Good heavens, this cannot be allowed

Oh, dear, we can’t have that, the media mavens, heavily tilted leftward, continually remind the voters, most of whom are paying scant attention.

The state’s unfortunate (in this case anyway if you lean liberal, progressive or socialist) open primary setup is to blame, along with a slate of bland, uninspiring Democrats who are bludgeoning one another with endless TV attack ads and weakening the party’s electoral chances to the benefit of the GOP. The horror of it all! This cannot be happening! The humanity!

The situation, seen as almost a crime against nature by the pundits, does have a silver lining, however. At least both print and electronic news/opinion outlets are, for the most part, fully exposed.

This isn’t new, of course. The well-documented bias has been blatant for years. Small wonder polling shows so many consumers of information no longer trust news providers (doubtless including your faithful correspondent). That journalistic ship sailed a long time ago.

PETE HARAMES’ FINEST HOUR: For the late Pete Harames, who passed away last week at the age of 80, his long career as a Peninsula public school teacher/coach was marked by more than its share of victories.

But his finest hour may have occurred in a gut-wrenching loss. It occurred in March of 1995 at the Oakland home floor of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

Harames’ Capuchino High School basketball team was playing Verbum Dei of Los Angeles in the California Interscholastic Federation Division IV championship game. It was a highly improbable matchup, at least as far as the San Bruno Mustangs were concerned.

Harames’ underdog crew got into the CIF tournament as an at-large team, having finished second in a regional playoff. They had to go on the road and win three difficult games to secure the Northern California divisional title and the right to meet Verbum Dei.

Few expected the contest to be close. But it was. And then some. In draining and dramatic fashion, Capuchino lost, 60-59, in a game decided in the last 1.9 seconds, in part, on a missed free throw.

But the gritty, no-quit performance by the out-of-nowhere Mustangs generated kudos from all sides. Harames’ savvy and inspired coaching job was praised by his peers, the press and scores of other observers. He and his players put Capuchino on the sporting map.

FUNGIBLE CASH EASILY MOVED: The misleading material is arriving in the mail. They outline the purported capital improvement/maintenance needs of some of our public schools in anticipation of planned bond measures. One of the disingenuous arguments in favor of a yes vote is this one: “Funds cannot be used to pay administrators’ salaries and benefits.” That ignores the reality that, if new bond money is approved by voters, it frees up fungible capital improvement/maintenance dollars budgeted in the general fund that can then be used to improve administrators’ (or other employees’) compensation.

DUBIOUS RANKING FOR A TRIO:  The coastal city of Pacifica recently received a depressing designation it would prefer to hide in a marketing closet. It was named the worst small town in America in which to start a business by WalletHub, an online financial service. Locally, the coastal burg wasn’t alone in this rating system. San Carlos and Belmont were also ranked in WalletHub’s bottom 10 in this dubious category. More than 1,300 small municipalities were analyzed across the United States. All we can say is “Ouch.”

TIME FOR AN OFFICE OF MEA: The San Mateo County Office of Education performs a variety of tasks in support of the county’s 23 public school districts. Among its functions is a separate department involving what is called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI. But we have to wonder, where is the office devoted to Merit, Excellence and Achievement, or MEA? Wouldn’t that be an important, logical addition in Silicon Valley, one of the world’s hotbeds for innovation and creativity where the brightest minds flock to work?