POLITICS AS USUAL AND THE CITY GOES DOWN HILL
The Bell Curve is a manure heap, dear friends, and it pulls to the middle where it stinks the most. Entropy in politics, as in all of existence, is difficult to avoid, and one has to understand it to avoid being pulled in.
First, you cut your ponytail, then you wear a suit, then you lick the boots of the GOP bigs and your new best friends. Little by little you change and you tell yourself that it's just the way things are done because that's the way the big boys do things.
Soon, you're not in office to improve the city; you're in office just to stay in office. Soon, you've become one of them.
Soon, you're saying, "I think I'll just lie down in the snow here and take a little rest. I'm so tired."
# # #
ERIC (CHRIS STEEL) BEVERBack before he ran for office,
Mayor Eric Bever sported a long ponytail. We liked that, because we thought it showed a non-conformist bent and reflected an inner quality of one who wouldn't be easily co-opted by the establishment. True, ponytails on men weren't all that rare, still...well, maybe we just read into the ponytail thing.
Bever talked a pretty good talk about wanting to improve the
Westside and that's something we were already involved in doing, so we listened and watched and he pretty much did keep saying the right things.
Then, when he ran for office, he cut off his ponytail. "Maybe, he did that just to show that he was serious about running to improve the
Westside," we thought to ourselves. Again, it may be that we were reading our own hopes into things.
Unfortunately, since
Bever's been on the Council, he's done very few major things to improve the
Westside or any part of Costa Mesa. Oh, he's done some small things and we've praised him for them, but the things he's done are to our city what
hors d' oeuvres are to a banquet. And, we keep waiting for the real meal to begin, but we tire...and we begin to think that this host has nothing but
hors d' oeuvres, and that maybe we've crashed the wrong wedding.
At last night's no-City Council meeting, the CM PRESS told the no-Council that we think
Councilmembers should be more assertive in getting things done. (We were being kind, and chose as mild a word as we could think of to say "Get off your fat asses and do something.")
We cited the
55 Freeway mess, the ever expanding
John Wayne Airport,
Banning Ranch and the
Westside.Bever's reply from the dais was essentially that things were being done behind the scenes and that these things involve politics and networking, blah, blah, blah. Read,
Bever knows best and the subtleties of what's going on behind closed doors are beyond the ken of the
hoi polloi.
Baloney.
The public has a right to know what's going on and we have a right to participate in meaningful ways, not in set-stage little community meetings like the City holds that are just for PR effect; but as active participants.
Then, City Manager
Allan Roeder said that the issue of
Banning Ranch was very early, and that
Newport Beach doesn't yet own the land, etc.
Well, with all due respect to
Mr. Roeder, who we admire as a very able administrator, these things take on a life of their own and once the train starts down a certain track it's hard to stop.
The train of
Banning Ranch becoming part of
Newport Beach and having 1, 375 homes and a 75 room hotel and 75,000 square feet of shops and with four roads leading out of it with three of them being right through
Costa Mesa (16
th St., 17
th St., and 18
th St.) is starting to leave the station and gain speed.
And,
Costa Mesans are going to be left standing at the station, once again saying "How did that happen?"
Same thing with
John Wayne Airport. While
Katrina Foley and her
fou fou liberal pals are
gnoshing over wine and cheese and tightening the sleeves of their sweaters tied around their necks and wearing the latest galoshes from Land's End while clucking their tongues about the planes overhead, John Wayne will expand. Count on it.
That is, it will expand,
unless an alternate location for a very large international airport can be found to replace John Wayne. Folks, the way things are going right now, we're all going to be living on the tarmac here in Costa Mesa. NO ONE, except the CM PRESS seems to be talking about the real solution that makes perfect sense: Build a large international airport on a tiny portion of massive Camp
Pendleton. If you're the mayor of Costa Mesa, and if you're half-smart, you'd be on the phone to Dana
Rohrabacher and others and getting them on board with this idea. Forget that
maglev train to the desert, folks. It makes no sense. It's a Triangle Square idea.
One local dimwit who blogs on all things that he knows nothing about, and that includes just about everything, and who seems to have an IQ on a par with the wattage of the light bulb in your refrigerator, says that
Pendleton is no good because it has hills, blah, blah. Oh, good grief!
Of course, this same imbecile keeps writing that
Bever is doing all he should do to improve the
Westside. And, the buzz is that this guy is one of
Bever's pals. That's the trouble with the
internet, dopes who would have been limited to writing their stupid ideas on bathroom stalls down at the Greyhound Station, are now doing it on the
internet.
You know folks, it may be a myth, but it is said that you can stop a train if you put a penny in front of its wheels before it starts moving. Myth or not, the point is still valid.
We can't wait until the train starts moving. We need to act now on the 55,
JWA, Banning Ranch, and the
Westside (Remember the
Westside? Remember that's what got
Bever, Mansoor and
Leece elected?)
Costa
Mesans deserve a better, a smarter, and a stronger City Council.
Our City is at a turning point. There are lots of very important issues that are hitting us all at once, and the present weak no-City Council can't do the job. If we were an Indian tribe, we'd throw the bums out and elect a War Council--one that is more suited to the real problems of this city.
If you doubt what we're saying here, please tell us what
Bever,
Mansoor and
Leece have done to improve the
Westside. Talk is cheap and that's about all these three are doing.
Improving the
Westside was the one small job that these three were elected to do and all they've done is put some flowers in the middle of W. 19
th Street.
Improvers delegated to these three, and the job is not being done.
The gangs, the crime, the slums, the massive industrial area are all untouched, and there is still no supermarket on the
Westside.
Where are the homes on the
Westside Bluffs full of upwardly mobile citizens contributing to our city? Right, there are still no homes on the
Westside Bluffs. What's changed on the
Westside since
Bever,
Mansoor and
Leece took office? Nothing, except that
Mansoor has moved out of the
Westside.
These three have done nothing meaningful. They show up at City Council meetings and rubber stamp whatever is put in front of them, and collect their pay. Then, one or two of them will smile and mumble something about attending the latest PTA level conference.
And, folks, it's not just the CM PRESS that is concerned. We have feelers out to many other improvement activists and while they may not be as direct as we are in saying these things, they are concerned.
The problem for those who want a nicer city is that we don't have any good candidates who are jumping into the fray.
So far, there appear to be only five people who are running for the City Council this year:
Eric Bever, Chris Bunyan, Jim Fisler, Gary Monahan and Katrina Foley.(
Chris Bunyan, who has filed papers, told the Council last night that he's not running, but left the door open and said if he did run it'd be solely on the Banning Ranch issue.
Katrina Foley, who is running, according to her Web site, has not yet filed papers.)
Jim Fisler has always been good on illegal immigration, but that's about it. No one knows where he stands on anything else. And, the buzz among
Improvers is that he doesn't seem to have the drive to really run a campaign.
Geez, you have to actually appear in public and get name recognition. Except for
Fisler showing up to collect his pay as a no-Planning Commissioner, he's usually AWOL.
Fisler was reportedly put on the no-Planning Commission to groom him for a run for the Council, but he's pretty much blown it.
Gary Monahan will probably win on name recognition, but when he was on the Council before, his votes seemed to be all over the place and seemed to lack any cogent overall long range plan to improve Costa Mesa. It was as though every vote was in a vacuum and not connected to the whole.
And, this metaphor of being in a vacuum is not chosen lightly. It seems that the same thing applies to all the other members of the Council.
We wonder sometimes if we're seeing some sort of mental defect in our politicians. Why can't these people think strategically? Can't they see how it's all connected? Don't they realize that if you vote for A, that it will affect B, C, D, E, right down the line; maybe a couple of years in the future, but that there is a trajectory to what we do?
Can't they extrapolate from A to at least, oh, B? Look, we're not asking for geniuses on the Council, but can we at least have people who are able to factor in more than what is just on the surface of what comes before them?
If you shoot an arrow into the air, you can pretty much predict where it will land based on wind speed and direction, force of the pull, weight of the arrow, etc. and you can have a pretty good idea of what the effect of its landing will be.
But, it seems the City Council members don't get it. They shoot an arrow into the air and don't seem to have a clue where it will land or even if it ever will land. To them, it's as though that arrow exists in a vacuum.
That's a lousy way to run a City. That's why we often refer to the City Council as the no-City Council and the Planning Commission as the no-Planning Commission.
# # #
IS THE CITY IN VIOLATION OF TITLE VI OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964?The City denies it, but the CM PRESS believes that the no-City Council is not doing all it should do to prevent racial discrimination in the awarding of HUD
CDBG funds and that it is trying to avoid looking at the situation.
LINKIn fact, as we pointed out to the deaf ears of the no-City Council last night, for the umpteenth time, the packet of information they receive from City staff to decide on who gets HUD
CDBG funds, is missing one very important document that is collected by City staff:
the quarterly HUD reports showing the racial composition of all the charities to whom the City Council gives OUR money.
Why doesn't the no-City Council want to see that document? Why did they look at us with blank stares as though there were no brains behind their eyes when we told them that it was missing from their packets?
Could it be because that document shows that some charities that receive our money don't look anything like Costa Mesa? Could it be that a responsible City Council would start asking questions about why these charities don't look like Costa Mesa? Why no red flags in the minds of the City Councilmembers? Hmmmm?
And, to make it look even worse for this gang of five nitwits on the Council, the Council is on actual notice that one charity was found to be discriminating and was taken to the woodshed by the Feds, as we've reported many times, and as we told the Council last night, also for the umpteenth time.
# # #
BREAKING NEWS
From his Rolls Royce parked at his mansion on the tony bluffs in Newport Beach--bluffs that are full of expensive homes and not industrial buildings--a rich industrialist who makes his living off keeping the Westside Bluffs of Costa Mesa full of industrial buildings and no homes, places a call to Bever Election Central and with a well disguised voice says:"Hello, this is little Susy, and I'm six years old and if you allow homes to be built on the Westside Bluffs, my mommie and me will be thrown out into the streets."
And, Bever responds: "Don't worry little Susy, I'll help keep the Westside Bluffs fully industralized, cough, cough, cough--excuse me, I live on the Westside and I forgot to close my window and the polluti...ah....don't worry, little Susy. You can count on Bever to keep things just the way they are. Say, how do you like those flowers in the middle of 19th Street? Now, that's what I call real improvement."
# # #
Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year. http://tinyurl.com/zob77
2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. http://www.cisorg/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. http://www.cisorg/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers. http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens. http://transcripts..cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html
11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border, also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report. http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
12. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm
13. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States". http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml
Total cost is a whooping... $338.3 BILLION A YEAR!!!
pes is provided for doubters:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/bankofamerica.asp