I don’t want you to even think about touching my doorbell. It’s unfortunate that installing a trapdoor on the front porch or catapult system is cost-prohibitive. So when my doorbell rang the other day, I went through a mental checklist of who it could possibly be. Cathi was expecting a package, so that could be it. Whoever it was rang the doorbell again and that made me think about turning on the garden hose. You don’t rush me. I opened the door to a fairly well-dressed man who resembled Mario from the video game series with a heavy accent I couldn’t place. The gist was he owned a house down the street and had evicted his ...