Mark Bennett:Outside the Ivory Tower

Outside the Ivory Tower: Observations on Occupy Amador

Most Americans, including those associated with Tea Parties and the Occupy movements, agree on many things. But the democratic process by which we live, or try to, is done a grave disservice by the slurs and lies encountered on the Occupy Amador website. IRS data proves that those in the millionaire income category vary from year to year. They are different individuals. Of course, there is a permanent upper class, but they are far fewer than 1% and usually have the means to escape assault. However, this rhetoric and additional regulation end up impacting the middle class and those aspiring to it. Obama’s activities are even more deadly: they intend to destroy the Jeffersonian middle class.

For example, the new rules on the basis, or cost, of a stock require different accounting for the investor and for the reporting broker. This is not tax collection, but entrapment. Investors no longer pay taxes, but rather submit protection money to the federal government. Agenda 21 is intended to force people off the land and destroy private property. It is a reality, not a conspiracy theory. Go to Rosa Koire on youtube or www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/. Neither of these are Tea Party venues. To deny reality and call the Tea Parties conspiracy theorists is a slur that offends democratic process. But it goes beyond Occupy Amador. Some of the staff of the consulting firm writing our General Plan are conducting training sessions for planners to attack Agenda 21 critics. Our Board of Supervisors is now being forced to consider the prospect of grey wolves being introduced into Amador County.

Occupy Amador stated that the Tea Parties: “…would rather sell out to the 1% to abate any and all federal oversight of our forest and water resources.” They have chosen to ignore the absolute failure of Federal management. http://www.rangemagazine.com/ documents the destruction of our grasslands. Our forests are overgrown with rainwater evaporating from the dense forest canopy and not seeping into the ground or flowing into streams or rivers. Forests need to be pruned by people.

Based on a supposition seemingly born from some type of self rejection, many believe that a natural environment untouched by human hands once existed. We have altered the landscape for as long as we have walked the earth. I am reminded of the elaborate and obtuse theories archeologists have put forward to explain the groves of fruit and nut trees in the “primitive” Amazon basin. They ignored the obvious, that these areas were planted, simply because of an attitude that many would call racist. The Book of Genesis gives us dominion over the earth. I would suggest that this passage was a codification of what had always been.

Outside the Ivory Tower: High Speed Rail, a political quagmire

Conservatives are vehemently opposing high speed rail because it is not affordable today and its future thirst for funds is frightening. I agree 100%. However, I haven’t heard this opposition ask the question: Do we need high speed rail? If population growth continues do we build a few more I-5’s instead?

It needs to be noted that the rail proponents cite the benefit of reduced congestion and air pollution, as if demand for travel is a zero sum game. But it is not. Increased travel opportunities increase demand for travel. A likely situation would be sitting next to an older woman from Stockton who lauds the new train because she can now visit the grandkids in Bakersfield more often. While this is all to the good, and even pro-family, it is not replacing prior travel by other means. So it’s likely that some of the environmental benefits, and the rallying cry for many proponents, ring a bit hollow.

As part of the portion connecting Fresno and Los Angeles, via Palmdale Airport, the California High Speed Rail Authority begins with a segment between Madera and Bakersfield. While this first segment will produce little revenue, it could serve as a rallying cry for more money. Additional financing may come from future cap and trade revenue, dependent upon the total fraud of human induced global warming.

Perhaps the problem lies not in the possible future travel demand, but in the sadly inherent approach of government enterprise. The present proposal takes passengers to Bakersfield. Why dump passengers at the already missing link in California rail: the Tehachapi’s between there and Los Angeles? Amtrak currently operates a bus bridge, while north/south freight presently travels through Barstow and other distant locations. A direct freight route through the Tehachapi’s would save over a 100 miles of time and fuel. With state of the art track, all existing trains, no matter what their technology, could safely operate at their maximum speeds. The gap in California’s rail system would be closed with all existing intercity, commuter and urban rail systems finally connected. This would increase ridership and revenue on all these systems and fill presently empty and highly subsided seats. Greater use of Palmdale Airport would immediately reduce Los Angeles air pollution by eliminating the extra miles caused by the over the ocean flight path.

Most importantly, this right of way would produce lease revenue immediately upon completion from the freight and commuter railroads and Amtrak. The expense of electrification could occur later. While I would prefer private sector ownership of the right of way, political compromise and eminent domain issues may make that impossible. However, why should the government operate the trains? I suggest that they all be leased to entrepreneurs. Even the airlines could run trains, rather than see themselves as lobbyists competing for bigger airports with more public subsidy.

My suggestion is not a finished proposal that accounts for every question, including the switching done in Barstow and elsewhere, but it clearly illustrates a difference in approach. Government can only tax and borrow while a businesslike attitude says if you don’t take in more than you expend there’s no food on the table. Along with this present myopic proposal, also alarming is how this issue is narrowly framed and fought over within today’s polarized climate.

Outside the Ivory Tower: Religious Freedom- Obama’s Script, Trotsky & Lenin

Following the Russian Revolution churches were sacked and institutions closed. While there were many parts to this program, one was the Decree of the Soviet Commissars Concerning Separation of Church and State, and of School and Church (Compilation of Decrees, January 23, 1918, No. 18, Page 263.) which states: “Free performance of religious rites is permissible as long as it does not disturb public order, or interfere with the rights of the citizens of the Soviet Republic. The local authorities shall be entitled in such cases to adopt all necessary measures for maintenance of public order and safety.” Does this remind anyone of the various persecutions of home prayer meetings by zoning codes or that our proposed General Plan vastly expands land use regulations?

This decree went on to say: “Nobody is entitled to refuse to perform his duties as a citizen on the basis of his religious belief.” This certainly reminds me of Obama’s demands upon religious hospitals and schools with attendant fines. These are projected to be about $10 million per year for Notre Dame University alone. It also stated: “The School is separated from the Church. Instruction in any religious creed or belief shall be prohibited in all State, public, and also private educational establishments in which general instruction is given. Citizens may give or receive religious instruction in a private way.” Religion is therefore relegated to the home and family and absent from public life. The legal attempts in Europe to ban the public wearing of crosses fit into this perspective as do many recent actions in the USA.

Obama’s script has an eerie familiarity. But he needed an excuse that he could sell to some. He found it with “women’s rights”, birth control and abortion, and attacked the Catholic Church. He then asserted state control of religion by not allowing Catholic army chaplains at regular services to read an Archbishop's letter of protest. “Religion will only cease to exist completely with the development of the socialist system,” wrote Leon Trotsky.

Barack Hussein Obama is a Communist. Some reading this, that is if I’m doing more than just preaching to the choir in these commentaries, may decide I’m a right wing nut by making that statement. But the reality is the opposite. I grew up in a left wing milieu. I know the difference between a liberal, a left liberal, a European socialist, etc. I can even distinguish between a Marxist and a Marxian point of view. I’ve noticed all the references to left wing theories in our proposed General Plan. I’ve read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Barack Hussein Obama is a Communist.

Recently I read an interview with Roberta Karmel, a professor at Brooklyn Law School and a former Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner. She was extremely concerned, as are most Americans, by the mergers of 37 financial companies over the past 20 years, into four “to big to fail” mega-banks. She thought that Dodd-Frank was not the answer and suggested breaking up the mega banks into smaller institutions by using, as a model, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. Shock described her response to the Obama administration’s ignoring this precedent. She seemed unable to grasp the Obama is not a New Deal liberal like herself, but a Communist. He wants enterprises to merge into bigger and bigger entities so that they are easier to digest as agencies of the federal government. His blueprint appears to be “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” by Vladimir Lenin.

No matter how gradual his moves or how “marketable” his excuses, I am evaluating Obama based on his actions. Many believe that Obama was nurtured to be, and has always been, a communist. If you want to examine the evidence for this, put Trevor Loudan into your browser. I find his speeches on youtube quite impressive. Put “America’s Most Biblically-Hostile U.S. President + David Barton” into your browser and find Obama’s war on religion well documented. While you may not agree with every item on that list, it’s still quite overwhelming. The pattern is clear. Even for a news junkie like me, it was surprising to learn of the Obama administration’s objection to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. containing President Franklin Roosevelt's D-Day prayer. He asked God to give the allied troops courage and faith, "With thy blessing we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy."

This is not about “reproductive rights”. This is about our first amendment rights. The USA is on a slippery slope and there may be less time left than we think. There is a rally for religious freedom this Friday, March 23 at 12:00 noon at the State Capital north steps (L Street). Be there before it’s too late. For more information see http://standupforreligiousfreedom.com/ and www.facebook.com/CatholicsforReligiousFreedom.

Outside the Ivory Tower: Global Warming or Climate Change

Every time I think of the science of global warming and climate change I recall German school children in the 1930’s learning theories of racial superiority and believing them because they were also based on exacting science. Global warming or human induced climate change is a total fraud. The data was doctored, honest scientists discredited and even maps of the Greenland icecap forged. Suppressed also has been information about the Medieval Warming Period when higher crop yields led to a better life for all. Many people now advocate greater atmospheric “greenhouse gases” to increase plant growth.

Climate is controlled by activity on the sun. Many historic volcanic eruptions have put vastly more “greenhouse” gases into the air than the entire industrial revolution. To believe that human activity causes climate change or global warming reveals a supreme arrogance. Perhaps for some advocates a godless attitude prevails.

An enormous amount of social, economic and land use control is being purposed, and in some cases already moving forward such as the pending Amador County General Plan, to reduce this imagined danger. While some are probably sincere dupes, I truly wonder about the motives of those who want to destroy freedom, prosperity and private property.

It will be very interesting to hear what Amador Citizens for Energy Conservation have to say in their Global Warming/Climate Change Informational Meeting on March 3th at 10:00 in the Jackson Senior Center.

Outside the Ivory Tower: USA, the Stock Ticker Symbol

The stock ticker symbol USA represents the US Silver Corp. They are the second largest primary silver producer in the US, mining in the traditional Idaho silver belt. This company has no debt, meets all current environmental laws and has no historic environmental liability. The miners are well paid members of the United Steelworkers. The company’s pension plan has a reasonable expected rate of return of 5.75%, unlike many California public pension plans that assume an 8% return they don’t achieve.

USA appears to be part of a real economy, or at least a vestige of one. But all their ore is smelted in Canada, some traveling as far as Quebec. Regulatory costs have forced the listing of their stock (USA) onto the Toronto Stock Exchange. However, their stock trades over-the-counter here under the symbol USSIF. The IF seems appropriate. Their most recent annual report states that “… in the ordinary course of business, U.S. Silver is required to obtain or renew governmental permits for the operation …of existing mining operations…” and that “…U.S. Silver’s efforts… to renew permits are contingent upon…the interpretation of applicable requirements implemented by the permitting authority…”

The Congressional Western Caucus recently stated that “…the EPA has also declared the mining industry their number one target for writing rules pursuant to CERCLA S108(b)…” and that this “… will be duplicative of federal land management agency and state programs…” and “…will cause some existing mines to close prematurely and prevent new mines from opening..." Historically, states have had the authority over what could be done on private land but recently the EPA has been asserting that they have authority if air or water might come in contact with development.”

Is Amador County’s future in these capricious hands?

Outside the Ivory Tower: Implications of the Hwy 88/Pine Grove Meeting

In a prior commentary entitled, The American Road I urged people to attend this September 21, 2011 meeting. Fortunately it was not manipulated, the rumor of an outside consultant running the meeting, though from a reliable source, didn’t happen. Perhaps there was a change in plans or something behind the scenes. I don’t know.

Many plans that were Town Center focused were presented, along with the presently unaffordable southern bypass. The leave it alone option was presented last. The majority of people present favored the do nothing alternative with property condemnations avoided and consideration of the southern bypass at a later date. This leaves unresolved the question of how the southern bypass could affect local businesses.

Although based on much higher pre recession traffic projections, the presentations were throughout. The small discussions were lively and candid. The staff, generally speaking, from the Amador County Transportation Commission (ACTC) and Caltrans are dedicated and hard working people. But despite my satisfaction that the no Town Center side predominated I left the meeting with an uneasy feeling. While it’s important to make informed decisions, what is the relationship between study or over-study and taxpayer cost? And what are the implications of the ever increasing administrative rule society that skips and perhaps ignores our elected legislative bodies?

While they build and maintain great roads, Caltrans is an empire unto itself. When they don’t have money to build a project they set up a study committees that primarily exist to keep their staff employed. I have served on some of these committees and have experienced their “productivity”. I would like someone to calculate, ideally in the state legislature, the total expense of all this over study. How many real and perhaps life savings highway improvements could have been constructed for this same amount of money?

Except for a hostile and ineffective attempt during Jerry Brown’s earlier governorship, Caltrans does what Caltrans wants. When Los Angeles County decided to reopen the Los Angeles-Long Beach light rail line for about $400 million, Caltrans felt left out and built a parallel busway on the Harbor Freeway for about $1 billion. This disregards the taxpayer and defies common sense. Build one or the other or neither. In the Sacramento area Caltrans decided to build the Highway 50 carpool/bus lane (or HOV - high occupancy vehicle-lane) and literally bought off a transit agency with public funds. And despite the powerful environmental lobby in California, Caltrans still builds park and ride lots inaccessible to buses.

The other half of the equation at this meeting was the Amador County Transportation Commission (ACTC). Go to their website and see everything they do. Does anyone today wonder how we got along for probably a century without them? Their staff mostly fulfills state requirements, and like the Caltrans study committees, I wonder what is “the bang for the buck”? They are planning an unaffordable bikeway system that very few people want and using staff time to apply for competitive grants. Currently they intend to hire an additional planner for 50K to 80K per year.

How many administrators per person are there in Amador County and at what rate is this growing? How much time is left for important discussions when our Board of Supervisors has to make zoning exceptions caused by unnecessary and overly intrusive zoning that need not exist in the first place? Did we really need about 170 pages of material for the proposed design review ordinance? What does all this cost us taxpayers?

We have decreasing actual physical investment that could contribute to economic well being at the same time we are increasing costly administrators. Could this result in top heavy government falling from its own weight? A wise friend ominously suggested that this required local government growth could result in county mergers and/or regional governments. We would lose democracy and void why we live in Amador County. Do we want a society that substitutes expensive rule by “experts” for our elected officials and individual responsibility?

Trade Offs and Individual Responsibility

No one can quibble with the General Plan’s promotion of safety. But the problem lies in the trade off decisions made. Unvaryingly the Plan decides on the side of higher costs, both individual and governmental expansion costs. Many of those who spoke before the Board of Supervisors recently requested a cost benefit analysis to see if many General Plan provisions they are really worth it. We are all waiting to see if the Environmental Impact Report discusses the Plan’s one sided decisions.

I grew up in Western New York, famous for its gray skies, rain and snow. Many homes have basements that sometimes flood. To drain this excess water the basements have floor drains connected to the adjacent sanitary sewer system. Occasionally this extra water will cause a sewage treatment plant to overflow into a river. No one questions the obvious that this is unhealthy. Therefore the environmental authorities ruled that every home’s basement must be connected to the storm water system in the street, 75 to 100 feet away. This added to the cost of home ownership and very likely priced some people out of the market.

In the almost 50 years my mother lived in that area, there was one basement flood. While cleaning it up, she became infected and hospitalized. Her response was: I have to be more careful next time. For our family the cost of a connection to the storm sewer system was unthinkable. And making that option everyone’s requirement and thereby making housing less affordable was also unthinkable. But today its required and only one trade union at their fixed rate is allowed to do the work.

Behind the fancy phases, concern for public safety and environmental protection in the proposed General Plan, the real trade off decision appears. It is between freedom, individual responsibility and prosperity or more government to protect us from real or imagined menaces. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” said Benjamin Franklin in 1775.

Smear Replaces Discussion

“A Brief Glossary of Buzzwords that Terrify the Tea Party (and Why They are Ridiculous)” was posted by David Roddy at motherlodeleft.blogspot.com. I am responding to his smears, guilt by association, name calling, dishonesty, distortions and misrepresentations. Typical of his style he calls an exchange of information between two specific commentators, normal democracy to most of us, as pouching. Does he describe sharing between commentators he agrees with in the same way?

David Roddy claims that the Tea Party position on Agenda 21 as a force in society “…is just the end of a long rope of interwoven imaginary plots…” If anything is imaginative here it is his linking current Tea Party thinking to past conspiracy beliefs. The current the Federal deficit is without precedent. He proceeds to point out that people are dishonestly saying that Agenda 21 is hidden when it is not hidden and misses the entire point that Amador County like numerous other counties has an Agenda 21 General Plan without any mention of Agenda 21. Go to http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/index.shtml and http://www.co.amador.ca.us/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=9566’ and read Agenda 21 and the March 2011 Draft General Plan and decide for yourself.

He claims in his typically insulting tone that some believe that the basic concept of biodiversity “is merely an excuse for the government to take their land.” He is the one “oblivious to the obvious”. One can both believe in biodiversity and believe that it is being used as an excuse. They are not mutually exclusive. He also states “that land ownership is a human construction.” This is left wing dogma, descended in part from Frederick Engels that is, at best, a theory. Many animals, from beetles to monkeys are territorial. Environmental hero Jane Goodall has documented chimpanzee wars. He uses the same logical fallacy in discussing the Delphi Technique. Upon correctly stating its origin with the Rand Corporation effort to quantify expert opinion, he states that its current use embodies only paranoia with no reality. But the Delphi Technique has been modified to produce preset outcomes at public meetings. I attended such a meeting sponsored by SACOG (Sacramento Area Council of Governments) a few years ago. When I objected to its blatant manipulation I was told to shut up. My response was horror, not paranoia. But it was easy to numb your emotions with the copious “free” food at taxpayer expense, unlike most other public planning meetings.

In his discussion of form-based codes he correctly states, but not directly given his selective quotations, that these codes will tell you how your building should look. However, he calls opposition to this basic freedom and form of human expression “right-wing doctrine”. And, not surprising to his myopic point of view, anyone who wants to put up a building is a “developer”. His leaps of logic continue when he connects things that aren’t directly connected with his statement: “The irony of the resistance towards such form-based coding is that it is the individuals that fantasize the most about the virtues of “small town” America who are fighting the hardest against measures aimed at limiting urban sprawl.” He implies that those of us who don’t believe in form-based codes are somehow undercutting our desire to preserve small town America. This statement is manipulation, or attempted manipulation, at its finest. We apparently need to surrender freedom to preserve it. Sounds like George Orwell to me.

Small towns often maintain their unique character, such as Fair Oaks Village in Sacramento, when they become neighborhoods within expanding or “sprawled” cities. But to attempt to preserve their character by preventing “sprawl” with buffers and greenbelts only leads to more expensive housing and elite communities. And I wonder if he thinks that the evils of “sprawl” are the result of unregulated free enterprise? In reality, they were planned as part of the New Deal. Go to YouTube Movies and type in The City (1939) and see for yourself.

The definition that he quotes of the New Urbanism states: “…in the form of complete communities…” He then ridicules the opposing position by saying: “…the right’s faith in the magical power of the market to provide goods in direct correlation with human wants and needs”. Not even Adam Smith gave his “invisible hand” such power. He misrepresents the belief that the market, rather than government, best defines (and at a lower cost) a complete community. No one has ever suggested that any fallible human institution would achieve or even define “perfect correlation”.

He does not quibble with the free market position that long commutes are an individual trade off decision (costing time and money) made in favor of “spacious living”. But he states that these advocates ignore the external or social costs which are congestion, pollution, accidents and space. Congestion affects those who didn’t make the commuters’ trade off decision such as a delivery service making fewer deliveries per day. This can be reduced by staggering work hours as is presently successful in many places and by increasing road capacity by not wasting existing gas tax funds on projects like the carpool lane on Hwy 50 in Sacramento. Often environmentalists make ideological assumptions. They think that the work at home drive less when in fact their independent businesses require more driving that a typical office worker. Often retired people may drive less per average day, but take more frequent long auto trips. Much of the traffic in Amador County is tourism, but here our General Plan conveniently chooses to ignore this external or social cost with its promotion of tourism as a “green” industry. They also seem to forget that congestion is an equalization factor. If transit or some other factor reduces congestion in an area, other people drive there and fill that street capacity. Congestion remains the same, supply and demand tend toward balance. Many people thrive on this “hustle and bustle” of big cities that have existed throughout history. In ancient Rome deliveries were made at night to reduce congestion.

Another external consequence is pollution. More state of the art cars have and will continue to reduce pollution. But only an increase in general prosperity will increase purchase of these vehicles. If pollution appears to have increased, it primarily reflects an increase in population much of which is here illegally. Electric vehicles require possible pollution elsewhere to generate electricity. Solar farms negatively affect “endangered species”. Windmills require mining rare earths generally found along with radioactive minerals. To the extent that transit is an answer, the existing funding can be used far more efficiently. Most present systems have a social service mentality with transit provided for political, not economic considerations. A quick internet survey reveals that the less wasteful systems have boards of directors made up of local business leaders, not politicians. Another factor against reducing pollution are the environmental purists or extremists sometimes in control. I once attended a transportation planning meeting where the higher pollution/cold start/short distance auto trip prevented a free or low cost neighborhood park and ride facility from opening.

Noise is also an external consequence and, like congestion, part of the hustle and bustle of large cities. I should know, having lived a half block from the Hollywood Freeway for about a decade. But it’s largely framed as a “social justice” issue, meaning the world should change –feasible or not- rather that those affected changing their own lives. Modern zoning effectively separates excessively noisy activities from residential and other land uses. Most “social justice” areas are legacy areas.

While auto accidents are often considered an external consequence, the more buses or railcars you have the more bus and railcar accidents you will have. Certainly the much touted alternative of bicycles are the least safe of all. And our rural roads are less safe that congested urban highways.

Roads and parking areas do take up a lot of space. But the entire discussion of land use in Northern California occurs within a constrained ideological box. Throughout the world people live on the hilltops and farm the valleys. But here we built housing in the fertile valleys and complain about it while the hilltops are wildlife preserves. Mr. Roddy is wrong. The external consequences or social costs are not ignored; they are all answered if one looks. The only “smart” thing about crowding people into housing blocks is the added control it gives those in power.

Additionally Smart Growth and its related philosophies negate the “inconvenient truth” that the separation of work from home is one of the greatest liberations in human history. In Los Angeles and elsewhere this new freedom was expanded to include home and work in differing geographic areas.

He makes the bias statement: “…Tea Partisans take issue with smart growth because it requires that the public have some say in planning developments…” The facts say otherwise. We have an elaborate public participation process easily controlled by zealots and then enforced by the most governmental control over land use in history except for the theocratic cities of the ancient world. Is he implying that he and people sharing his beliefs don’t have the say they want and may somehow even feel entitled too? What would be the outcome of a real referendum in Amador County on the third storey apartments in the Town Centers and the other schemes in the proposed General Plan?

He likes to take an isolated fact, add his ideal logical perspective and then make a far reaching conclusion. He makes the statement in reference to resources: “… inequality has left millions of human beings on our planet destitute.” How does this account for small nations such as Singapore, Israel or Switzerland that are prosperous and resource rich nations such as Argentina that aren’t? Or the oil rich Middle Eastern countries where the average person lives poorly? Don’t democracy, freedom and free markets have something to do with it?

Mr. Roddy states: “…a map that supposedly depicts the parts of the United States planned for wildlife corridors, as represented by scary red lines… (that) are quite sinister.” He attempts to negate reality with a smear while the beginnings of this, the Wildland-Urban Interface Building Code (Title 24), is part of our proposed General Plan as required by state law. Armed police are presently forcing rural Los Angeles County residents to demolish their homes. Agenda 21 is real and is happening right now.

He accuses many of the individuals speaking against Smart Growth, Agenda 21, etc of just promoting their self interest. He assumes, without any evidence, that they are dishonest. And what is wrong with advocating your self- interest anyway? I find it more honest than Cisco and Goldman Sachs via a Cayman Islands front corporation manufacturing “green” light bulbs in China that we will soon be required to buy.

And who has really benefited from the social programs since the Great Society? The advocates for the poor who became the well paid functionaries in the War on Poverty and jumpstarted careers while the poor stayed poor? The army of archeologists and other scientists in the Environmental Report industry have done rather well, especially considering the otherwise dismal job prospects in their fields.

He engages in psychologizing about those who believe in Agenda 21 as a conspiracy. The revolutionary changes in land use plans across America occurred without the average person being informed given the state of our government and media. Forget the semantics and realize the obvious. The popular perception of conspiracy is correct. Is there anyone in Amador County except for a vocal few who really want Town Centers and all the new schemes and restrictions to remove us from the land in our almost adopted General Plan?

As an end note I would like to remind Mr. Roddy that the information on the motherlodeleft blog about the Ludlow Massacre refers to a strike against the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., a Rockefeller company and that the Rockefeller Foundation is a big backer of Agenda 21. Isn’t it obvious that these interests were behind both and for the same reasons: to increase their power and steal our freedoms?

Mark Bennett, Pine Grove

The American Road

Many years ago I helped my mother dismantle her parents’ home and drove a truckload of inherited household goods cross county. Upon my return to LA, some foreign born friends expressed great sympathy for what they saw as an arduous trip. I thanked them for their concern, but told them that it was a great experience. But I could not explain to them, at that time, how it was an American mythic journey. A certain spirit prevails, no matter how much the ethos may vary, with Alabama singing eighteen wheeler roll on, you can get your kicks on Route 66, John Wayne and Ronald Reagan riding the trails of the old west or Jack Kerouac’s On The Road.

The history I remembered learning associated this with the settlement of the continent and the often maligned concept of Manifest Destiny. But I believe it runs deeper. When we achieved independence from England, we still had their colonial transportation system. If you lived in Baltimore and had a job opportunity in New York you took a coastal schooner and paid a cash fare. If you didn’t have the cash, you were stuck. But with a road you could ride your horse, hitchhike or even walk. It didn’t take money, just gumption, to seize that opportunity elsewhere. We ditched the British system and built roads.

The Boston Post Road system expanded throughout the Eastern seaboard. In 1795 the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, our first long-distance paved road, opened. In 1806 President Thomas Jefferson authorized construction of the Cumberland Road, forerunner of the National Road. Many of the early roads, or turnpikes, were toll collecting private enterprises. But people and goods avoided the toll booths and the word shunpike was added to our language. Later we built canals and railroads, but the free and democratic spirit of the road remained and remerged as the frontier moved west. My first cross county trip was an initiatory experience and rite of passage, reinforced by my later trips. This seemed standard for my generation. But it was truly foreign to my European friends.

I wonder if they will erect a plaque to the heritage they want to obliterate if Agenda 21 style General Plans, here in Amador County and across the county, succeed in their pedways, bicycles, buses and crowded Town Centers. Some people in our County are pushing the Town Centers’ planning forward, despite the Environmental Impact Report for our General Plan still being written. On September 21st starting at 5:30 pm with presentations beginning at 6 pm Caltrans will have a public workshop on the Highway 88/Pine Grove Improvement Project at the Pine Grove Elementary School. There are rumors circulating that that this project is being turned into a “phase one” for a Town Center. There are also rumors that these meetings are very manipulative. I don’t know if either of these rumors is true, but I will attend on September 21st to find out for myself. You should too.

Life’s Absurdities

Mark L. Bennett

A few years ago I wrenched some muscles and found myself in physical therapy in Rancho Murrieta. As I performed my proscribed exercises, I watched dozens of people exercise on machines. Through the picture window behind them a bevy of gardeners were trimming hedges and mowing lawns. This seemed totally absurd. Why aren’t those people needing exercise just maintaining their grounds? Has life become this fragmented and abstracted? I’m reminded of singer Buddy Miller’s lyric, “…it’s the way we tell ourselves that all these things are normal, ‘til we can’t remember what we mean”.

My Volcano Telephone bill informs me that I pay into a fund to help rural telephone companies but benefit from it elsewhere in the same bill. My PG&E bill contains, in addition to the basic charge, nine other items including the taxes to pay for them. It appears to be an attempt to achieve “social justice” through complexity.

A recent visit to my dermatologist cost $240. My health insurer paid $73 and I paid $166. What I paid was what the service was worth. What my health insurer paid did not share the actual expense, but rather represented the cost of the insurer’s bureaucracy and the doctor’s billing staff. It is not therefore surprising that the sicker I may become and the more doctors I may visit the lower my cost due to their deductable arrangement. This is my due reward because it justifies their employing more office workers. And, of course, we have Obamacare which claims that adding more bureaucrats will result in new cost savings and perhaps even stimulate the economy.

An inventor friend with hundreds of patents, including the now standard eye exam machines, told me that if an idea didn’t work out after several modifications, additional processes or “band-aids”, he stopped and started fresh. His secret was simplicity. Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Coinage, 1784) used the same reasoning when he created our current system of currency. “…he used to be puzzled with adding the farthings, taking out the fours and carrying them on; adding the pence, taking out the twelves and carrying them on; adding the shillings…” and concluded that even the mathematically minded “… feel the relief of an easier substituted for a more difficult process.”

American industry rose to world prominence based on the concept of simplicity. The Windsor chair in the 1790’s eliminated parts, lower costs and created the basis for all the chairs we have today. Later our rail locomotives were the envy of the world for their ease of maintenance and operation. Recently Apple trounced the competition that used a desktop operating system in their tablet computers with the simpler iPad software. Eleven government entities with hints at more are documented in the Foothill Conservancy’s “Who Controls the Mokelumne River?” on this site. Their answer is an additional legal designation to regulate the other regulators. I find this approach troubling. What is at stake is not the river, but one of the principles that made America great.

Costs & Complexity: the General Plan’s Implementation Plan

Mark L. Bennett

This Wednesday, June 29th, at 1pm the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission continue to take public comment on the General Plan with a focus on the Implementation Plan. Major changes in our County are proposed and everyone should contact their Supervisor with their opinions. If you come to speak this Wednesday let’s hope the Planning Department doesn’t “coincidently” schedule another few hours of procedural items before public comment.

The Plan includes: “new programs or projects” and requests Panning Department power via “…those to whom the Board delegates, may need to prioritize programs.”(pg P-1), new costs and possibly new taxing authority with the “creation of districts to implement the Town Centers…” (pg P-3), allows annual zoning changes on land designated as flood prone (pg P- 7), considers some proposals to be “…discretionary development…” (pg P-14) as if the same law does not apply to all, wants more meetings between County departments and agencies (pg P-33) rather that ask why we have so many of these and why won’t simplifying government be more effective and less costly, enshrines the Mother Lode Land Trust as part of County government (pg P-36), wants to examine housing in fire risk areas and proposes “structural rehabilitation on occupancy reduction, demolition…community-based solutions..” (pg P-37), proposes a new County agency for stormwater control (pg P-38) because of the danger of “stormwater pollution” (pg P-20) and continues the attack on independent living with well and septic. The above are just a small sample of the plan’s new costs and added complexities for us that pay taxes and live a rural lifestyle.

The Plan very successfully expands the Planning Department. But it either desires or fails to realize that complexity breeds complexity. One example would be the requirement for locally owned businesses in the Town Centers (pg P-5). If you locally own a franchise business and mess up the national organization has the right to take over. Then it is not a locally owned business. Do all parties now lose their investment? What follows is much expense and exasperation and a probable fair decision in the end. But all of this was unnecessary in the first place. Why create what is ultimately waste? The Plan is full of bureaucratic government quicksand. As an example on the Federal level is that “financial reform” now classifies everyone who buys a home heating oil winter contract as technically engaged in a commodities futures contact. The enforcement officials at several agencies are now wondering what can be sensibly done.

The Plan sees the world through its own narrow focus. It seeks to attract business with incentives, but ignores the opposite: that a fiscally sound County is most likely to attract business because it will most likely present fewer financial surprises for that enterprise. The need for affordable housing is stated (pg P-17) while the entire Plan does everything possible, sometimes with invented or vastly exaggerated reasons, to make housing unaffordable. There was a time when we built what we could afford, determined by what “the market would bear” and there was no housing or mortgage crises. The Plan states: “Consider incentives to energy efficient or ‘green’ businesses that relocate to Amador County” (pg P- 28). Are we to produce solar cells because of our silicon grade sands or copper deposits? Are we to manufacture windmills because of our composite materials infrastructure and rare earth deposits? Yet we are blessed with timber, gold and other minerals. The Plan wants wide roadways in new development for fire safety and narrow roadways in the Town Centers for their “old world charm”. The Plan’s motives, requests for new programs, new taxes, staff devoting time to speculative grant funding applications, regulatory complexity which will take our elected officials from other responsibilities, etc, will strangle our County. With 17% unemployment in Amador County, it is a dead wish plan.

God Bless America

By Mark Bennett

Sometime before the First World War an unconscious newsboy between 7 and 12 years of age was fished out of a river and rushed to the hospital. As the medical team worked to revive him they wondered what his clenched right fist contained. It must be of great importance, they thought, for someone in his condition to hold so tightly. When he came to they found five cents. But this man, Irving Berlin, never blamed America for his childhood poverty or asked for a handout. Instead he gave thanks for the freedom and opportunities this county offered and wrote “God Bless America”.

How times have changed.

___________________________________________________

The Freedom vs. General Plan Fight Continues

By Mark Bennett

I want to thank everyone who showed up this past Wednesday. Despite many objections being raised and some minor modifications in the language achieved, the Plan is moving ahead to the additionally expensive Environmental Impact Report phase. When that is completed another series of public hearings will occur. The costs even may approach $1 million, an expense probably totally unnecessary if the existing staff had just updated the prior plan. But rather than plan for a sensible continuation of the present we all share and love, a decision was somehow made to use the General Plan to transform Amador County into something new and very different. I will continue to explore that new and different vision in this commentary and will also discuss the assumptions/presumptions of the Plan.

Page I-6 states: “Grazing on public lands has been part of the custom and culture of Amador County, long before the concept of public lands.” This is amazingly revealing statement of the Plan writers’ mind set. They seem to be inferring that before they appeared the world was mired in greed and private property and unbalanced without public lands. But public lands are as old as humanity and well documented in the historic and prehistoric record. Have they not heard of the Boston Commons? The Plan writers’ absence from history and distance from reality allows the mental vacuum necessary to have an intellectually derived ideology instead and permits their often convolved reasoning. While my above comments were elaborated from one quote, their new and baseless logic underlies the Plan. I have noted their supposition that deer will somehow not walk around a new home and instead have their movements dangerously disrupted. Another example is the absolute absurdity that people wanting to move to Amador County for a home in the countryside will instead accept a third story apartment in a Town Center rather than move onto a countryside home elsewhere.

Pages I-7&8 state: “…services that meet our people’s needs…quality child-care and senior services…” These and many other parts of the Plan are a social policy plan. None of this belongs in a General Plan except to set aside sufficient land for institutional/public service use. Since a government social policy plan can’t (or at least not yet), for example, compel a church to provide childcare or tell the Masons what sort of insurance to offer; it by necessity becomes a government only plan for social services. As a consequence the Plan becomes, by default, policy that favors expanded government social services. In many communities the United Fund or similar organizations do social service planning that includes both the secular and religious. Often faith based social services have higher success rates than other types. This recalls the debate during the Bush administration which proposed that federal monies for childcare should also go to religious institutions. NOW (the National Organization of Women) went berserk and implied Jim Crow because Bush’s proposal would allow “discrimination” due to the reasonable expectation that a parent could anticipate, for example, Catholic staff at a Catholic Church daycare. Many object to paying full fare for their choice while their taxes subsidize the politically correct government childcare for others. Those of low income often feel forced into their only alternative. All this illustrates the political difficulty of government social services as well as their social strife qualities. Some in Congress consider the income tax charitable deduction as an unfair benefit for “The Rich.” But IRS data shows that those who give the highest percentage of their incomes are the Jeffersonian middle class. All these issues are inherent in the Plan while the Plan writers’ attitude, remaining one sided, is reflected in the Plan specifics.

Page C-23 states: “Encourage site plan elements in proposed development such as reduced pavement/cover and permeable pavement, as well as drainage features which limit runoff and increase infiltration and groundwater recharge.” What if you, on a down slope lot, wanted to use your non permeable driveway to channel water into your garden? This represents the common sense site planning that has sustained the human race since the beginning of agriculture. The theme of the above quote, which repeats throughout the Plan, implies that you don’t or shouldn’t own the water that falls on your property. Are we moving in the direction of SWAT teams confiscating our rain barrels? Runoff can be a problem, although the Plan exaggerates the danger to further restrict us, but it is best controlled by a land owner protecting their investment. However, there is nothing wrong with permeable pavements or cluster developments or many of the other ideas in the Plan. What is wrong is the County adopting these as polices with coercive means, rather than having the free market determine demand for them.

Page C-7 states: “…the county imports both oil and gas,” and page C- 8 states: “Amador County has the capacity to further develop renewable energy resources to protect residents from volatile energy prices and reduce the state’s dependence on out-of-state and foreign oil and gas.” This statement about out-of-state oil and gas, aside perhaps from a dislike of pipelines, seems to have forgotten that we are “indivisible” in the Pledge of Allegiance and that word, according to some historians, refers directly to interstate tariffs before the present Constitution. But the overall meanings of these above quotes and others in the Plan appear to invoke input/output analysis, an analytical tool adopted into the neo-colonialist theories of the 1960’s. (President Obama’s father was a big proponent). It then became radical chic to use this technique with certain neighborhoods in America. Aside from the antecedents I have suggested, I can see no reason to even note that Amador County imports oil and gas except, of course, for fear mongering about fossil fuels.

I hope that the above discussion gives the reader some insight into the concepts and mind set of the Plan writers behind their wording. Are the Plan writers’ attitudes reflective of ours? Do we want this to shape our County’s future? If you are opposed to the Plan, or maybe just unsure; then please contact your County Supervisor to voice your concern. If you want help with that communication, or just want to understand the Plan better, the Citizens Action Group for Freedom is here to help, a coalition of Citizens for Responsible Government, the Amador Business Council and the Mother Lode Tea Party. Since the Tea Party has a walk in office in Jackson’s Mother Lode Plaza, stop by Wed – Sat, 11am - 3pm. Don’t miss the maps that some see as our future. Or call (209) 223-1318 during the same hours.

Response to Kathy Allen’s “The General Plan: Building a Basis for Economic Growth”

By Mark Bennett

I had intended to continue my commentaries evaluating the lengthy General Plan. However this recent Guest Commentary needs an immediate reply and with the time constraints of Wednesday’s public meeting, I am writing quickly and without as many direct quotes from the Plan as I would prefer.

Kathy Allen has accused me of being an alarmist. I am absolutely alarmed by the proposed General Plan and feel compelled to warn others. She also accused me of being misleading. But her title is misleading. The Plan states on page E-5: “One industry poised to experience economic growth-which could translate into employment opportunities-is the tourist industry.” They are making the assumption that tourism is “poised” to grow. Often this argument is based upon more people retiring and taking day trips and vacations. The opposing point-of-view argues that this continuing economic downturn precludes that extra spending. While both sides have valid points, why choose to be dependent upon prosperity elsewhere visiting us when we can choose to develop our own independent propensity?

Page E-8 states: “By attracting tourists, Amador County will also increase demand for service and retail industry jobs.” Does anyone think that wages for skilled underground miners and store clerks are the same? Page E-11 states: “Given the importance and anticipated growth of tourism and visitor services within the County’s economy…” while page E-21 states: “The County seeks to support the development of agri-tourism and associated sub-industries like nature tourism, agri-entertainment, and agri-education businesses.” Page E-25 Goal E-7 states: “Promote and expand tourist opportunities in Amador County” and then lists six policies for that goal. This is a tiny sample of the General Plan’s favoring low wage employment over the other alternatives which are given only the minimal necessary recognition in the Plan. Yet Kathy Allen states that my contentions are “unsubstantiated” and that I have somehow insulted those in the tourist industry.

She also claims that my example of bike path costs are “exaggerated proclamations”. Yet page 28 of the Draft Amador Countywide Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Plan (available on the internet) lists estimated costs of $111 million that are recommended with almost $16 million of those in high priority projects. Three quarters of a mile in Amador City is projected for $138,000. This is almost entirely public tax money with a very small contribution from a development fee fund. She states that “…in fact it is the developers who will build the pedestrian and bike paths.” This is true within the confines of a development and is part of the answer to the question of why a $200,000 home now costs $400,000. Land developers, like any business person, just pass on their additional costs into the final sales price. They never pay these costs, we do. And those of us who cannot afford the higher prices of politically correct housing are homeless. Once upon a time in America we built to what the market could support and everyone was housed without subsidy.

She refers to my comment that the General Plan will regulate where businesses may locate as “ridiculous” because she somehow infers that I’m suggesting a retreat to some form of land use chaos. The General Plan ceaselessly proposes pushing businesses into the Town Centers of Pine Grove, Buckhorn and River Pines. What if the market demand tells you that Pioneer, Red Corral or Fiddletown is the best location for your business? Or perhaps you live in a non Town Center commercial area and/or plan to use your existing property for your business? In both these cases you have had a freedom regulated away and in some cases your business idea has become financially impossible. And while I certainly endorse someone working from home, the talk of “…a diverse and integrated mix (and) co-locating…” that she quotes from the Plan have a bureaucracy rather than the free market determining location and with that the probably of erring in either direction. The current fashion in planning of work-at-home units ignores that the separation of work from home was one of the great liberations of human history. These and other considerations are forgotten because the Town Centers require concentrations of the population for you to “…walk and bike to services” (LU-5).

Somehow Ms. Allen takes great offense at my statement that the Plan is “an elitist plan written by outsiders”. The Plan was written by the firm of EDAW, now part AECOM - a Forture 500 company of about 45,000 employees working in about 125 countries. They work to “incorporate sustainability into every project in order to shape a better tomorrow” according to their website. They are the enforcers of the United Nation’s diabolical Agenda 21. A good website for further understanding is http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com The consultants’ outsider position is revealed in their discussion of cemeteries and elsewhere in the Plan. Their elitist posture is shown in their attitude to us County residents, their misunderstandings about how we live and their between the lines allusions to the latest in social theory.

Ms. Allen has conjured up the notion that my evaluations are disrespectful to those residents who served on Plan committees, etc. I’ve never said anything to that effect. I am only concerned with, as I need be, the final product that may soon be approved. She takes extreme issue with my statement that the Plan prevents people from living in the woods. Of course, the Planners won’t, and probably can’t, order us out now. If they did it would be a revolt. They are far more clever and insidious. It will be one by one, each of us alone fighting some decree. Firstly, they state their opposition to living in the woods at every opportunity with every possible excuse. They never once uphold our freedom of mobility. Their regulations effetively ban all new construction except for the very wealthy. They never once state “grandfather” rights for existing home owners. Rather than reinforce property rights they refer to property owners, implying some right to leave gracefully. Generally, when a building is improved to a certain percent of value (adding a few rooms for grandmother,etc) or a certain event happens like a septic failure you may be required to completely met the current building code. With their endless and costly new regulations many, if not most, people could lose their homes in these situations.

She also imagined another insult in my statement “…framed as a clear admission of our presumed dependence on the nanny state…” while I discussed page LU-30. The Plan is a social policy plan full of bias. The general plan need not be, and should not be, a social policy plan. That function, including provisions for senior citizens, belongs elsewhere in society however valid the needs. As an example, the Plan repeatedly discusses child care but never mentions that cheaper housing doesn’t require two paychecks and that people are leaving California for affordable housing and the opportunity to be a stay at home parent.

Ms. Allen claims that my “interpretation of the jobs-to-housing ratio seems to come out of thin air” and that it is “proven”. What is her basis for that? I recently read an article arguing the opposite, that recommended attracting retirees that bring in outside income, don’t have children in school, etc, to create a fiscally sound community.

She asserts that my get off the land statements are either a result of not reading and understanding the Plan or a vicious lie to inflame others. Implying that someone is lying certainly adds a new low to this public discussion. Saying that I haven’t read the Plan nor understand it makes the assumption that if you don’t agree with her you don’t understand the Plan. I have read every word of the Plan several times, except the already approved Housing Element. I have a Master of City & Regional Planning degree and have read more general plans than I can possibily recall. And while I have not followed a career path in planning, my work has been good enough to be cited in the Congressional Record. I completely understand this proposed General Plan and I am horrified.

____________________________________________________________

Outside the Ivory Tower: The General Plan says: Get Out!

Mark Bennett

In two previous commentaries I have referred to the General Plan as a plan of fear and darkness that considers us as lab rats rather than as human beings. I have also publicly stated that the General Plan favors low wage and unstable jobs in tourism, will tell you how your building should look with form based zoning, proposes significant and unknown costs such as bikeways at thousands per mile, will decide where your business locates, plans to regulate us off the land and into high density villages, says goodbye to well and septic independence, sees government as the only solution to everything, makes unnecessary and perhaps disagreeable social policy statements, is an elitist plan written by outsiders, fears the future and abandons American optimism and ignores freedom and favors coercion.

The entire plan rests on assumptions that few, if any, County residents share. Simply put, the Plan writers believe that if you live in the woods, the woods are no longer there.

In this commentary and those that follow, I will support my statements with direct quotes for the proposed General Plan. While this adds appreciably to this commentary’s length, I want to communicate the language and tone of the General Plan. Also in a prior commentary, I stated a date incorrectly. The correct date for public comment to the Board of Supervisors about this plan is May 25, 2011 at 1pm. Be there and be there early to get a seat.

Removing us from the land has two parts: the slow removal of us from our present homes and the inability to build new homes. This commentary will discuss new construction. Of course, the Plan does not dare specifically say no new homes but instead makes it impossible with regulations and restrictions often supported with their own data, their own assumptions or gross exaggeration. Here are some examples:

Page LU-27 states: “Encourage development patterns which support water quality objectives…Direct development to areas with existing urban services and infrastructure, or to areas where extending of urban services is feasible given distance from developed areas and topography, capacity, or land capability.” This quote, with the use of the word “urban” seems like a roundabout way of saying no one can built their home where they want with individual well and septic, perhaps paying for an electric power extension or simply living off the grid. No definition of unbuildable topography is given. Almost all topography is buildable with proper engineering. If someone wants to build on the site of their choice and will bear the cost of necessary engineering, why should the county restrict this freedom?

Page LU-30 states: “Ensure that new development is able to meet water supply, wastewater disposal, and public service standards.” Again, more to ban living in the woods and partly dependent upon whatever political persuasion controls the Amador Water Agency. “Public Service Standards” could easily mean that you can’t live too far from some public service and appears to be another, and perhaps new, means to limit freedom.

Page LU-30 also states: “The County faces sizeable ongoing challenges in providing community services based on the relatively small and decentralized population.” Framed as a clear admission of our presumed dependence on the nanny state, this statement appears to be another reason to concentrate the population. Are we no longer free to make a tradeoff decision between distance from services and our personal quality of life?

Page LU-1 states: “Ensure that new residential developments include on-site pedestrian facilities to provide safe routes to schools.” Much of the Plan reads like this, things that sound good but always without any acknowledgement of the costs in relationship to the perceived benefits or the reality of the problem.

Pages CM-6&7 state: “Traffic congestion is a problem in some areas of the County. Congested roadways in the County include:…SR 88 at Ridge Road, SR 88 at Pine Grove-Volcano Road…Improvements may not be feasible…Land use changes offer the potential to reduce traffic congestion… Amador County’s terrain conditions, relatively dispersed population, and funding constraints all limit the feasibility of roadway improvements to reduce congestion.” I choose the two intersections cited above because I drive them daily. This plan takes a mild inconvenience and uses it to support its agenda of moving everyone out of their homes and off the land into resettlement camps known as Town Centers and Special Planning Areas. Page CM-7 states: “Other congestion reduction programs, such as transportation demand management, transportation systems management, and alternative transportation improvements for bicycle/neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV), pedestrian, and transit users can help reduce congestion. Reducing the number and distance of automobile trips through land use changes and placing more residents in closer proximity to more services will also reduce congestion.”

Page E-24 discusses the “jobs-to-housing ratio”. Their argument assumes an unproven relationship between where one lives, works or shops. It also ignores that most households have usually two or more adults doing different things. Apparently the Plan has some romantic attachment to the steel and coal mining company towns of the 19th century.

Page CM-9 states: “Public input during the General Plan update process indicates a need for additional and improved bicycle infrastructure,” while page CM -12 states: “Amador County will consider the needs of pedestrians and bicyclists in future development plans. In addition, development patterns which place dwellings within a short distance of essential services and activity areas offer increased opportunities for alternative transportation, including pedestrian and bicycle transportation.”

Page C-6 states: “New development adds pavement and structures, often altering natural drainage patterns and reducing infiltration and percolation of rain and snow. Using low impact development (LID) strategies helps to reduce the amount of excess runoff generated by new development, and also to improve the quality of the water which drains off a property.” These are but a few of the endless number of new requirements to ensure that no one can build their home in the woods. A Class 1 Bike Path is projected to cost Fresno about $800,000 per mile.

On page C-13 is the culturally-sensitive areas map, which is quite extensive and includes many prime home sites. Prehistoric sites are everywhere on the face of the earth. This appears to be another very open-ended tool of restriction.

Page C-22 states: “Limit reliance on groundwater wells as sources for community water systems. Where possible, encourage connection of developments to existing water supply systems.” Page C-23 states: “Guide future development to areas of the county with the ability to obtain adequate wastewater service and treatment capacity.” The attack on our septic/well independent way of life continues throughout the Plan.

Page C-25 states: “Promote increased energy efficiency and green building practices through the County’s use of these practices and through use of incentives.” Don’t green building practices mean a required northern exposure for sunlight while you may miss the view you bought your property for? Incentives are always tax money taken from you and given to someone else.

Page C-27 states: “Amador County can help to maintain its good air quality by modifying development patterns…” More state-of-the-art cars will probably reduce pollution far more than a little less driving.

Page OS-1 states: “… protecting natural resource habitats and special status species. Because of animal migration needs, both the quantity and the location and connectivity of habitat are important considerations. Special-status species could be affected by existing and projected land uses if habitat is lost, existing habitat is fragmented, or land use changes on adjacent lands degrade current habitat areas.” These statements imply that if you build a house on a deer path the deer can’t figure that out and blaze a new path. While this is obviously absurd, it does provide an insight into the thinking of the Plan writers.

Page OS-7 states: “Promote the development of a network of recreational trails for pedestrians, hikers, equestrians, and bicyclists. Where possible, promote the functional use of trails as transportation corridors.” Are they going to bring back the livery stables? Do they remember when the streets were full of horse manure, people wore “high top” shoes and gloves and infectious diseases were more rampant than today? And that the automobile was then hailed as the clean tech solution? What is the safety of having horses and bicycles share a trail?

What I have written is a very small sample of the General Plan’s program to stop all new homes in the woods. My future commentaries will do the same with the Plan’s other provisions. Read the Plan on the County website: www.amadorgov.org/index.aspx?page=143 and attend the May 25th public discussion with the Board of Supervisors at 1pm.

A General Plan of Fear and Darkness

Mark Bennett

As I read and reread the proposed General Plan to write my upcoming commentaries its foreboding darkness overwhelms me. American exuberance and optimism about the future are gone. Everything is an obstacle or a limitation. Where we once thought of problems as challenges to be solved we now find

them nearly insurmountable. Fear of the future has replaced optimism. This sensibility then finds coercion more important

than freedom. If too many people share these viewpoints, it can become the grave danger of a self fulfilling prophesy and clearly so if enshrined in the General Plan. We may talk about the American dream dying, but in the proposed General Plan it is dead on arrival.

I will write in more detail in further commentaries. But everyone should examine the proposed General Plan and appear before the Board of Supervisors on May 24, 2011 at 1pm to say NO to the Plan and to stand against crowded European style land use, growing dependence on a nanny government and an economic plan that fosters low wage jobs.

Has Logic Disappeared?

By Mark Bennett

I have discovered that Katherine Evatt maintains a blog that has responded to one of my “Outside the Ivory Tower” commentaries separate from her Letter-to-the- Editor responses and is also a venue for her other opinions. They need a response, so I have decided to write this Letter-to-the-Editor separate from my ongoing commentaries which will continue with the proposed General Plan.

Her 3/27/2011 post entitled “Want a little tea with your conspiracy?” decries what she considers accusations “…that smart growth and sustainable development are the new face of socialism in America,” and concludes by reaffirming that she is a capitalist. Yet her prior post of 2/24/2011 “Looking back and looking forward “ in response to my commentary entitled “Imagine” is a long argument in favor of economic planning including the potential use of grant money. These two posts are contradictory on the surface. Most people would agree that economic planning is an integral part of the socialist agenda.

Her 7/18/2010 post entitled “Placing faith in growth” compares the growth rates and economic well being of Amador and Calaveras counties. It exhibits the Post Hoc logical fallacy of comparing two things that don’t have a causal relationship. Another example would be predicting the stock market based who wins the super bowl or the more common statement of comparing apples and oranges. Just the two rates are compared while all the other differences between Amador and Calaveras counties are ignored. This is the logic from someone who freely criticizes others for alleged logic fallacies.

Her response to my “Imagine” referred to some prior statements I made in support of the Devil’s Nose Dam and repeated her tired answers, all of which have been fully refuted. At that time I stated that we don’t know what future demand for electricity will be and that we should plan for possible increases in future demand (Amador Ledger Dispatch, 8/8/1990). At that time some local people felt otherwise. But since then electricity demand has soared (the internet alone represents about 10% of our current usage) and rates have also soared. Most new capacity is coal, rather than clean hydro.

Along with potential hydro power we in Amador County are also blessed with gold resources. Among gold’s many unique qualities is its electrical conductivity. Almost all computers and many cables contain gold. Replacing unstable and expensive indium tin oxide with gold can accomplish “…the holy grail of truly flexible solar cells” announced the University of Warwick recently.

Gold has been a storehouse of value and a means of personal adornment since long before recorded history. The current price of $1500 per ounce is far above the less than $800 per ounce cash cost of mining. Also the cash costs of mining often drop in correlation with the gold price, diesel fuel being a prime example. Much of the rising demand for gold comes from the newly prosperous. In India and China alone over one billion people are rising from the peasantry into the working class or from the working class into the middle class. This trend will last at least several generations and will provide more higher paying jobs than agri-tourism and the other schemes in the proposed General Plan.

The gold mines were closed during the war, ostensibly for the miners to produce more strategic materials. But this was just a part of FDR’s actions against gold in his program for the government to control the currency and the economy. After the war the gold mines did not reopen because the government had fixed the price of gold at $35 per ounce. But demand continued and was met by apartheid South Africa and the former Soviet Union. The politically incorrect were arrested and used as slave laborers. The graves of one million of these surround just one Siberian mine.

The cedar pencil on my desk is no different than the ones I had 60 years ago except that it is imported. But while most lumber demand will vary with construction activity, as she stated, I really wonder what sustainable (removed from the proposed General Plan) and orderly growth (now in the proposed General Plan) mean? Both individual lives and the collective human experience are boom and bust phenomena. We once used whale oil in our lamps until it was replaced with kerosene. Kerosene production created the byproduct of gasoline and made the automobile feasible. When the Portuguese sailed around Africa Middle Eastern merchants lost their European spice markets and promoted coffee instead. Examples like this have always been the nature of the human experience. Perhaps the orderliness some seek is not of this world, but only of the next.

Are We Lab Rats, or Citizens in the Proposed County General Plan?

By Mark Bennett

When I was in graduate school in planning, we would radically alter land use in an area as a class exercise. Somehow we now have a General Plan proposal that seems like one of those class exercises and intends to transform Amador County from an American community living on the land to the European style of crowded villages with our once private land and homes restricted into oblivion. It exhibits the people in cages and the animals roaming free syndrome of environmental extremism. The basis appears to be the assumption that it is unnatural for people to live on the land. An analogous situation would be the unfortunate children in England now crippled with rickets from vitamin D deficiency because the “authorities” decided that sunlight is bad. Thousands of years of experience and common sense seem to have disappeared. All concepts of the obvious; natural living, natural law, and our God given rights have vanished.

Instead, we have the County culture defined by outsiders in a distant academic manner and a social policy plan, with a specific agenda, that recognizes government as the only institution in society. We are to be forced off the land and into high density Town Centers and a Special Planning Area, using water and other regulatory mechanisms. This process is insidious because we will be picked off as isolated individuals without the power of a group response. Major changes such as form based zoning, which will decide how your building looks (alpine style required in Buckhorn, for example), are snuck into the General Plan rather than be subject to public awareness and discussion. And the costs of all of this are never even mentioned in the Plan.

Personal freedom and free enterprise are abandoned in this Plan. The Jeffersonian ideal of independent citizens, the middle class, is trashed. It is a coup d’ etat disguised as a land use plan. I do not want to be the victim of someone’s social experiment.

My next several commentaries will discuss in detail everything I have outlined above. The General Plan is available at www.amadorgov.org/index.aspx?page=143 or by purchase at the County Planning Department. I urge everyone to read it. While it will speak for itself, the prose is very smooth. It sometimes took me several readings to fully comprehend the implications and grasp the omissions.

____________________________________________________________

Logic

Response to “Saving the Mokelumne is Democracy in Action”

It is a common, but disreputable technique to avoid discussing someone’s ideas and to instead to attack them. Referring to me, indirectly by implication, as a “propagandist” is a clear example of this in Katherine Evatt’s response to my “Earth Day Comes Early This Year” in her “Saving the Mokelumne is Democracy in Action”. My commentary was a straight forward exposition of the evolution of American attachment to land ownership and private property rights. I felt this was necessary to balance the unending threat of environmental horrors, often totally made up, that fill our classrooms and the mainstream media and serve as excuses to limit our rights. Also the time seems appropriate given the upcoming County General Plan approval. I mentioned the wild and scenic river designation only as an incidental example. But she responed as if that designation was the purpose of my commentary. The Foothill Conservancy flatters itself. But this type of arrogance should not be surprising for a group based upon telling other people what to do.

My commentary was also attacked for containing “a specious persuasive device” and using “a classic logical fallacy.” But doesn’t Katherine Evatt do exactly what she accuses me? I specifically noted ownership of public lands along with slavery as issues in the Texas annexation debates because most textbooks ship the public lands issue for necessary brevity/summation, and because it is less politically correct to discuss than slavery. Is it not “a specious persuasive device” for her to state that my mention of slavery in that context is somehow related to “a laundry list of ills…and then equated with the …effort to save the Mokelumne River…” And what is the logic, beside the propaganda effect, of calling urban water agencies “predatory” when they are simply doing what they are legally obligated to do?

My “facts” are facts, anyone can verify them. There is no logical fallacy in understanding the basis of American values and traditions. Our founders were joined by immigrants unable to own land in restrictive Europe. Italian immigrants would give up education, even to the extent of illiteracy, to save money to buy land as documented in “Family and Community” by Virginia Yans-McLaughlin while a Women’s Studies professor at Rutgers University.

Putting all immediate issues aside, population growth is straining fresh water supplies and along with new water projects, water needs to be used wisely. Here in California industrial use is relatively small compared to residential and agricultural uses. Low flow toilets have failed as the recent problems with stinky sewer pipes in San Francisco illustrate, but air bladder toilets may work better. However, the installed base does not appear large enough to render a complete verdict. Reduced flow showers left me feeling disgustingly dirty when I used them at an Orange County hotel for a several day conference. Possible savings, focusing on agricultural use, are described by Jim Luria in the recent Huffington Post article “Gospel From the World’s Headwaters”. While he talks mostly about Israel, he also notes Singapore and Spain.

These new irrigation technologies could save water. And while I favor the private sector, political compromise may dictate public sector involvement. But ultimately that point is moot, because I doubt we have the capital today in the United States for these projects and instead have unmanageable household, business and government debt. It took us from the 1630’s (I’m using the Chesapeake Bay/Tidewater tobacco boom as a start date) to the early 1880’s to accumulate a surplus of capital, but just a few recent decades to squander our inheritance. This lack of capital is not a created fear. If you think I am fear mongering, be shocked when the dollar becomes worthless or instead watch the daily events of our decline. Rome didn’t fall in a day. Just remember the decision made years before the fall: turn Rome into a park and import from the colonies (ironically one import was grain from Libya).

The only way we can become financially free again is to return to the wealth creating free enterprise system, in part by reducing governmental interference, and by reducing government expenditures. I support the Tea Parties because if we don’t downsize government soon we won’t have an America left to discuss these issues in. Instead, bankruptcy, chaos and civil strife will occur. But democracy in action could be a real discussion on what to cut. Citizens must examine government budgets. The Tea Parties have blazed the trail. We don’t need to complicate this with more designations, debts, regulations and agencies to encumber the future.

Endnote: The course of many of our rivers, including some considered natural and perhaps some even considered “wild”, were created by stone fishing weirs built by Native Americans. These can be found be underneath thousands of years of sentiment.

____________________________________________________________

Solidarity Forever

In her recent commentary, Mary Molina spoke of the Wisconsin public employee situation and of “the American working men and women”. Who are these American working men and women? The millions of struggling Wisconsin taxpayers who will have to pay or the privileged civil servants earning far more? As Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated in a 1937 letter: “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public sector…The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials …A strike of public employees…looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.”

Collective bargaining does not belong in private sector. It is not bargaining when both sides of the table have the same interests. Often this arrangement works out with elected officials granting salary and benefit increases. Part of this increase goes into union dues that become that same elected official’s campaign funds. Those not represented at the bargaining table pay for this in their taxes. Are these the American working stiffs another commentator on this website has referred to? The working stiffs of America have voted with their feet and left private sector unions despite their very different history. I was raised on stories of working conditions in the robber baron era . In a prior commentary I mentioned the building of National Guard armories to contain the labor movement. Violent criminals employed as strike breakers were commonplace in my parents’ childhood neighborhoods.

But I also know that organizations once young and vital become powerful and decadent. Lack of internal democracy, financial irregularities, corruption and vastly overpaid executives characterize the private sector union movement in America today. Today’s labor unions, governed only by their selfish motives, are just another means of economic and social control. Does anyone remember that affirmative action began, in part, because the craft unions refused to integrate while the rest of America was changing for the better?

A liberal acquaintance once told a vemently anti-union friend of mine that he had read too much conservative propaganda, and that if he belonged to a union, we would feel differently. My friend responded by saying that he had always been pro-union until he joined one. As a shop steward, he had to confront both an unresponsive union as well as a hostile management in a life-threatening worker safety issue.

I was raised in union town where boasts of exploiting contact provisions were frequent. When I look back, I realize that every one of those factories is now closed. A steel mill that once employed 40,000 now rusting in the sun is an ominous image. It doesn’t present much collateral to borrow against the future with, a somewhat different picture than the economic forecasts invented in Washington. And while there probably are some fine, decent people among union staff, all my experience with unions - direct and indirect, and too lengthy to catalog - have been extremely negative. An organization drive at my most recent employer drove people away with their flagrant deceit. In my present position as a pension trustee, I am engaged in fighting a union that is literally trying to steal money from some beneficiaries to give to their own union members.

When individuals forego a college education to make $70,000 to $90,000 as auto workers, the entire labor market is distorted. Their best abilities are never developed, and society as a whole suffers. But since several unions provide thugs for Obama’s equivalent of Hitler’s brown shirts, from the Iowa caucuses to a recent demonstration in Sacramento, their immediate shelf life is assured. This is a historic role reversal where union members now act like the strike breakers of the past.

____________________________________________________________

Earth Day Comes Early This Year

Two hard working and freedom loving friends in the Mother Lode Tea Party recently alerted me to the increasing and possibly severe new restrictions on the use of public, or perhaps formerly public, lands here in the West. Our tradition of public lands stems from the situation in Medieval England where the forests belonged to the aristocrats. The punishments for hunting or cutting firewood were extreme, even including the death penalty. People were forced into gathering twigs. These were tied into bundles called faggots, the probable origin for the derisive term for male homosexual. However, the rights to graze livestock were granted in one forest and became known as common rights, the origin of the term commoner. But most restrictions remained. One county boy, according to the local legend, was caught pouching, skipped out on bail and went to London. He was William Shakespeare.

Later in English history the Enclosure Acts prohibited people from grazing their livestock in most open lands. The resulting poverty, along with the brutal experiences of centuries, led these people to America and the promise of freedom in the new world. Ironically, some of their descendents were driven from their land centuries later by the now imperial Federal Government for the Shenandoah National Park project. The environmental movement was being born. Those who wouldn’t leave were, in some cases, burned out by Roosevelt’s Civilian Conversation Corps. Does this remind anyone of Obama’s proposal for a civilian national security force?

After the Mexican War many New Mexico residents were impoverished by the loss of public grazing lands. A left wing college professor once had me believing that this was due to “greedy Anglo capitalists”. But I later learned that most of the seized land became national forest. The Federal Government also added to its power base when it took the public lands of Texas. This was a primary and contentious issue, along with slavery, in the annexation debates. I can’t help but be reminded of the national wild and scenic river designations and other restrictive schemes of the Foothill Conservancy and similar groups.

Do our public lands belong to us, the American public, or the elite governing class for their globalist or other agendas? It’s harder to find out since the White House now quietly holds many meetings at the Council on Environmental Quality facility without attendance records or Secret Service clearance. Be it open meetings or open lands, our traditions were born from stark reality. How can we be Americans if we don’t know why we are who we are? Some have forgotten and some probably never learned. And some, like the occupant of the White House, hold our traditions and values in disdain.

Happy Earth Day!

____________________________________________________________

Who is really getting fleeced?

Mark Bennett

Mary Molina raised many interesting points in her recent “Okay, Who’s getting fleeced?” One was the possible reduction in federal government home heating assistance. The horror of old people freezing to death happens every winter, as any news junkie knows. But why is government the only answer that some people think of? At best it treats the symptoms. The cause of high energy prices can easily be ended by developing our own resources along with the lease revenue benefit. The Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota alone contains 3 to 4.3 million barrels of oil according to the US Geological Survey press release of 4/10/2008. But developing these fields is partly prevented by the vision of supposedly less polluting renewable energy. The administration holds this view, but is absolutely limited in seeing only increased government control and in forcing already painfully high energy prices to new heights as solutions. The answer is, among others, ongoing technological breakthroughs in solar energy. As has been said the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone. And money isn’t the only motivation. I, for one, want my home solar simply for the feeling of independence it would provide.

As the bureaucrats administering home heating assistance band aid part of the problem, what does the entire US Department of Energy do? President Carter began this department due to the strategic and financial danger of importing about 33% of our oil. Today we import about 70% of our oil. Their success speaks for itself. Yet the individuals involved work hard writing reports, attending conferences and building careers. This has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars.

Any real budget reduction process must examine what government does and how it does it. This doesn’t occur by just nibbling away at program appropriations. Ideally the interests of the American people must be foremost. Instead, in many cases, we have budget cutting as an excuse for an ideological agenda. President Obama intends to cancel Voice of America broadcasts to freedom fighters in Tibet and elsewhere. Freedom, it is apparent, is not part of his agenda.

Like paying for home heating, the problem with Social Security and many pensions is not the money received, but the rising cost of living. President Clinton “solved it” by changing the Bureau of Labor Statistics cost of living calculations to abrogate the promised increases. Price stability would naturally result from a stable currency, something presently impossible for the world’s biggest debtor. Low interest rates protect debtors. Among the losers are older people dependent upon interest income from savings. Increasing debt and a declining dollar, the result of Liberalism, is fleecing us all.

As an endnote, I ask everyone enamored of the GI Bill to remember that Truman’s advisors predicted a huge depression after World War II. They were afraid the returning GI’s would turn their guns on Washington.

____________________________________________________________

Want to comment on this article?

CLICK HERE or e-mail: ACNEditor@gmail.com

Imagine

Mark Bennett

I was both inspired and frightened by the speakers from Siskiyou County at the recent Tea Party meeting. It was frightening because of the increasing government control of everyday life and the increasingly coercive methods being employed. It was also frightening because the steps now necessary to protect freedom are also becoming more entangled. But I was inspired when they spoke of becoming a chartered county. While I don’t have the legal knowledge to comment on local “sovereignty”, I began to imagine a very different Amador County where we controlled our own destiny.

I envisioned the Devil’s Nose dam built, providing abundant water and electric power with probable lower consumer rates. I saw our forests free from federal control and the saw mills rebuilt. The gold mines humming with activity selling into the world market. There would be little unemployment and few empty stores. If Preston closes, perhaps demand for that space would be from a taxpaying enterprise. Facilities like the County Museum could be renovated. Young people would stay here, and perhaps we would even have a permanent local college extension.

We are (or were) prosperous because we are (or were) free. Many countries have vast natural resources and are mired in chaos and poverty because they lack freedom. But other countries have few natural resources and are prosperous because they are free. Free enterprise is not a difficult concept. The fewer barriers between someone’s idea and a new product or service the more likely that new product or service will happen.

Whether heroic people like Daniel Boone or the thousands of more ordinary people who braved the Oregon Trail, our personal and economic freedoms made us America. We can live our heritage and acknowledge our historic “warts” at the same time. We can be fallible humans and exceptional Americans at the same time.

I wonder what our young people are learning today. Many of the college textbooks provided when I taught were not only ideologically slanted, but several contained gross factual errors. Have we lost something that will be hard to regain? I sometimes wonder if many believe that the freedom to consume is a worthy replacement for the freedom to produce.

The last cedar pencils I bought were made in Viet Nam and China. But why should we worry? The money we send China will just be lent back to us. That’s a gamble based on assuming our advisory is stupid. The Chinese are buying natural resources everywhere. Our creditors will assert their advantage. I can see a new cedar mill here given special dispensations from Washington, possibly with lax environmental controls and owned by unsympathetic foreign interests.

While the binge borrowing and anti business programs from Washington cause me grave concern, both for this country and for my personal survival, the frequent confusion is even more alarming. How does Obama intend to build high speed rail at the same time he wants to diminish the supply of electricity? This type of incoherence when debt slavery looms appears to be a prescription for failure. Is this intentional?

____________________________________________________________

Egypt Burns

Mark Bennett

The people of London are huddled in the tubes as the ground shakes and city above burns, American supplies to England are torpedoed into oblivion in the mid Atlantic due to German spies on our docks and the citizens of central Europe are being sent to death camps. Yet Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill hold a joint press conference about our misunderstanding of Nazism. But while that press conference didn’t happen, it is analogous to Obama’s actions, inactions and his friends.

Who is this man and what side is he on? It is not about right versus left or liberal versus conservative. It is about freedom versus tyranny and the survival of civilized life.

While most Moslems are moderate, there is no moderate Koran. Where in the Bible are the sanctions for the Spanish Inquisition or Oliver Cromwell’s death penalty for celebrating Mass?

Read the Koran (a short interlude on the internet will suffice), draw your own conclusions and decide what side the White House is on.

Mark Bennett, Pine Grove

____________________________________________________________

Arizona and the State of the Union

Mark Bennett

We are all horrified and saddened by the recent events in Tucson, Arizona. The left has blamed the right and the right, to a limited extent, has blamed the left. Both say the rhetoric of the other side is inflammatory, but that there’s is OK. I find this type of thought insidious. It assumes that we are unduly influenced by whatever to hear and that we cannot think for ourselves. If this is true then we are not capable of self government.

More sensible public figures have not assigned blame, but have suggested that everyone tone it down. And while I also cringe at the tenor of debate, and share their well founded fears, I find that this point of view ignores the obvious. There are real reasons that people are this vehement. The health care change, no matter what you think of it, was rammed through Congress in a series of deals without the necessary widespread support for significant change to be anything but coercion. The leadership in Washington primarily ignores and at times seems to overtly and covertly support worldwide Jihad that threatens all civilized people. Government debt is a ticking time bomb that risks hyperinflation with possible economic collapse and social chaos. Read John Williams’ scenario on his website Shadow Government Statistics. It’s frightening and lingers like a recurring nightmare. Unemployment is now at record highs while the Federal Government attacks the job creation abilities of business with “dead by a thousand cuts” of taxation, over regulation and mind numbing paperwork. And while the general public is outraged by these and other issues, left wing activists who have taken over most universities and some communities and neighborhoods and felt they have won with the Obama regime now see a public uprising against their agenda unfold. Their anger has increased their rhetoric to the point where people I disagreed with, but once respected, I now write off as nut cases.

We healed ourselves after a bloody civil war and a neighbor against neighbor, in many cases, revolution. But I am pessimist about the future because of our dangerous polarization. Documented in Angelo M. Codevilla’s, “The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It” is an excellent description of this present schism. While he is part of our local Tea Party and many of you may disagree with him, I urge everyone to read him to gain understanding. Another book is Bill Bishop’s, “The Big Sort” with an anecdotal and demographic perspective. While it suffers from its liberal basis by over emphasizing the so-called religious right and by totally ignoring the anger of people who have suffered from forced busing, affirmative action or lost their businesses to over regulation, it is well worth reading. There are undoubtedly many other books, but I’ll stick to those I’ve read.

Many commentators gauge this polarization comparing the present with a bucolic 1950’s. I reject that view. My memories of the 50’s are of civic and business affairs dominated by organized crime, the fear and intimidation of the McCarthy period and labor violence. “It’s not a real strike unless someone dies” was commonly said. So I reject that analysis and look to the decades preceding the First World War. The government built National Guard armories in major cities to fight the labor movement. Blood in the streets was commonplace. Well over a dozen Socialist newspapers in numerous languages were published. Many said that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe would never assimilate (the passages about this from John Dos Passos “The USA Trilogy” have haunted me since college).

Yet I also reject that period as more polarized that today because we no longer share the same basic values we did then. During the great depression you were ashamed of not being able to care for yourself if you received welfare, but today you are a successful scammer. While many note the decline of society with their favorite “hot button” issues, it is evidently blatant in daily life. When I went to the post office as a teen ager, people with dogs would leave them tried up outside as a courtesy to others. But that courtesy disappeared in a value change so the post office banned dogs. Then I saw a post office sign that read: “No dogs allowed except guide dogs for the disabled” or words to that effect. One or more people must have complained. If someone thinks that a blind person with a guide dog is not an obvious exception I wonder if I am on the same planet as that person. And why was the post office so spineless in this situation? Of course, you can argue that tying up your dog outside risks theft. But that fear is just another indication of decline. A hundred years ago men would gather at factory gates for the right to clean out the scrap metal. After the foreman’s announcement the gathered men would brawl. Whoever was left standing cleaned out the factory. What I find amazing is not making the statement “fight for a living” literal, but that total strangers could engage in “gentlemanly fisticuffs” without serious injury.

Last year I had a chance encounter conversation with a woman in a Sacramento chain store. Although nothing but words were exchanged the hate in her eyes was foreboding. To her, as a male identified white middle American, I was a political criminal in need of internment camp reeducation. It seems detached from reality that people have the passion to object to Christian crosses in cemeteries while “Rome burns”. Today’s polarization is real, it’s dangerous and it can tear America apart.

Many cite the cause as the ideology of moral relativism, that one system of morality is not better than another and that the belief in right and wrong, which was demanded of me growing up, is old fashioned. This and other new attitudes took a generation or more to evolve and cannot change quickly nor without trauma. I wrote last week’s “The trees for the forest” asking readers to examine the origin of their political opinions. The healing of America must begin in our hearts. Then true leadership will emerge from among us, which is far preferable than being imposed by the governing class, perhaps merely as a rebranding. This cannot include someone who appears to have learned their Americanism in an Indonesian madrasah.

____________________________________________________________

The trees for the forest

Mark Bennett

For many years I passed the Georgia Pacific mill site on a daily basis. Each time there was a little less of it. Each time my gut wretched with coldness and fear. I saw couples arguing and breaking up, homes being lost and children having their dreams shattered. But despite the physical reality of that recurring experience, I also knew it was simply a conditioned reflex to growing up in a gritty and dying industrial city. Other people here in Amador County grew up differently. A local environmentalist has spoken of growing up in a charming little city and watching it turn into a series of congested highways and look-alike businesses. We are both speaking from the heart and are both “right”.

In Calaveras Big Trees State Park there is a tree stump with a plaque quoting John Muir. He says that certain men murdered this tree for greed to put it on display in major cities across North America and Europe. Aside from his inflammatory word choice, it is literally true. But I imagined millions of people seeing a wonder beyond their circumscribed worlds. I see a little boy say, “Are there really forests of trees like this?” and, as his father answers “Yes”, this boy and many others first learn of a vast world beyond the smoke stacks of their steel mill company town or whatever their respective surroundings were. It is simply a matter of perspective and ignoring, or being unable to see, the same thing from someone else’s perspective.

Many believe the rhetoric that Republican Party is the party of the rich. But half of America votes Republican most of those are not rich. When I taught Political Science I spoke of two hypothetical people, both the same age making the same hourly wage. The first person lives in a rented apartment in a big city. When rats threaten his infant and his landlord gives him an evasive answer he calls city hall. They get rid of the rats and go after his landlord for the expense. He concludes that government protects powerless people like him from those with more power, and he happily votes Democrat.

Our second hypothetical person lives on an acre he owns in an old trailer in a rural area. When a building inspector tells him he must remove the tarp and fix his roof or vacate he feels that the only thing he owns is now threatened. He is not only angry that his taxes pay the inspector, but concludes that if the government took less of his pay he could afford a new roof. He believes in smaller government, less taxes and proudly votes Republican. My students always looked bewildered when I asked them which one of these two hypothetical people is “right” because both of them are “right”.

Many people are simply born into point of view. They don’t question the way they see the world or expand the constricted attitudes they perceive through. Is the dazed person drinking a morning beer on his front porch a welfare cheat, or someone who was up all night baking croissants for the morning lattes of those with greater prosperity? Is the teen age girl pushing a baby carriage an unwed mother, or someone just helping out? Are African Americans kept in dependency, or helped by the Democrat Party?

So far I have spoken of people responding out of their experience. But many people are “educated” into a point of view. They discuss ideas verses ideas and often take leave of common sense. This is often seen in government bureaucrats, as Sarah Palin and others have noted. The brutal head of the Shiny Path guerillas in Peru was a former professor of philosophy. While some people found this shocking, I think it’s obvious that his education enabled him to rationalize abhorrent behavior.

Several years ago, left-winger Tom Hayden helped defeat a solar energy bill in the State Assembly. His reason was an intellectual concept of social justice that said since wealthier households would receive a bigger subsidy because they use more energy, have heated swimming pools, etc., this was a bad bill. As a result, California missed the opportunity to lead the world in solar energy. While what Mr. Hayden said was literally true, what outcome would have been more just? California could have provided thousands of well-paying jobs in manufacturing, installation and export as well as Arizona copper miners keeping their jobs. There also may have been benefits from cleaner air and reduced fossil fuel use.

It is clearly a testament to the human mind and abstract modern society that people can think this far removed from daily reality and common sense. Some commentators have referred to the Delta Smelt decision as the action of zombies. Every day our universities produce graduates that are convinced that Socialism is the preferable system, despite the fact that it has never worked in a 100 years of experimentation varying between the terror state of Stalinist Russia and the near bankrupt nanny states of Western Europe. Yet these elitist views persist as a liberal former work supervisor once said to me, “People don’t know what’s good for them”.

But whether people “learn” their political beliefs, or simply project them from personal experience, do they see a situation from the other side? Are they able to “put themselves into someone else’s shoes”? And if they can’t, do they have the ability to be leaders?

____________________________________________________________

amador living & recreation - arts, music & theater - business

community groups & organizations - education - faith & values - food & wine

government - health & wellness - historic Preservation - opinions & issues

amadorMilitary.com - amadorWeddings.com - amadorMemorials.com

newsAmador.com - classified ads