Wading In

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...