A diet for a new year

We (and by we, I mean Porter and I) call it the New Year News Diet. A cautionary note: The NYND calls for self-discipline. It requires you to stop.

Stop obsessing over every new outrage coming out of the White House. Stop reading every commentary, analysis and set of five (or eight or 12) takeaways about each new executive order, pardon and hopelessly dense piece of legislation. Skip the breathless bulletins on cable news, pass on the Sunday news panel analyses, tune out the social media echo chamber, take a break from the apocalyptic rhetoric that permeates our national life.

Years ago, when I was still writing a daily column for another local paper, someone wrote to me and said, “It makes me crazy to read your column every day.” I replied: Turn the page.

I offer the same advice now.

Except the Daily Journal, of course. We are the good guys, providing actual news, information, sports about your daily life, as well as the Jumble. And in the language of the day, it is all locally sourced.

BY THE WAY: This is the 25th year of the Daily Journal, a truly independent, locally owned newspaper. Considering the state of local journalism around the country, this is an exceptional achievement worthy of attention and appreciation. Publisher Jerry Lee and Editor-in-Chief Jon Mays have produced a consistently excellent newspaper (even considering this dubious corner of the place) that is fair, engaged and diligent. It is a pleasure and a privilege to be a participant in the continuing adventure that is the Daily Journal.

SO MUCH FOR THE DIET: In observing all the tech bros who eagerly rushed to be on hand for President Trump’s inauguration, PIO guru Dave Vossbrink noted that Silicon Valley is no longer a tech industry. It is a money industry. It most assuredly is not a manufacturing industry, which is what Silicon Valley was in its beginning and for most of its life, up until dot-com changed everything. I did an interview with Lew Platt when he retired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard at the height of the dot-com boom. My most vivid memory of it was Platt’s outrage at the “get-rich-quick” atmosphere that permeated an industry that had been about building companies.

BE PREPARED: Last week’s sweeping power outage in the heart of San Mateo County certainly highlighted the need for extensive emergency planning in our cities and the county. The outage blacked out traffic signals across San Mateo, Foster City and Burlingame, which resulted in massive traffic jams at major intersections. All of which brings to mind the traffic jams that ensued when residents were fleeing the fires in Los Angeles. It is easy to imagine a similar and catastrophic panic should a major event occur here. Either the local communities have no evacuation plan, or it was not implemented. No matter, a plan needs to be formulated, practiced and made ready.

WHAT I MEANT TO SAY WAS: It is the briefest items that seem to cause the greatest problems. Last week’s item about two local slates of candidates to be delegates to an upcoming state Democratic convention presented, once again, the ongoing challenge of distinguishing between them. I described Assemblymember Diane Papan as a moderate, when, one complainant wrote, she is a shameless progressive.

In fact, almost everyone involved in these Democratic intramurals is a progressive.

Anyway, Papan has put together a slate, Dems United, that includes many people I have described as pragmatics — veterans of local Democratic politics; half the slate is current, high-profile elected officials. The other slate, Dems United For Working Families, has activist experience in the progressive area, is younger and includes two elected officials. Last week’s column prompted a complaint that I gave this slate short shrift. Clearly, this is a more hardline progressive bunch, although some of them undoubtedly would insist they are pragmatic, just as the pragmatics would describe themselves as progressive. Now that I have cleared that up …

MEASURE A: This whole slate hoo-ha aside, the county Democratic Party voted 29-0, with one abstention, to support Measure A, the March 4 ballot measure that would amend the county charter to empower the Board of Supervisors to fire Sheriff Christina Corpus. And this week, the LatinX Dems voted unanimously to support the measure, more evidence of the rapid erosion of the support that ushered Corpus into office in 2022.

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He can be reached at marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.