By Richard Brautigan
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

This was written by Richard Brautigan when he was the poet in residence at the California Institute of Technology in 1967.

The Chino Valley Unified School District and the parents of eight students attending its schools and those in three other school districts in California have filed a lawsuit against Governor Gavin Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in an effort to prevent the enforcement of a recently passed state law prohibiting schools from making a practice of notifying parents if their children are assuming a gender different from the one assigned them at birth.
The suit comes nearly a year after the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees instituted a parental notification policy that was in short order challenged by Bonta and his office and thereby blocked from being applied.
Representing the district and parents Oscar Avila, Monica Botts, Jason Craig, Kristi Hays, Cole Mann, Victor Romero, Gheorghe Rosca, Jr. and Leslie Sawyer are the Austin, Texas-based Liberty Justice Center and attorney Emily Rae.
The lawsuit challenges AB 1955, which was signed by Governor Newsom on Monday, July 15 and is scheduled to take effect January 1, 2025. AB 1955, authored by Assembly Member Chris Ward, D-San Diego, came in reaction to the passage of Chino Valley Unified’s policy followed by similar actions by the Orange, Temecula Valley and Murrieta Valley school districts.
The Chino Unified School District Board of Education took up the issue of parental notification after Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli in March 2023 introduced Assembly Bill 1314, which would have required schools in California to notify parents in writing within three days if a student identified at school as a gender different from his or her assigned gender at birth. AB 1314 died a quiet legislative procedural death when Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat and the chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, declined to set a hearing date for the bill before his committee, such that the bill was not given a chance to be considered by the entire Assembly. Continue reading →

So far, six local voter initiatives have qualified to appear on the November 5 ballot corresponding to the Presidential General Election in San Bernardino County.
One of those will be a measure to increase the tax for short-term vacation rentals such as hotels, motels, inns and so-called air mattress bed and breakfasts in the county’s unincorporated areas.
In Grand Terrace, voters will consider a 1 cent per dollar sales tax override, what city officials are calling a 1 percent transactions and use tax.
The City of Needles is asking its voters to determine whether the city should impose a 10 percent tax on all marijuana related businesses.
The City of Rancho Cucamonga is turning to its residents this year to see if they will vote to approve a “transient occupancy tax,” otherwise known as a bed tax or hotel/motel tax, of 12 percent.
The City of Yucaipa is asking its residents to approve a one cent per dollar sales tax.
The Morongo Unified School District is asking the residents who live within its boundaries to authorize the district to issue and sell up to $88,300,000 in bonds, the proceeds from which are to be used for the specific school facilities projects. Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
The latest recall effort in San Bernardino presents the public with a confusing mélange of conflicting political and personal entanglements, leaving confusion as to who, precisely, wants two of the senior members of the city council removed from office.
This week, it was publicly announced that a group of city residents living in both the First and Fourth wards want to force a recall question against Councilman Ted Sanchez and Councilman Fred Shorett.
Sanchez was first elected to the city council in 2018 and was reelected in 2022. Shorett was elected to the council in 2009, reelected in 2013, reelected in 2018 and again in 2022.
Shorett’s early tenure in office was distinguished by his alliance with then-Mayor Patrick Morris, which was an unlikely pairing, given that Shorett is a Republican and Morris a Democrat. Nevertheless, the two were part of a narrow ruling majority on the council that formed when the city was under severe economic challenge, with consistent consecutive budget deficits in which expenditures eclipsed revenue. Morris, who was himself a longtime public employee as both a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office and then later a Superior Court judge, took what was for many an unexpected if not shocking stand against public employee unions, which for decades had effectively pressured previous mayors and city councils to grant them salary and benefit increases, despite the city’s shrinking income. Shorett joined with Morris in seeking to reduce city expenditures by freezing city employee pay levels and holding the line on benefits, which managed to stave off for a year or year-and-a-half an inevitable bankruptcy filing by the city in 2012. While Shorett found himself faced with the undying enmity of local public employee unions, he managed to get some level of credit from city residents for his efforts to maintain the city’s solvency, and has managed to stay in office for a decade-and-a-half. Continue reading →

The wife and five children of Keith Vinyard have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against San Bernardino County, the sheriff’s department, Sheriff Shannon Dicus and at least two unnamed deputies as a consequence of the unarmed 52-year-old’s execution on March 23.
On March 23 at roughly 9:50 p.m. in Hesperia, Vinyard was shot and killed after deputies, in apparent response to a domestic violence warrant for Vinyard’s arrest, engaged in a vehicle chase in which he attempted to escape and was, according to the department, driving recklessly. The pursuit ended within the vicinity of the 15400 block of Halinor Street, at which point Vinyard refused to comply with commands made by a deputy, according to the department. During that exchange, according to the department, Vinyard threatened to shoot the deputy. It was subsequently determined that Vinyard was not in possession of a gun. Vinyard did, however, according to the department, arm himself with a “large metal object” as other deputies arrived on scene.
As that was taking place, according to one of the deputies, a second deputy and a third deputy opened fire on Vinyard after a first deputy discharged his service gun, even though one of those deputies did not consider Vinyard at that moment represented a threat, but considered it necessary for the deputies on the scene to act in unison because the threshold of a use of deadly force was occurring.
As of April 4, the California Attorney General’s Office had initiated a review of Vinyard’s shooting under California Government Code Section 12525.3, which requires that the California Department of Justice serve as an independent agency to investigate statewide police officer shootings resulting in the death of an unarmed civilian.
While the sheriff’s department maintains that Vinyard was in possession of a deadly weapon – the large metal object it was claimed Vinyard was holding – witnesses at the scene as well as at least one of the deputies did not have anything in his hands and was yet inside his car when he was felled in a hail of gunfire.
Gage’s lawsuit on behalf of Tiffany Shernaman-Vinyard and the couple’s four sons and one daughter maintains Vinyard had not in any way threatened the physical safety of the officers at the scene.

Top San Bernardino County officials and a network of their supporters and political donors are preparing now to officially initiate the secession process to excise the county’s 20,105 square mile expanse from the State of California as early as January 2025.
If several political developments take place as anticipated and other arrangements take place, it is anticipated that the 51st State, Empire, will achieve its recognized status by some point in 2027, in time for it to achieve standing as the 36th largest state in terms of population, with five votes in the electoral college to be cast in the 2028 presidential election.
The odds-on favorite at this point to accede to the governor’s position upon Empire’s admission to the union is the prime mover behind the San Bernardino secession movement, Jeff Burum.
Thus far, the 57-year-old Burum has himself steered clear of elective politics, preferring the role of kingmaker he has assumed by virtue of his hefty political donations rather than that of officeholder. Nevertheless, it is anticipated that by the time he reaches the age of 60 in 2026, Burum will have made the transition into being an active politician, one whose ascendancy will be matched with the crowning achievement of his career, the founding of the first addition to the United States since Hawaii was admitted in 1959.
Burum’s largesse to San Bernardino County’s politicians going back for more than two decades has put him into the vaunted position he holds today, San Bernardino County’s shot caller. While he does not own every politician in county government and those on the various city councils in the at least eight cities in the county where he has real estate and developmental interests, those who are registered Republicans are safely in his pocket. With only limited exceptions, Burum does not support Democrats. Continue reading →