On yet another sunny May afternoon, Pres. JOHN SYLVESTER called the Los Altos Rotary Club meeting to order at 12:15 PM. 

Arriving Rotarians had been greeted by DWIGHT MATTHEWS, JOANNE KAVALARIS and JOHN CARDOZA.  SAM HARDING was also hanging around, annoying the greeters.

Pres. JOHN called on PP TRACIE MURRAY to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pres. JOHN then called on PATRICIA ROHRS to give the thought for the day, which was her wish that you always have old wine, old friends, and young cares.

Pres. JOHN then called on JEANNE MACVICAR, this week’s song leader, who  led the club in “You Are My Sunshine.”

Pres. Elect JACK KELLY took the podium to welcome our one visiting Rotarian, Tim from Wasco, CA (just north of Bakersfield).  JACK then called upon Rotarians with guests, and MARK ROGGE, RANDY GARD, and MONA ARMISTEAD all introduced their guests. JACK himself introduced two guests of the Club.

ELEVATOR TALKS

ANNE ARJANI and DAVE SMITH gave their “elevator talks” about their businesses.

ANNE is a local realtor who has several specialties.  Among them, she is a specialist in helping seniors purchase and sell properties.  She is also an international property specialist, helping local sellers market their properties to buyers from foreign countries (how do you say “handyman special” in Arabic?).  She uses lots of video to acquaint buyers with the properties. ANNE pointed out that these days, all of the video needs to be tailored to mobile devices, iPhones and tablets, because so many young buyers don’t even use computers to do their research anymore.  ANNE is also a negotiation specialist, helping sellers negotiate with the buyers to achieve their desired objectives.

DAVE SMITH runs “Auto Sales Velocity,” which is very different from an auto broker.  A person buying a new car will spend 18 hours on the Internet determining the features he wants for his ideal car, and then get to the dealer and find that the ideal car does not exist, at least not on the lot.  Dealers want to sell cars off the lot, but dealers can’t possibly order every variation of every car.  So DAVE’s company does “data research” to determine the options and features of cars that buyers are buying and looking for.  He provides this information to the dealers, so that their on-lot inventory will contain the types of cars buyers seek.  Dave currently has over 80 dealers in his network and is growing.

YOUNG AT ART

FRANK VERLOT reported the results of this year’s Young at Art competition.    FRANK pointed out that we normally receive up to 5 submissions from each of the 6 local high schools (AltaVista, Homestead,Los Altos, St. Francis, Mountain View and Pinewood).  All of the art is on display at our annual Art Show, and it is also usually on display prior to the show at local commercial venues.   The jury then selects the 2 winners from each school.  The winning artwork was on display at our meeting, and FRANK presented a slide show showing the winning art, and presented the awards to the winning students.

The winning students and their schools:

Alta Vista HS
- 1st place to Tyler Birdsell for his colored block print titled ‘Daryll Abbot’
- 2nd place to Vinnie Navarro for his watercolor titled ‘Marsh Scene’

Homestead HS
- 1st place to Conner Church for  his acrylic titled ‘Passive Consumers’
- 2nd place to Steven McDonald for his oil titled ‘Trees at the Baylands’

Los Altos HS
- 1st place to Amritha Jayasankar for her  India-ink pen work titled ‘Reaching the Moon’
- 2nd place to Savanna Li for her watercolor titled ‘Bird’

Mt View HS
- 1st place to Jason Farwell for his untitled watercolor depicting a rural rail siding & landscape
- 2nd place to Ed Tang for his inked pointillist work titled ‘Tired’,  depicting a yawning lion

Pinewood
- 1st place to Sarah Reece for her colored pencil work titled ‘Hands’
-  a 2nd place tie, to Abigail Brenneman for  her water color pointillist work  titled ‘Clowns’ 
and to Karalena Davis for her acrylic titled ‘Hawaiian Rainbow’

St Francis HS
- 1st place to Cindy Wang for her graphite pencil work titled ‘Backstage’
- 2nd place to Sophia Xiao for her graphite pencil work titled ‘China Doll’,

ANNOUNCEMENTS

CRYSTA KRAMES gave a preliminary report on the results of the art show.  Presently, it appears that we will net approximately $103,000, with a few items still yet to come in. CRYSTA also announced that there will be a “debriefing” party at her home tonight, for all of those who headed up projects for the Art Show.  If you want to come to her party next year, volunteer to be a Chair at the next show!

ALAN VARNI announced that the World Community Service Committee will hold a meeting on Tuesday morning at 8 AM at First Republic Bank.

MONA ARMISTEAD announced that the Kickout planning was underway, and that the dinner would be held on Friday, June 28 at the Fremont Hills country Club.  The committee has already done some hard negotiating, and the cost for the Kickout dinner this year has gone down from $90 to $75.  MONA asked that everyone get their checks into SANDY WHIPPLE early.

STEVE SHEPHERD announced that the annual golf tourney will be held June 7 at the Shoreline Golf Links.   You can sign up for golf, or just sign up for dinner. In the evening there will also be poker, and this year there will also be a table playing “Mexican train.”  Penny Lave will guide participants in how Mexican Train is played for those interested.

FINES (Hurt by Kurt)

Pres. JOHN then called upon fine master KURT (“It’s not about the money”) HUEG, who stepped up to the podium to resounding silence.  KURT was shocked, shocked, that there were still a few members who were not yet in the President’s Club, and KURT planned to correct this.

NANCY DUNAWAY paid an additional $20, even though she was already in the President’s Club, to announce that her son had just graduated with a PhD.

FRANK ELMER paid a fine to announce that he had two daughters graduating from college this weekend, one from San Jose State and the other from Cal State Fullerton.

TED SORENSEN paid a fine and announced that his daughter had worked on a movie that was submitted to the Houston Film Festival, a large festival with over 500 entries. Her movie won the Best Picture award the festival and she won Best Actress.

JANE REED paid $20 to join the President’s Club, and announced that she was hosting a young student visitor from Switzerland.

ALAN VARNI paid $15 to join the President’s Club, and announced that he was about to begin a motorcycle trip to use Yosemite National Park.

KURT then pounced upon the nicest guy at his table, and forced JOHN MCDONNELL to pay a $20 fine. (Big, fat, ugly, dumbo, KURT is apparently unaware that Rotator writers are immune from being fined).

SHELLY POTVIN paid a $40 fine and announced that she would be attending her 10-year high school reunion in Portland.  Mindful of the Four-Way test, SHELLY then amended the time period covered by the reunion.

GUY FARTHING paid the full $100 to join the President’s Club in one fell swoop.

DAVID CASAS paid his final $35 to join the President’s Club.

ALAN LAMBERT paid $20 and, when asked to mention something interesting in his life, let us know that his car passed its smog test (actually something of an achievement for his old Alfa Romeo).

THE WEEKLY PROGRAM–MAPLIGHT: Shining a Light on Money’s Influence in Politics.

This week’s speaker was Daniel Newman of MapLight, an organization that collects data to provide information on how money and campaign contributions influence politics.  (Those with an interest in this can also see extensive contribution information at opensecets.org).

Mr. Newman started with a specific example of how campaign contributions can affect legislation.  The California legislature was set to enact a bill to require that only “fresh fruit” be included on public school lunch menus.   Late in the process, the bill was amended to require “nutritious fruit”.  In this manner, canned fruit, which contains high levels of corn syrup, would still be qualified to be on the menu.  It turns out that the canned food industry had given $2.3 million in campaign contributions to 189 candidates who voted on the measure.

Mr. Newman also pointed out that the average cost of a Congressional campaign has now become $1.5 million, which means that a candidate must raise $1900 a day during the entire two-year tenure of his term, as part of the process of being reelected.  Politicians need money.

Mr. Newman pointed out several themes that he sees emerging from the 2012 election.  He sees what he calls “outside money” as a major problem.  This is money that comes from Political Action Committees (PACs), SuperPACS, and section 501(c)(4) groups.  Much of this “outside money” comes from corporations.  Mr. Newman sees “outside money” as favoring Republicans.

Mr. Newman also pointed out that the 501(c)(4) organization’s are not required to disclose who gives them money.  This allows many organizations with vague names like, “Citizens for the American Way, or “Americans for Growth,” to promote the agendas of certain private interest groups without disclosing who is providing the funding.  Mr. Newman pointed out that there are now some legislative proposals that would require these groups to disclose who their donors are.  The counter argument has always been that requiring the disclosure of donors is intimidating people for their political views or affiliations.

Mr. Newman pointed out that the supers PACs spent $664 million in the 2012 election, but 70% of this money came from only 163 people (average of 2.9 million each).  This indicates that the political views of a small number of highly-motivated individuals are having a large impact on elections.

Mr. Newman also pointed out that the amount of negativity in the advertising has been going up.  For the 2012 election, observation groups in concluded that 80% of the advertising by the Obama campaign was negative, and 84% of the advertising by the Romney campaign was negative.

Mr. Newman sees a number of trends emerging in the early stages of the 2014 races.  First, he sees more money being spent earlier in campaigns, to try to influence who the eventual candidates will be and to have a greater influence before people become saturated by campaign ads.  He also expects to see more spending on the “ground game” of getting people out to vote, and less on television advertising, which many see as reaching the “saturation point” and becoming less effective in the closing weeks of the campaign.

Mr. Newman also collects data showing specifically how people who voted one way or another on a piece of legislation receive their money.  When Congress was considering a bill allowing importing drugs from Canada, a great deal of money from the pharmaceutical industry went to those who voted against the bill.  Chevron Corporation, which has had political problems with its refinery in Richmond, spent $80 million on the campaign for a City Council seat.  Mr. Newman also pointed to the Wall Street bailout legislation where the yes voters got 54% more bank money than the no voters.  Another example was when the California legislature was looking to limit some of the operations of “payday loan” outfits, and large amounts of money from that industry poured into Sacramento to stall the legislation.

Mr. Newman referred us to his website, which contains detailed analysis of who’s providing money to each of the candidates.  You can search by each individual candidate, to see where the money’s coming from.  The site also contains an analysis of all of the money given on both sides for proposition 37, the initiative that involved requiring labeling requirements on genetically modified food.

Mr. Newman concluded by pointing out that his own organization receives its funding primarily from private foundations.  They get approximately two thirds of their money from foundations and the other one-third from individuals.  He indicated that the information on this could be found on his website.

At the conclusion of Mr. Newman’s presentation, President JOHN chimed the meeting to a close at 1:30 PM.

THIS THURSDAY'S PROGRAM:

Belva Davis - Radio and TV Personality

As the first black female TV journalist in the West, Belva Davis helped change the face and focus of TV news. In a career spanning half a century, Davis has reported many of the most explosive stories of the era, including the Berkeley student protests, the birth of the Black Panthers, the Peoples Temple cult that ended in the mass suicides at Jonestown, the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, and many more during her career. Along the way, she encountered a cavalcade of cultural icons: Malcolm X, Frank Sinatra, James Brown, Nancy Reagan, Huey Newton, Muhammad Ali, Alex Haley, Fidel Castro, Dianne Feinstein, Condoleezza Rice and more.

Belva Davis was born in Louisiana during the Great Depression and raised in the crowded projects of Oakland.  She has over three decades of television experience, having worked first for KPIX-TV, then KQED Public Television 9, then KRON-TV, and with This Week in Northern California.

She has received several dozen awards for her journalism and has won eight local Emmys.  Now she is sharing the story of her extraordinary life in her memoir, Never in My Wildest Dreams, written with journalist Vicki Haddock.