Newsroom

As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Thompson is privy to all kinds of sensitive material on matters of national importance. But he can't find out what's happening with the Rancho Feeding Corp. in Petaluma.

None of us can. And we agree with the North Bay congressman that with each passing day it gets more troubling.

More than five weeks have passed since initial actions were taken at the Rancho's Petaluma plant, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has yet to release information about what is happening.

2014 omnibus appropriations bill provision calls for the nation's military to purchase flags made in the country.

Soldiers carry them into battle, fly them high over foreign bases, and triumphantly carry them in processions, but those stars and stripes, until now, have often been made in China.

That irony spurred North Bay Congressman Mike Thompson (D) to write legislation requiring flags purchased by the Department of Defense (DoD) be 100 percent "Made in America." That legislation is now law, signed as part of the 2014 omnibus appropriations bill.

North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson criticized federal regulators Wednesday for failing to answer his questions about the growing Rancho Feeding Corporation meat recall.

Thompson joined a chorus of food safety experts and North Bay ranchers who have complained the U.S. Department of Agriculture is releasing few details about the reasons underlying the decision to recall all beef processed at Rancho's Petaluma plant last year.

Sometimes it just takes an act of Congress to get things done. That's exactly what happened in the North Bay. A Rohnert Park flag factory helped to change the law, as well as the lives of those working there.

You might assume that every flag is made in America. Not quite. And that's at the heart of the story.

Strips of red, white and blue fabric lay draped on tables and piled in bins, making the North Bay Industries warehouse in Rohnert Park look like the set of "The Colbert Report" on Patriot Day.

The 28 workers busily stitched the colorful cloth into American flags 3 feet wide and 5 feet long, big enough to cover the coffin at a veteran's funeral.

Every part of these flags — from the upland cotton grown in the U.S. South, to dye added in South Carolina, to the American brass grommets, to the painstaking sewing in Rohnert Park — is American.

The Sonoma Valley Community Health Center recently broke ground on a new, 18,000-square-foot facility that will help it treat an expected influx of patients amid expansion under health care reform, nearly tripling the size of its current location.

The new location, at 19270 Sonoma Highway in a former strip mall, will nearly triple the size of the health center upon completion, expected in June for an opening in July, officials said. It will replace the current center at 430 W. Napa St.

The three Santa Rosa residents registered for Sunday's forum on the Affordable Care Act and then gathered outside in the sun, discussing in Spanish the questions they had.

"The first question is, 'What help is there for people who don't earn much," said Odilon Salgado, 53, sitting on the curb outside Taylor Mountain Elementary School. "For people like me, for farmworkers."

"Another question," added Yolanda Flores of Santa Rosa, "is it obligatory."