About Me…

I am a native Californian, not fully retired from a diversified career as a business writer, consultant and manager, working with mostly smaller-sized entrepreneurial businesses, non-profit organizations, artists and other professionals.

Earlier this year I launched a monthly podcast, Wise Talkers, which also reflects my lifelong interest in how we can improve the human condition. A fairly extensive personal bio on the Wise Talkers website provides additional information about my life and career.

I have always been intensely interested in politics as a voting citizen. And since this blog deals with politics, here’s a quick rundown on my early political upbringing and personal voting history:

My mother was the only child of a divorced union-working mom in Los Angeles, a staunch New Deal Democrat. My father, four years older, graduated from Cal Tech in 1943 and they married before Mom could finish high school. Dad was an Eisenhower conservative, a solid business Republican. Predictably, the family consensus on elections and candidates leaned Dad’s way. Even Mom said she voted Republican with Dad (though I did often wonder who she actually chose in the privacy of the voting booth).

In keeping, I became a Republican, and in 1968 I cast my first presidential ballot for Richard Nixon. Also my second in ’72.

I then became a Democrat in the mid-1970s, a transition to be described another time perhaps. I have voted straight Democratic in every election since 1976, with the lone exception of voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger in his successful second California gubernatorial run in 2006.

With a midterm exception or two, I have voted in every election since 1968.

And then came Donald Trump…

Like so many other Americans, I have been appalled, confounded, and deeply saddened by the rise of Donald Trump since 2015. I would give my right arm for the return of my father’s brand of Republicanism. In the meantime, until the Republican Party can cast off Trumpism, if it can, the Democratic Party is the only viable vehicle we have to save democracy.

And now, in the candidacy of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, I believe that vehicle holds genuine promise for the future of our democracy, and for meaningful progress toward a better world for all.