Tuesday, November 27, 2012

CM PRESS # 54

WATCH THIS VIDEO AND SEE IF YOU THINK THIS WOMAN SEEMS LIKE SOME OF THOSE YOU'VE SEEN AT CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS AND WHO COMMENT OFTEN IN THE DAILY PILOT

Watch her face.  Listen to how she articulates. Observe her intensity but confused state and inappropriate comments.  Notice how she's dressed.
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WHOSE COUNTRY IS IT?

We saw a bunch of comments after a recent newspaper story about a suspected illegal alien who committed a crime.

The comments made after the story were typical and you'll find similar ones in every newspaper in the country.

Some of the commenters with European names said the illegal alien should be booted out of our country.

Then, other commenters with Latino names said that the European-named commenters should be sent back to Europe because "unless you're an Indian, this isn't your country." [Yes, we know, you goodies and swells want to call them Native Americans, but in this column, as you will divine, that term would be confusing.]

Sigh.

Look folks, there is no land on Earth that "belongs," in a moral sense, to any particular organisms--including any particular type of humans--just because they were the first in or because they were there before some other organisms that came later or because they're there now. There are no "natives,"  in the long view of history.

America did not belong to the Indians. Just because they were here before the Europeans did not make them owners of the land.  In fact, the Indians, as we know them today, displaced earlier peoples and the earlier peoples displaced earlier organisms.  And, this has been going on since the Earth existed and will continue to go on.  Why?  Because we do not live in a static universe.  Everything moves; everything changes.

Any organisms--any plants or animals--that can take over a land because they have adaptations that give them a survival advantage there under the then present conditions and who multiply their kind and prosper, will eventually force out competing life types that don't have those adaptations.

Fairview Park as an example

Back when the City Council was voting on putting millions of dollars into "restoring" Fairview Park to its "original" "state with "native" plants, the CM PRESS asked the Council when exactly in past time was that original state?  Was it a hundred years ago? A thousand?  A million?

You see, the Council had to pick some arbitrary time in the past and claim that was the original state of Fairview Park.

And, the Council did pick a time (without saying it) that is several hundred years ago. Then, the Council took our tax money and paid to have the plants that now grow naturally in Fairview Park, and prosper there under present conditions, and which do so without any City help, ripped out and replaced with plants from the past that can no longer compete under present conditions without intensive care from humans who will be paid by citizens to water, fertilize and make sure the "native" plants can grow where they are no longer native.

There are lessons in nature that we'd do well to learn.  And, by nature, we don't just mean the woods and fields of Earth, but, rather, the way things work in all of existence. Cosmic evolution is a reality and its processes are constantly working both in entire galaxies and  in tide pools on Earth.

And this, of course, leads us to discuss the foolish attempts to try to maintain green grass lawns in our semi-arid area, as though we live in more rainy climes, instead of simply putting in plants that will grow here naturally and prosper.  Ah, forget it.
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Wendy Leece's Westside Bluffs
gated neighborhood.
SAN BERNARDINO CUTS BUDGET MORE THAN $26 MILLION

Good move for a city on the ropes.

One San Bernardino Councilmember said the City should try to attract businesses and middle class residents.  Of course, he's right, but San Bernardino has very little going for it that would make it attractive to businesses and middle class residents.

Compare San Bernardino to Costa Mesa.  

Costa Mesa should also cut our budget, but given our location right next to Newport Beach and the ocean we, unlike San Bernardino, have much going for us, and if we can get our priorities straight and focus on improving the Westside, we'll become a magnet for new, well-funded, successful businesses, and upwardly mobile young families and professionals.

The Westside can be the bestside

Go West, young man--the Westside is an unpolished diamond for Costa Mesa and much of the land in that part of our city has not yet seen its highest and best uses.

Machine shops on view land

How many drill press operators in machine shops on the Westside bluffs appreciate a beautiful sunset while hard at work?  Very few.  But, replace that machine shop with single family homes (maybe like the ones in Wendy Leece's gated Westside community) and you'll have upwardly mobile citizens flocking to live there who will pay top dollar just for that view and whose very presence in the area will help the Westside evolve higher.

Nice neighborhoods like Wendy Leece's gated neighborhood are safe neighborhoods

We don't have the statistics, but we'll bet if someone put together the crime statistics for Wendy Leece's exclusive, gated community, that those statistics would show that Wendy's neighborhood has less crime than almost any other neighborhood in Costa Mesa.

Then, we'd like to see those statistics compared to some other neighborhoods on the Westside.

Planet Wendy

We'll bet that the differences will be so great that Wendy's neighborhood, compared to many other Westside neighborhoods will seem as though they're on different planets.





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19TH STREET BRIDGE DIES--FINALLY

In a win for the Westside, the 19th Street bridge has finally been removed as a possibility.

In the early days of the Improvement movement, some of us looked at the possibility of a 19th Street bridge as a way to possibly bring upscale traffic to W. 19th Street which might help transform the area and have major supermarket chains consider opening a supermarket near 19th and Placentia.

We quickly realized, however, that all we would get would be freeway speed traffic blasting down W. 19th Street to get to the  freeway, and that W. 19th Street would then become another mini-freeway cut through street that would only increase the feeling that Costa Mesa is just a traffic island between Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Irvine.

In addition, because the 19th Street bridge has now been removed from the Master Plan of Arterial Highways, it can no longer be pointed to by developers as though it actually exists and is mitigating traffic; which then allows them to increase the density in their projects even though there was never a bridge.

Regional vs. Local

Be wary of those who speak, in the same breath, of Costa Mesa and regional traffic mitigation and regional help with homeless problems and other issues in which you are told that Costa Mesa needs to help the whole region.

What they usually mean is that everything that isn't wanted in Newport Beach, Huntington Beach or Irvine can be dumped in Costa Mesa.

Costa Mesans need to work for our own best interests.  This is our city.  This is our quality of life. It's time that other cities and their residents do their fair part with regional issues and not treat Costa Mesa as the dump for all their problems.
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