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Phone Pests And Politics 12/19/02

Dad! Phone! The roof's leaking, daylight's fading while another storm is blowing in, and now I have to waste some precious time blowing off some damn phone solicitor." Who is it?" I yelled to my daughter as I jogged from the barn to the house. "It's Mike Thompson" she said, as my heart dropped to boot level, knowing this just couldn't be a good news kind of phone call.

Sure enough, it was our very own representative Mike Thompson, and he was most definitely not in a holiday frame of mind. In fact, Mike wasted no time at all pointing out the source his unhappiness, which as I had already guessed was a letter to the editor that had recently appeared in our local paper. Oddly enough, the letter I had penned had only a one-sentence mention of Thompson, with the bulk of the text being devoted to a diatribe against

the Republicans.

 

Mike had managed to blank out the basic premise of the letter (that neither party could be trusted), and homed in on my observation that Mike took gobs of money from over a dozen energy companies doing business in California, and how he set the stage for a massive ratepayer/taxpayer rip-off by voting to deregulate our electricity market. Mind you it was all true, so after spending forty-five minutes debating the issue with him (Along with several others), I remained un-swayed by his surprisingly feeble logic. It wasn't just the deregulation mess that Mike had lame-brain excuses for, it was his comprehensive lack of accountability that most impressed me, though I have to admit the deregulation vote logic was classic. According to Thompson, PG&E was on the verge of bankruptcy when it was "saved" by deregulation, and no matter how the situation was handled, it was inevitable that the ratepayers/taxpayers were going to shell out some big bucks. Now that's not exactly how deregulation was pitched to the voters, who were told they would be saving money once all that competition got going in the electricity biz.

But Thompson insisted that our power distribution and generation infrastructure needed rejuvenating, and that would require massive investment from private industry, so he had no choice but to vote for what turned into the screw-job of the century. I sure didn't sense any sympathy from Mike when I told him that small-time farmers like myself who were

already on the ropes couldn't afford or pass on their increased energy costs (My July ag bill alone had nearly $700 in deregulation related charges).

 

But as unsound as continuing support of his deregulation vote was, his reason for rounding up well over a million dollars in campaign contributions in order to outspend his sacrificial lamb opponent by a roughly ten-to-one ratio was even less solid. Basically, Thompson claimed that he had to do that too, because it's what everybody else does! When I pointed out the fact that he could have trounced his opponent without even bothering to have a campaign, and without milking donations out of outfits like Arthur Anderson or Philip Morris, he had no answer other than the "everybody else is doing it" catch-all. It all made me wonder if politician's consciences are surgically removed , or if they're just medicated into submission. When I mentioned that politicos like Thompson had helped facilitate the ridiculous over-expansion of the winegrape industry, and that many small growers wouldn't survive the shake-out, he had no response when I suggested that he'd be the about the only little guy not having a hard time finding a home for his crop (I also suspect Mike's little vineyard down the road from me would work quite well as a campaign money laundering operation). In fact, Thompson's said greed is inherent in all of us, and capitalism tends to bring out that tendency, so we just have to accept the fact that the modern

economy has no place for little guys (Except for the politically well-connected).

 

Another thing I didn't want to hear was the news that pear growers like myself had gotten their fair share of pork when the government took up some of the slack the Tri-Valley bankruptcy had created, though how paying someone to not grow a crop compares to buying canned fruit for the school lunch program, I don't know. Suffice to say the local pear industry, which has seen many sheds close and growers lose money for the last five years in a row, won't be seeing any more "help" from Mr. Thompson.

 

Thompson couldn't muster much in the way of justification for supporting his Democratic colleagues either, who he acknowledged had frequently held their fingers to the wind before casting votes on the war on terror or annexing Iraq. He also couldn't find much good to say about governor "hide the size of the deficit till' after the election", or the rest of the state

Democratic legislators who helped create the entirely predictable budget mess the state has wallowed into. Of course he fell back on the old "If you think we're bad, just look at the Republicans" line, which made me wonder if Thompson knew we were allowed to have more than two political parties in this country. When Thompson suggested that I was one of those Lake County Republicans who had been calling him a traitor for going to Iraq, I had to point out to him the facts that A: I had sent him an e-mail thanking him for his vote not to give the Bush-boy unlimited power to pursue a war against Iraq, and B:, I was a Green Party county council member. The second revelation brought the accusation that Greens like me had put Bush in the white house, which he seemed to really believe until I reminded him that 600,000 Florida Democrats had cast votes for our imbecile king, a fact that Mike had absolutely no comeback for.

 

Now I'll be the first one to admit that Thompson's voting record is better than 95% of his colleagues, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. For instance, Thompson voted for HJ Res 90-14-2000, which continued congressional support for the WTO. He voted for HR 4444, which gave permanent normalized trade relations to China (Which resulted in low-wage assembly jobs being sucked- out of every starving nation on the globe to even lower wage China). Thompson voted for HR 2926, which gave the airline industry a $15 million dollar bailout, in spite of the fact the bulk of the industry's problems were spawned by abysmal management. He also voted for bailing out insurance companies in case Bin Laden damages their policy holder's property, along with more wiretap, surveillance, and search/arrest power for government agents dealing with the threat of terrorists and peaceniks. Add to that list his support for handing the Israelis bags of our

tax money every year to help them ethnically cleanse Palestine of Palestinians, and you have plenty to be unimpressed with. So the gauntlet is being thrown down, and Mike is getting an invitation to debate me on our local community radio station KPFZ 104.5 FM to see if the general public is buying his spiel. We'll soon know if Thompson can be lured to Lake County for a purpose other than bass fishing, collecting campaign contributions and posing for photo opportunities.

 

 

a partial list of Mike Thompson's investors in 2002:

Aera Energy    DOW Chemical       Philip Morris

Arthur Anderson      Dynegy     Phillips Petroleum

Boeing  EJ Gallo     PG&E

BP-AMOCO    Edison International      RJ Reynolds

Calithness Energy     ENRON     Reliant Energy

Calpine  EXXON Mobil      Robert Mondavi

Chevron High Desert Energy       Sempra Energy

Coors Intel   San Diego Gas & Electric

Budwieser  MAXXAM-Pacific Lumber Sierra Pacific

Davis Oil Neuvo Energy    Sun Maid Growers

Dole Occidental Petroleum   Tosco     

        Texaco                      Wal-Mart

THE RECALL: ANOTHER MISSED OPPORTUNITY 9-13-03

 

When the news media hoopla over the upcoming recall election began, much was made about the 135 candidates in the race, and how it was an unprecedented chance to shake up the political landscape in California. But as election day nears, the familiar patterns of the two party system have once again dominated the contest, with the same special interests lining up behind the candidate they consider most likely to do their bidding once installed in office. Bustamonte, who makes no apologies for taking cash from companies like Chevron and PG&E, was shamed into donating the millions he took from Indian gambling interests to the "No on proposition 54" campaign, though Cruz isn't likely to forget that he's used tens of thousands in gambling money to fund his previous campaigns. Schwarzenegger has claimed he wouldn't take money from "special interest groups", but it turns out that Arnold's idea of what constitutes a special interest group doesn't jibe with the common understanding of the term, since he has taken contributions from companies angling for state contracts that are ponying-up millions to make sure they will remembered should Arnold be elected.

 

So once again a statewide election has become a bidding contest, with the voters/taxpayers sitting on the sidelines as the big-money boys use their bankrolls to tailor the candidate's platforms to their needs. So what happened to the unprecedented diversity and choice offered to the electorate? For sometimes unfathomable reasons, well-qualified contenders like Arianna Huffington and Peter Camejo who offer a true alternative have had trouble gaining traction with voters, and remain mired in the low single digits in recent polls. Huffington has gained a good deal of credence and

visibility due to her column in the New York Times, but unfortunately for her that notoriety has for the most part remained on the east coast and has had little impact on California voters. Many Californians are turned off by her sometimes "society girl" persona, and tend to focus more on her heavy Greek accent than her hard-hitting assessments of her rivals and their special interest-dictated agendas. While being an absolute master at getting free air time and media attention (as was evidenced by her crashing Arnold's first media event), Huffington wasted her precious paid air time on a well produced but unfocused TV commercial that did little to make the distinction between her and the other leading candidates. A far more effective commercial would have consisted of Arianna getting in front of the camera and telling viewers why the Democrats and Republicans don't deserve their votes and how both parties have betrayed their supporters, a very easy case to make. Arianna seems destined to come in a distant fourth, assuming that McClintock stays the course and doesn't pull out under pressure from Republican party bigwigs.

 

The other lost opportunity in the recall race is the Camejo campaign, which has been almost imperceptible in the mainstream news media. While Camejo would certainly make a fine governor, his campaign has been run with typical

Green Party ineptness and lack of understanding of the ways to score points with voters. Instead of pointing out the massive drain of money by the bloated state bureaucracies, Camejo has spent too much time talking about

generating new revenues through higher booze and cigarette taxes, along with higher rates for corporations and upper income taxpayers. Camejo has spoken of his rival's glaring flaws in only vague and general terms instead of going for the jugular, a gentlemanly but ineffective approach. Voters need to hear in simple terms why they can't trust Bustamonte orSchwarzenegger, and coming from a candidate who isn't carrying the baggage of Democratic or Republican contenders a devastating case for abandoning the major parties could be made. Camejo has also hurt his chances by pledging to back Huffington if his poll numbers are lower going into the home stretch of the campaign, leaving many Greens wondering why they should spend their time and money helping a candidate who is almost certain to pull out of the race. While the "consolidate the progressive vote" strategy makes sense, it should have been done early-on, so precious resources wouldn't be wasted on campaigns with near identical agendas. After the first debate the Camejo base seemed to be re-energized by their candidate's strong performance, making it even harder to make the decision to pull the plug and back Huffington. Greens are also hobbled by the split over whether or not the recall is a fiendish plot being orchestrated by the white house, a foolish bit of paranoia given the fact that Davis has an approval rating in the low

20% range, and is despised by many Democratic party leaders and voters-many of whom signed the recall petition! The dithering, lack of media savvy and pledge to quit have taken their toll on Green Party member support for the

Camejo Campaign, and many Greens are tiring of continually backing campaigns that seem doomed from the start.

 

Fortunately, The Republicans are as dysfunctional as the Greens, and seem destined to ruin their chances by splitting their votes between hardcore conservative Tom McClintock and third-rate movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, a major tactical mistake. If the Republicans had taken the middle road and put former Los Angles mayor Richard Riordan up as their guy they likely could get their man into the governor's office, due to the lackluster support for Davis clone Cruz Bustamonte.

 

So what is the $65-plus million dollar recall offering to do for us? We can choose to condone the massive fraud perpetrated by Davis regarding the size of the state deficit before he was re-elected by voting "no" on the recall, or vote "yes" and virtually guarantee another spineless and corrupt Democrat will be put in charge. Either way the recall is almost certain to be a huge waste of time and money, and all Californians should be appalled that Davis could have spared us the millions by resigning before the election had been called, which would have have given us the same result as the election is likely to yield by making Bustamonte the governor. But either way, the bigger problem of the hopelessly partisan and corrupt state legislature will remain, with no solutions or serious debate about the glaringly obvious flaws in our political system that generated the ongoing state assembly and senate dysfunction on the horizon.

 

 Late breaking development:

 

As of Friday September 12th, a new strategy appears to be coming from both the Camejo and Huffington camps. Huffington seems to be leaning towards dropping out, even thought her poll numbers have consistently been higher

than Camejo's, albeit by a small margin. Camejo now either seems to have forgotten his pledge to support Huffington should he be trailing in the polls as the election nears, or he is banking on Huffington bailing-out, since his latest comments suggest that he will stay in the race regardless of what Huffington does. This is a somewhat dicey strategy, since if Bustamonte loses by a slim margin Greens could become the group blamed for his defeat, and could hurt the Greens in next year's presidential campaign. Having Huffington shoulder the blame would get the Greens off the hook for

>being the spoiler, and would keep the Democrats from claiming the recall race was a repeat of the Florida debacle, where Greens were unfairly blamed for Gore's defeat.

Our Rocky Roads 1-21-03

 

Every few years in Lake County a plan to "fix" our system of roadways comes along, and 2003 seems to be the year of the latest pavement-patching effort.

Last year the city of Clearlake, Lakeport and the county all individually considered putting sales tax increase-funded road fixing plans on the ballot, but the three groups eventually came to the conclusion that they'd have to join forces if they were going to have any chance of success. This was after the Area Planning Council spent $65,000 on a study last year to see if the county's plan could make a go of it at the ballot box, with many observers feeling that the survey's rather foggy data suggested that the county's proposal was a bit of a longshot.

 

So now plan "B" is to put a half-cent sales tax increase on everybody's ballot, and to share the revenue between the three entities for the twenty years the plan will be in effect. Supposedly roughly $899,000 would go to the county in the first year (45%), Clearlake would get $480,000 (24%), and Lakeport will end up with $620,000 (31%). Of course motorists can always find a stretch of local roadway they want to see resurfaced, but the truth is that the roads outside of the two cities aren't all that bad, with the five state highways sporting relatively new coats of asphalt. Sure, some of the county's less traveled routes are a bit rough, but all in all they're not too bad. In the cities it's a different story, with some truly awful

clumps of patches pretending to be roads in Lakeport, and the citizens of Clearlake are still dreaming of having some of the seasonal ponds graded out of their system of dirt pathways.

 

But a look at some of the figures makes you wonder just how fair the plan would be, since there seems to be definite winners and losers. Lakeport has just 31 miles of roads, and with the new tax will be able to expend over 1.7 million dollars a year to repair them, meaning that with repaving costs at $100,000 a mile they will have all their roads fixed in less than two years.

Clearlake on the other hand, with about 75 miles of pavement, would take about eight years to get the job done with their new funding. The county could theoretically resurface all 613 miles of it's roads with 15 years worth of combined existing funds plus the new tax revenues, but would undoubtedly would take longer unless repairs to structures like bridges were differed.

 

So why would voters in the unincorporated areas of the county pay a tax for twenty years in order to give the rapidly over-funded city of Lakeport more money than it needs to fix it's streets? In Clearlake voters have been told that the new money won't bring a single inch of new pavement to that city, and that the tax funds will only supplement the maintenance of what they already have. With so many promises of smooth new pavement on city streets having been broken in recent years (South Main street in Lakeport being the

most recent example), it's likely that many voters will look at any road tax plan with even more skepticism than usual. But of course there's more to the equation than that, since there is a political and commerce angle to the story too. In the past, most of the business community in Lakeport has been in opposition to any form of sales tax increase, arguing that they would lose many customers to Ukiah if they could pay significantly less on big-ticket items. In the past Supervisor Farrington has come out against a road tax plan for Lakeport, saying that it would severely impact the senior citizen community, though many suspect that his objections had more to do with his family owning a local furniture store that might lose some sales.

 

Another political aspect is the timing of the election for the measure, which is slated for June of this year, meaning a special single-issue election will have to be held. It's believed that the purpose of putting the

measure to a vote in the spring, rather than to combine it the other local issues on the November ballot, is to get the money flowing as soon as possible. However, the BOS has yet to allocate the $41,000 it's estimated to cost to put on an unscheduled countywide election, and no funds have been earmarked for that purpose. Also, the odd timing of the election and its single-issue tax increase nature is bound to work against it's chances of success, since low turnout generally means the conservative anti-taxation faction will show up in disproportionate numbers.

 

But that's not the only obstacle the road tax will be up against, since the governor is asking for a full one-cent increase to help solve the state's budget woes, which will probably be whittled back to either a quarter or half cent by the time the legislature is done with it. Making the success of the measure even more unlikely is the fact that issue is being pursued during a rather severe economic downturn, which is never a good time to ask people to hike their own taxes or to approve new large scale government spending plans. And like all tax increase measures, this one will need a two-thirds majority approval in order to pass, a tall order for any ballot proposition. The probable outcome of the effort is that we'll end up with the same roads in the same condition, but will also have a $41,000 hole in the county coffers, along with the additional costs the county has incurred with all the staff time put into the planning and study of the measure.

Another End Run by the BOS 10/13/02

 

A few weeks ago when I formally asked the Lake County board of supervisors to change the time of citizen's input during supervisor's meetings, I was surprised to learn that the idea of a time change was already been on the minds of some of the supes, and that they had no objection to it being agendized. The fact that one of my requests was granted so easily should have made me suspicious, but instead I thanked them and went on my merry way thinking that I had finally found an issue I could make some headway on.

 

But when the time change came up a couple of weeks later, my confidence quickly faded after hearing in which direction the county's elected leaders were planning on going. My plan was to move input from it's position at 11:00 A.M. to 12:30 P.M., so that at least some of the supervisor's constituents could make it down to the meetings on their lunch hours without having to take time off work. Though I use the citizen's input time more than any other constituent, I personally didn't really care what time they had it as long as I could continue to get a chance to publicly contest some of the chronic stupidity that so oftentimes goes by unchallenged down at chaos central. I figured that most people had their lunches at noon, and even if you worked in Clearlake you'd only miss a few minutes off the time clock if you had the urge to give the supervisors your two cents. Sure, if you lived in Middletown it would mean probably missing a bit over a half an hour off work to make the round-trip lunchtime contribution to democracy, but none of this made any sense to the supervisors.

 

Jeff Smith and Ed Robey were quite adamant that a lunchtime input session was out of the question, and that they had a far better idea up their collective sleeves. Using some of the most twisted logic I've ever been subjected to, the dynamic duo explained how much easier it would be for the folks in their districts if they could come down at 9:00 A.M. to do their thought sharing. Sure, if you had to be at work at 9:00 A.M. that meant you'd miss at least a half an hour off work if you came from Clearlake, instead of just a few minutes. And if you had to be at work at 8:00 A.M. you'd be missing over an hour off the paycheck to give the local government

leaders the benefit of your opinion if you had to make the trek over from Clearlake, but according to the "we get paid to be here" guys the inconvenience factor was some kind of plus. Also objecting to the 12:30 time slot was a key member of the BOS staff, who seemed to be unclear on the fact that the functions of government were supposed to be based on the needs of the citizenry, with the minor one-day-a week change in feeding times for county employees being a secondary consideration. But in the strange world

that the supervisors live in the logic of their arguments was overwhelming, and they unanimously passed the plan to make virtually everyone who wants to have a face-to-face exchange with their alleged local representative pay for the pleasure by taking a hit in their paycheck. This is a continuation of the role the 11:00 A.M. slot played, which was also undoubtedly considered an inconvenient spot. But apparently too many vocal taxpayers were able to wrangle themselves an appearance at 11:00, so a new and even less convenient

time had to be found.

 

Having a good chance to embarrass the board members after people watching on TV had a chance to tune in was not something that the board cared for, so getting it out of they way right at the start of the proceedings seemed to be the best way to keep the publicly-voiced objections to BOS mis-doings off people's radar and TV screens. So it won't be too often that the BOS will have to endure the embarrassment of being publicly asked questions that they either can't or don't want to answer, not that they routinely feel obliged

to answer their constituent's queries regardless of how politely voiced or important those concerns may be. THE SUPERVISORS QUIET RETREAT 12/06/00

As bad as the supervisors behavior was at the morning session of the 12/5/00 BOS meeting, the situation became even worse when they returned to the afternoon portion of the show, which is usually reserved for the mundane and trial items on the agenda.

This Tuesday's post-lunch session was not your average exercise in tedium, since the board had already given itself a whopping 13.3% raise in spite of a lot of vocal opposition to the plan. Supervisors Robey, Lewis and Smith had done the inadvisable before the lunch break, but in the second half of the days schedule they did the clearly illegal.

With no public notice or input they put their two-hour old pay raise back on the days agenda, and voted to rescind the increase and turn the matter over to the Grand Jury to decide their pay scale. That was illegal move number one, the other aspect of the process that wasn't kosher were the behind-the-scenes discussions that must have taken place in order to get the issue back on the front burner, a likely violation of the Brown act. I suspect that weak-kneed Gary Lewis got nervous about facing a recall election and begged his fellow board members to do something quick to get them out of their self inflicted trouble with their constituents, though Smith or Robey might have caved in spite of their initial resolve to push on no matter what the consequences might be.

Unfortunately, the Record-Bee did not report how the vote broke down the second time, they only reported that the plan passed, so we don't really know if Mackey and Merriman supported the eleventh hour scheme to save the gang of three's hides. If the gang of three thought that they were off the hook by handing the problem over to the Grand Jury they are probably mistaken, since the public now has no input on the subject and no recourse against any decision handed down by the Grand Jury. It is not very reassuring to know that the salary of the supes is decided by a secretive group of people hand-picked by the local judges who make sure the members of the GJ are not the boat-rocking type.

If the supervisors really want to take the heat off of themselves and neutralize the issue, they have to turn the problem over to a citizens committee, anything short of that is not going to sit well with the general public, since the Grand Jury is not accountable to the public in any way (we don't even know who they are). This issue is definitely NOT over yet, and I plan on personally giving them hell next week for their stealthy afternoon change of plans.

Lake County's Ten Worst Ideas Of 2003 12/30/03

 

#1. Measure "C", the county-wide half-cent sales-tax-increase-for-road

repairs initiative. Measure C got barely 50% of the vote, far short of the

two-thirds needed, thus killing the chances of any further attempts at

fixing the local roads with voter authorized tax revenue increases for the

foreseeable future. Why the poor showing at the polls? The scheme was

crafted and promoted almost entirely by the Lakeport chamber of commerce,

who's president wrote the "pro" argument in the voter's guide and who also

penned the "pro" position in the Record-Bee's editorial debate.

Commerce-heavy and not burdened by an extensive road system to maintain,

Lakeport stood to gain the most from measure C by far, with 31% of the total

funds raised in the county going to pave roads serving Lakeport's 8% of the

county's population. With nearly $80,000 spent on running a special election

in much of the county, doing voter surveys and making "education efforts",

measure C was an expensive experiment to determine just how gullible the

voters were. The Grand Jury is looking into how tax money was used to send

out mailers promoting the measure four days before the election, while

transit consultant Phil Dow had publicly stated that he thought the publicly

funded "education effort" could make the difference in the campaign, another

clear violation of the supposedly neutral Area Planning Council's charter.

 

#2. All 911 dispatch center plans. Sheriff Mitchell's first plan was for a

12,000-plus square foot nuclear holocaust-proof all-purpose command bunker

with a stunning 12.5 million dollar price tag to replace the current 250

square foot facility that houses the two-and-a-half employees typically on

duty. The new plan is for the dispatch to be moved to the 2,700 square foot

building currently housing the Public Works department, who are in turn

hoping to have a sprawling new 7,000 square foot structure erected for their

offices. No matter what happens in the end, three things are for certain:

Sheriff Mitchell will spend every dime of the 5 million-plus he has stashed

away for the remodeling and outfitting of the building, he will claim much

more money is need to truly fulfill his vision, and no one will notice the

difference when calling 911 in it's new digs.

 

#3. Health Needs Assessment Study. $85,000 was pried loose from the county's

general fund in order to more fully comprehend the already painfully

obvious: that the primary benefit of such endeavors is to gainfully employ

the people doing the studies, and that all the data in the 273 page report

was already out there and available for those that needed it. The quality of

the work raised many eyebrows, as somehow the supposedly highly professional

consultants came up with the number of 140 AIDS cases in the county. This

doesn't jibe with the latest county health department figure of 322

confirmed AIDS cases county-wide, which gives Lake County California the

dubious distinction of having the highest AIDS rate of ANY small county in

America, thanks mainly to the rampant intravenous use of crank.

 

#4. The Finley Water Project. The Problem: Kelseyville wants to continue to

sprawl out into the Big Valley, but it's antique water system limits new

development and realtor's incomes. The solution? Come up with a scheme to

connect the water systems of tiny rural Finley with suburban Kelseyville,

thereby qualifying everything for Federal Rural Utility Service grant money!

Using poverty-stricken residents of Finley as props to justify putting in

place the infrastructure that will be used to gentrify and pave the fertile

soil of the Big Valley while also serving the upscale neighborhood of nearby

Corinthian Bay will cost 4.9 million dollars, in addition to more than

doubling Finley water customers rates.

 

#5. The New Lake Transit Maintenance/Office Facility. How much will it cost

for a new fix-it shop for the county's fleet of 16 vans and buses? No one

outside the Transit Authority knows, since when they asked that a revised

budget be approved mainly because of all the bids coming in over-budget for

the new building, they neglected to include any info in the request that

said how much over the bids were! Last estimates were in the 4.5 million

dollar range, before the bidding problem. The real question is why it costs

so much to build a structure to perform the relatively minor routine

maintenance chores typically handled by such facilities, especially given

the small size of the fleet and number of vehicles needing mechanical

attention at any given time.

 

#6. The South Main Re-Pave. Rate payers were told they would get a widened

road with a bike lane and undergrounded utilities, the government money and

PG&E undergrounding fund were all in place, they said. But Lakeport's plan

to annex the busy commercial area once the mostly county funded sprucing-up

is done caused long delays in an agreement between the county and the city,

while "promised" PG&E and state road money disappeared into thin air and

offshore bank accounts. Yes, the road did recently get a thin veneer of

fresh asphalt, but that only insures that the already paid for

undergrounding and much needed bike lane is a dead issue for the foreseeable

future.

 

#7. The Big Bass Tournament. The Clearlake Chamber of commerce felt the

city's salvation was riding on landing a big bass tournament that would get

the city lots of exposure and tourists. They ended up paying Bass Masters

Western Open organizers $35,000 to get them to bring the top pros and ESPN

coverage to their city for an event scheduled for early April, and made

claims of 3 million dollar-plus benefit to the local economy from the

projected crowd of 25,000 spectators. All they needed was $15,000 from the

county's general fund too get things going, which the supervisors supplied

on a close 3-2 vote. The problem is that while the calendar may say it's

spring , April still means winter weather in Lake County, which the Bass

Masters people found out in a hurry. The two biggest days of the tournament

saw the worst weather, with howling winds driving a near-freezing downpour.

Biggest crowds were around 500, economic impact was negligible, and the

fiasco has driven the Chamber to the brink of bankruptcy. Another expensive

black eye for Lake County, this time on national television, thanks to the

Clearlake Chamber of Commerce.

 

#8. The New Discovery Center. $80,000 has been rounded up from two

government grants to fund a study to figure out just what a discovery center

is, or should be, as even the people pushing the plan can't really explain

what it is or is supposed to do. But there is no doubt that if enough grant

money could be found they would build one darn fine discovery center, and

while it is important and necessary for the survival of children and

tourists, it probably wouldn't be cheap. Could it fit into some of the

mostly empty $400,000 dollar 4,500 square foot ex-liquor store/now visitors

center in Lucerne? No, according to proponents, it needs a new building in

Upper Lake, a fifteen minute drive up highway 20. Since proponents aren't

resourceful enough to use some existing facility, the $80,000 study is

likely to gather dust while backers dream of nonexistent grant money and

interactive learning experiences. Tourists and children will doubtlessly

wither and die as a result of their inability to access interactive learning

experiences, a possible certainty unless some kind of Sacramento super-hero

like Wes Chesbro steps in to save the day with some of that easy-spendin'

state money.

 

#9. The Stop Light On Highway 29. Need more proof CalTrans is run by morons?

The 1.6 million dollar intersection improvement project at Highlands Springs

Road is a perfect example of why CalTrans needs to purge much of it's

management. Last year they repaved Highway 29, this year a nearly mile-long

stretch of the road was ripped-up in order to make turn lanes and put in

little chunks of sidewalk at each corner. The truncated sidewalks are miles

from their nearest cousins, and one wonders if a wheelchair will ever roll

down the handicapped ramps sitting in the middle of miles of orchards and

vineyards. Could CalTrans think ahead one year instead of fifty? Apparently

not, even though the much-needed signal light was planned for many years,

and another big chunk of precious road repair money went swirling down the

drain.

 

#10. The Jail Re-Roofing project. After a Jail expansion project went

$65,000 over budget earlier this year you'd think the Sheriff's department

would be extra careful not to incur any more big unplanned construction

costs at the facility. But boo-boo number one didn't stop boo-boo number

two, the $335,000 plan to re-roof the twelve-year-old structure in the

middle of winter. Why did a twelve-year-old roof need a complete overhaul?

Why schedule it for December when the problems were apparent for the last

three or four years? Why is it so friggin' expensive? Who is paying how much

to send scores of our inmates to be housed in other county's jails due to

leaks making the building unusable? All good questions with no apparent

answers. With a virtually endless list of improvements on the Sheriff's wish

list for the jail, get used to the idea of supplying massive yearly

infusions of cash into the Hill Road Hilton for the foreseeable future.

TEN WORST IDEAS OF 2002 1/10/03

 

Lake County has never had a problem coming up with it's fair share of lame-brain ways to mis-spend our tax dollars, and 2002 yielded a bumper crop of cash-sucking black holes. While it's hard to say which bill-burning scam is the worst of the bunch, it's likely that one of the listed boondoggles are a contender for the "Turkey of '02" prize.

 

In no particular order we present our "Top ten".

 #1. That friggin' clock. Yes, the God awful cast iron monstrosity that glowers over Main street in Lakeport, which took a $25,000 bite out of the treasury. $15K came from the county, $5,000 more was handed over by the city of Lakeport, with the rest covered by a couple of well-heeled locals who probably passed their generosity along by letting the rest of us pick up the difference when they deducted the testament to bad taste and misplaced priorities on their 1040's. They main cheerleaders for the high-buck timepiece have remained anonymous, but they undoubtedly have some major influence over the trio of boobs on the BOS (Farrington, Robey and Lewis), who voted to bring Lakeport another expensive taxpayer-funded eyesore.

 

#2. The road tax feasibility study. The Area Planning Council (APC), felt that it would be a good idea to see if the county should try to get a sales tax increase on the ballot in order to freshen-up the asphalt in some of our pot holes, so it threw $75,000 at the problem. But when the money was gone and the results were presented to the BOS, it became clear that the main function of the survey was to keep the surveyors gainfully employed. The data generated was so ambiguous that no one had any confidence in it, other than the conclusion of the study, which was that the numbers made the issue too close to call. A definite maybe. Might work, might not. What really decided it was the fact that the cities of Clearlake and Lakeport were dreaming up their own road-tax plans, which if they appeared on the same ballot were likely to end up defeating each other.

 

#3. Bring on the nukes! $93,000 was spent on gear designed to fight world war 3 right here in Lake County, in spite of the rather remote likelihood of Bin Laden assembling an atom bomb in Lucerne. The good news is that a handful of county employees will have a limited degree of protection from a limited number of bio/chemical/nuclear elements for a limited amount of time. Never mind the fact that no plausible scenario was put forth to justify the expense, that little detail wasn't necessary since the money came from Uncle Sam instead of the county coffers.

 

#4. The "Housing Needs Assesment study". You won't believe what kind of priceless data was culled for a mere $15K. They figured out that many dwellings around the county were dilapidated, but had no idea what percentage of county residents were renters, or how many people were living in "secondary" types of housing (trailers, garages, chicken coops). I could have told them as much for $15 dollars, which would have freed up another $15,000 or so for more studies. Thank Andy Peterson of the redevelopment dept. and the BOS for this file-and forget-it waste of time and money.

 

#5. Water wheelspin. Supervisor Farrington's plan to earn his green badge meant that $30,000 got tagged for seed money to find out if Lake County could sue it's way back into the drivers seat when it comes to water rights over Clearlake. As always, the only winner in this contest will be the attorney who gets a taxpayer funded ride on the gravy train, who'll undoubtedly come to the conclusion that it will take more dough to really know for sure if a lawsuit has any chance of success. Never mind the fact

that the real battle for Lake County's water is still yet to come, or that any lawsuit against Yolo County would likely drag other deep pocketed water importers like San Francisco and Los Angeles into the fray.

 

#6. The Agricultural Conservation Easement plan. $25,000 went AWOL on a program that two years after it's inception has yielded absolutely nothing in the way of results. Promoted as a way to help out struggling pear farmers and the environment at the same time, this brass-plated boondoggle has done neither. But it's not all bad news, since supervisor Robey did manage to find gainful employment for his former campaign manager, who got paid $15,000 for doing a job in a field she had virtually no experience or expertise in. Not one millimeter of terra firma has been "conserved", and the chance of any dirt being saved from some kind of non-agricultural development remains virtually nil.

 

#7. The new Kelseyville post office. If there's any redeeming feature of this structure, it's not readily apparent. Ugly, poorly located, inconvenient to use and of course, expensive as hell, this K-Mart sized display of a lack of architectural talent and imagination has to be the most unloved public structure ever foisted on the unwary community of Kelseyville. Adding insult to injury, the eyesore sits on some of the most expensive dirt in the county, which cost nearly $100,000 an acre for a weed-strewn lot at the edge of town that had little potential for development. Can you say "Inside job"?

 

#8. The new visitor's center. Got a large, un-sellable piece of commercial real estate? Got pals down at the BOS? You got a winning combo, baby! Nearly 5,000 square feet of white elephant became our collective pride and joy for a mere $250,000, such a deal! Anything to keep the constituents happy, especially if they belong to the chamber of commerce, and/or write big campaign contribution checks. Not needed and certain to keep on nibbling at the county coffers, this bad decision will be hard to ignore, given it's highway 20 frontage location.

 

#9. The Kelseyville barf-a-torium. Given the choice between the ugly, expensive and seriously flawed design and an alternative plan for a far superior in every way version, which one did the Kelseyville schoolboard pick for the 2.9 million dollar cafetorium/music room? You guessed it, the bad one got the nod since it wasn't being pushed by people several board members had taken a personal dislike to. Egos trumped brains, and the end result was that the students will end up with a building that will be hated for many years to come. Trustees Olson, Winer, Quartarollo and Dobusch, qualify for the "I have no taste and put my own personal vendettas ahead of the public good" award collectively. Olson, Quartarollo and Winer are also in the running for the "arrogance" award for their " We're trustees, how dare you mere mortals think you should have some kind of input into board decisions"attitude.

 

#10. The new marketing plan. $75,000 was expended in order to yield these nuggets: We have too many poor people living in shabby dwellings, and Clearlake (the body of water, not the city) is so ugly it needs a name change. Come to think of it, the city could use a name-change too. The report cost about $1,000 a page and considering the fact that much of the data was repeated several times, we spent an awful lot for an awful little.

The embarrassment at the BOS unveiling was palpable, and the pricey document is now comfortably gathering dust on shelves alongside other expensive marketing studies that contain the same data and suggestions.

 With unanimous approval from the Lake County board of supervisors, Lake County has armed itself to contend with yet another phantom menace, the bio/chem/nuke terrorists. Over $93,000 will be spent by the county to buy a wide array of gadgetry, from air tanks and "bunny" suits, to radiation monitors. The Sheriffs department came up with the two page list of items it felt were need to keep a handle on any weapons-of-mass-destruction-oriented terrorism, and the Sheriff himself pitched the proposal to the board members. Now the pork-barrel laden war on terror has spread to rural America, where small town politicians are proving that they can spend the taxpayer's money just as foolishly as their Washington D.C. based counterparts.

 

Never mind the fact that the likelihood of dealing with the threat of bio/chem/nuclear weapons in Lake County is non-existent, we are now able to provide a handful of government employees a limited degree of temporary protection, which will undoubtedly make the rest of us feel much better about facing a world-war three type disaster. The really scary part is that there are 57 other counties in California doing the same thing, only generally they have a bigger chunk of war-on-terror pork to work with. Now it would have been a bit much to expect any of the supervisors to have either the brains or courage to say "This plan is a bunch of bullshit and wouldn't have a hope in hell of making one single citizen safer", since this is the golden age of the chickenshit politician. Nope, it's much easier to just tell people "Just pay us your money and we'll keep you safe from the big bad terrorists" than it is to say " They have us by the balls, and we can't save ourselves let alone protect your sorry ass". Yes sir, the big lie goes down MUCH easier. So on the charade rolls, the money disappears, and life goes on without missing a beat. But what will happen to all this stuff the Sheriff says he hopes will never be used?

 

Well, it could sit around and keep those big, expensive-and-never-used generators the county bought for Y2K company, since they were both intended to deal with imaginary threats they should get along well. Those generators are another county-sponsored boondoggle that the supervisors don't like to get reminded of, but aren't the only other pretend-crisis solving toys

they've thrown money down a rat hole for. A couple of years ago the sheriff wrangled enough grant money to buy the swat team ten Ruger mini-14 assault weapons. Now exactly what kind of law enforcement situation calls for that kind of firepower is unclear, but rest assured that should the Lake County Sheriff's department need to function as a paramilitary unit, it could

handle the weaponry end of things. So once again we have another fine example of the fact that when it comes to spending money that comes from any source other than the county general fund, it's mighty darn easy for the supervisors to say yes. In fact, no matter how foolish the request it's hard for them to say no to the "It falls from the sky like manna" grant money, especially if they can pretend they're keeping the kiddies and old folks safe with it.

 Pick any of the papers that are Lake County based, and sooner or later you're bound to find some trace of local arch-conservative Darryl Watkins. His letters to the editor have been a more or less regular feature on the editorial pages of the Observer and Bee, and lately the Outlook has also become a depository for his literary endeavors. Generally, Darryl's themes are rather predictable, and center around his belief that the bulk of disorder in our community is due to his brand of Christianity not being adopted and practiced by enough of his fellow citizens. His enemy list commonly features gays and lesbians, people who are pro-choice or believe that women can have meaningful lives outside their biblically-designated

role of domestic servant, and anyone who doesn't do everything in their lives in accordance with his concept of proper Christian guidelines. More recent additions to his enemies list are school administrators who don't believe in corporal punishment, and those Satan-worship promoting Harry Potter books.

 

So it was a bit of a refreshing surprise that he recently took a break from picking on the people and things he believes God doesn't care for, and went on a new tangent, that of defender of our personal liberties. This came about as a result of his objections to a plan promoted by the Clearlake city Council ordering yearly inspections of residential rental properties in the city of Clearlake, which was passed by the council and will be in effect in the not-to-distant future. Supposedly this new regulation is the brainstorm of city administrator David Lane, who seems at times to be more a director of city policy than someone charged with implementing it. In fact, the general impression around town is that the council works for him, rather

than the other way around. Whatever the case, there is a very harmonious relationship between the generally corrupt and clueless city council and it's emperor-like administrator, with signs of ranker and dissent between the two being very rare indeed.

 

Now one can applaud Darryl for taking Mr. Lane to task for any number of plausible reasons, but the one issue Darryl has homed-in on is the new rental inspection ordnance, which has to be one of the most shallowly examined local controversies in recent memory. Darryl says that Gestapo-like rental police will be barging into the homes of Clearlake's down-trodden masses and poking around looking for God-only-knows what, and that this constitutes a huge invasion of our privacy and civil liberties (oddly enough, Darryl has not publicly voiced any complaints about Mr. Ashcroft).

Mr. Lane and the city council claim that it's the only way to get landlords (and particularly absentee landlords) to keep their rental units in some kind of habitable and presentable condition, and that the cost will be covered by a relatively small yearly fee, paid for by the landlord.

 

The opposition to the plan came from both sides of the rental equation, with landlords and tenants making a considerable fuss about the proposal at a couple of different council meetings. The renters didn't want people invading their privacy, and had a well-founded mistrust of the motives and agenda of the city of Clearlake. The landlords were upset that they would

have to pay a small annual fee, and were worried that they may have to bring various aspects of their units up to building code compliance. Supposedly, the inspections were to focus on three main chronic areas of concern: kitchens and bathrooms (due to the problematic nature and importance of functioning plumbing), and making sure the yard wasn't full of trash or other eyesores and health menaces.

 

But that wasn't the whole story by a longshot. Not mentioned by the renter contingent was the fact that many of them didn't want city employee-types rooting around their hovels due to their embarrassing lack of housekeeping skills and obvious signs of illegal drug use, either of which could trigger unwanted contacts with CPS or the police-maybe both. But the renters had another concern that was shared with the landlords, and that was what if the city said "this dump is condemned"? That would be bad news for the renter, who would be forced to move into a shrinking and therefore more expensive rental market, and would possibly mean the landlord would have to pony-up more cash to either get the unit back into the renting business or demolish it. Also, scores of backyard trailers, illegally converted sheds and garages would be eliminated from the rental market permanently, sending scores of families packing.

 

But there's still more to the story, and that's the way many rental agreements are crafted at the lower-end of the rental market. For many tenants, there is no written rental agreement whatsoever, and all payments to the landlord are made in cash. So what we have here is a classic example of the "gray market" economy in our own backyard, with a huge amount of monthly rental incomes going straight into the landlord's pocket without making it onto the IRS radar screen. How much money are we talking about? Figure the city has 3,000 rentals at an average of $500 each (probably low on both counts), and half were "off the books". That adds up to $750,000 a month in the city of Clearlake, and that figure has been termed reasonable by one of the most knowledgeable and respected members of the Clearlake business community, so it's probably not too far off the mark. This situation becomes evident on a regular basis when landlord/tenant disputes

erupt, and the renter gets the "sorry pal, you're SOL" story because they can't even prove they have a home, let alone a right to habitable one.

 

So now we have an unusual condition, one where the bad guys are doing the right thing (for seemingly the right reasons), and the other bad guy attacking the right people for the wrong reasons, making damn difficult to know who to root for. The one thing that's working normally is the local news media, who has done a predictably fine job of not being able to do any

serious reporting or analyzing of this still unfolding story.

 Last Friday evening I happened to be outside at a little after 9:00 p.m., and saw an amazing sight in the southern sky. 400 miles away at Vandenburg Air Force base an Atlas rocket had been launched, and of the several rockets that I had seen depart from that facility, this one was the most dramatic.
You could clearly see the first stage separation, and the second stage as it headed west across the Pacific Ocean into outer space. The plan was for the Vandenburg launched rocket to be intercepted by another rocket sent from a small island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, which would destroy the pretend ICBM.
But that intercept was never made, because the "killer" rocket failed to separate it's first and second stages, which cause the killer rocket to destroy itself while leaving the target rocket untouched. The program director said that the problem was a failure of "forty year old technology", not a failure of the state-of-the-art warhead that was the real subject of the test. Actually, there were several failures that evening, the first was the way the test was set up, because there was only one target for the rocket to intercept. This "one target, one interceptor" scenario is likely to be seen only in tests, because for years multiple warhead technology has existed, and with it the likelihood that any ICBM would deploy many decoys, which earlier tests have shown are impossible to differentiate from the real warheads. But just because the advocates of this system have no answers as to why the people who put this $100,000,000 all-important test together couldn't get forty-year-old technology to work, and have no answer to the decoy problem, it doesn't mean that the program is dead.

George Bush Jr. has said that if elected president he will go ahead with the missile defense scheme, in spite of the compelling evidence that the system probably wouldn't work. Clinton has said that he will put off the decision until later this summer, and is probably waiting to see how the program is doing in public opinion polls before making any decision that could negatively affect Al Gore's campaign. Though several congressional Democrats are supporting the program, this new version of the "star wars" plan has become a cornerstone of the Republican party.

The truth about the missile defense concept is that there is an incredible disconnect between the scenarios that would make such a system useful and the actual threat that we may face from our advisories. Not one of the advocates of this program have been able to answer the question of why would a country send a nuclear or bio-chem tipped missile to the United States when within minutes the exact location of the launch would be known to us thanks to cameras and infra-red sensors onboard our spy satellites. This would guarantee that the aggressor country would be turned into smoldering crater, which makes you wonder which world leader is planning on committing suicide along with all of his or her countrymen. North Korea and Iran have been held up as potential missile threats to the U.S., but recent developments have clearly shown that both of these countries are intent on building stronger ties with the west, and even though much has been made of China's missile and space programs continuing progress, it is hard to believe that China would ever threaten it's largest trading partner.

But beyond the facts that the technology is implausible and the alleged adversaries are also highly improbable, their is another big reason that the whole concept is an exercise in futility. Why would some rogue state spend billions on a space program and risk it's own destruction when it could bring a nuclear or bio-chemical weapon to America in any number of low-tech ways, like aboard a shipping container, fishing boat, or aboard a commercial airliner. We have not been able to detect boatloads of Cuban refugees that have arrived on our shores, and every day of the year tons of illegal drugs also slip quietly into our country undetected, which makes you wonder how a suitcase sized nuclear weapon or an even smaller bio-chemical weapon could be stopped. That simple fact is that if someone really wants to bring these types of devices into this country they can, and the best way to be sure that they don't is to look at why certain groups and nations might want to, and to deal with those differences in a way that shows that we do care about the concerns of other peoples and nations. America has for too long dismissed most over-seas anti-American sentiment as being unfair and misguided, though in just about every case there are two side to the equation, and we have had a lot of trouble acknowledging the other side of the story.

Now is the time to get the word out to our politicians that we have wasted enough money on this welfare and employment program for defense contractors that is jeopardizing our relationships with our neighbors and providing this country with no additional security. PUBLIC DEFENDERS CONTRACT: WHO GETS IT?
12/16/00

Like many Public Defenders offices, the Lake County Public Defenders operation is farmed out to a private legal firm, instead of being handled "in house" by attorneys working directly for the county. For the last two years the contract has been handled by the local firm of Carter and Carter, an outfit that was lashed together specifically to compete for the Lake County PD contract when it was first put out to bids from private law firms.

Everyone, including Carter and Carter, admits that they got off to a shaky start, with complaints about the firms habit of not communicating with their clients filtering back to the BOS on a fairly regular basis. According to the supes, those complaints have tapered off, thought the Free Press has continued to get the same story of lack of communication, generally from inmates. But the clients are not the only ones complaining about the lack of an adequate level of service coming from Carter and Carter, as one out-of-county attorney brought in to pick up the pieces of a Carter and Carter case gone wrong has told the Free Press that She will soon file a complaint with the state bar alleging incompetence against two attorneys working for that firm.

When the issue of a contract renewal first came up, it was at the November 28th BOS meeting, where Carter and Carter and their only competitor, Barker and Associates, gave the board their sales pitches. For some as-of-yet unexplained reason, Karen Mackey was in a tremendous hurry to vote on beginning negotiations right away, and made it completely clear that her choice was Carter and Carter. This push to go with the current contract holder was rather baffling, as Barker and Associates offered several advantages, including a guarantee of at least $100,000 a year savings to the county, a larger staff, and the claim that their firm had more experience.

One of Karen's reasons for going with the current legal team was that the District Attorney liked them, which in most cases would have been considered a negative.

Fortunately, supervisor Smith had the sense to call for a two week delay in making the decision, in order to collect more data on the subject, so Tuesday the 12th the matter was back on the front burner. DA Gary Luck even got into the act, and made it clear to the board that he would much prefer dealing with Carter and Carter. Amazingly enough, not one single client of the Public Defenders office was surveyed by the supes about their level of satisfaction, and all the input came from Judges, lawyers, and the DA. In other words, the foxes had been told to keep track of the henhouse, and the let's -just-be-done-with-it BOS decided to trust the foxes, with the exception of supervisor Smith, who couldn't get past the fact that we were going to spend more money for what was likely to be less service.

So now the county has entered into negotiations with Carter and Carter, and the chances are good that the seamless Lake County Legal system,"will keep rolling along" where cops, DAs, Judges and Public Defenders are one, big happy family, and the only discontent comes from the people being shoved through the meat grinder.

 Like nearly every American I'm upset about the attacks, but unlike most people, I'm mostly mad at the American public. The tragedies in New York and the capitol didn't have to happen, and wouldn't have, if we had a fully functional democracy, the kind where people regularly pay attention to what their government is up to. FDR was wrong, the buck doesn't stop at the White House, it stops on main street, and the buck got bigger every time we tuned-out the depressing news from the Middle East's latest hot spot.

Did Americans really think that we would never have to pay a price for the sanctions against Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have died in the last ten years as we continue our "Get Saddam by making the peasants suffer policy"? I don't like Saddam either, but I'm against killing children in order to make a political statement that seems to be " We're too cowardly to admit this isn't working". It doesn't help matters that those sanctions are enforced by American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, the heart of the Islamic holy land, where many Moslems object to their presence on religious and political grounds.

Then there is the never-ending story of violence between Israel and their neighbors, another situation where America's involvement is totally devoid of common sense or fairness. Only one out of 2000 people on earth is an Israeli, yet we give that tiny country one third of all our foreign aid dollars, is spite of the fact that Israelis have a modern nation with virtually no poverty. So what do they do with the 6 billion dollars we send them every year? They went to Lebanon to stop terrorism, and left ten years later after admitting they had failed, leaving 17,000 dead civilians in their wake. More American tax dollars went to help fund their theft of enough equipment, materials and know-how to put together a nuclear weapons program larger than that of China or France. Still more greenbacks are funneled into the construction of illegal settlements, which makes a workable treaty with the Palestinians nearly impossible, and guarantees that Israelis will continue to be plagued by suicide bombers. To show their appreciation the Israelis conducted one of the most damaging acts of espionage every directed at America, which jeopardized the safety the entire nation and cost us hundreds of millions to remedy.

Need more proof we are on the wrong track in the Middle East? Look at Iran, where we ended up with a bunch of religious fanatics running the country, because the thug we had installed as their leader was ousted for being totally corrupt, and for running one of the most murderous secret police organizations in the world. Try to imagine how Americans would feel if an Iranian warship had sailed into San Francisco bay and shot down an airliner killing all 290 aboard, because that is exactly what we did over there (And the ship's crew got medals for it!). To show how out-of-whack our rationale can be, when the Iraqi's launched a missile at one of our ships (killing 37 sailors), we blamed the Iranians, because at the time we were on the side of our good friend and money, arms and intelligence recipient, Saddam Hussein.

Remember when we tried to assassinate Kaddafi with an air strike? We didn't get him, but we did manage to kill his infant son and a slew of other unlucky civilians. And we wonder why we're so unloved in the Moslem world.

So what are we doing over there? In Israel it's a political thing, they've bought off most of congress, but in most of the Middle East we are there simply because we want to keep our SUVs full of cheap gas. The irony in Afghanistan is almost unreal, with Russian help we are now preparing to fight the guys we trained to fight the Soviets twenty years ago. Sometimes a little well-directed firepower now can save you from bigger trouble down the road, (We could have stopped Hitler in a couple of months in '39), but in this case I believe that it will cost us dearly, as we hunker down and wait for the next bomb, biological or chemical attack.

 

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