Sideshows run amuck!

 

Tuesday, June 21

Sideshows

This weekend saw a major escalation of the sideshow phenomena in Santa Rosa, with a show attracting 150 to 200 people plus a dozen or so performers with cars, moving six times in a matter of a few hours. Police, as usual, responded slowly with the few officers on duty on a weekend, stood by and watched while senior management tried to figure out what to do, and as soon as a few patrol cars became visible, the entire show picked up and moved. Six times. Wash, rinse, repeat.

What was immediately clear was that the shows were prearranged, the sequence of fallback sites was drawn up, and the entire crowd had access to that information and was ready to act on it on a moment's notice. As far as the police seem to be concerned, this is magical. Not as much as their response to the shows which have been going on for years and escalating regularly.

It's not really fair to say police intelligence is an oxymoron, but there are times when it seems that way. These shows are planned, marketed and executed with little fear of the police. My assumption is that there are fewer than a dozen ringleaders, mostly performers with hot cars, who do the planning and execution. Lots of people get the message and know where adn when to show up and where the fallback positions are. And Sunday's exercise is a clear demonstration that the organization is tight and very, very successful. Not one care impounded. No arrests. Six times.

From the PD story this morning, you'd think that both officers on duty were simply run ragged, poor folks. Which raises a question: why are fewer police available on weekend when stuff happens? I'm feeling a union contract clause in the duty roster process.

Police can put you in jail for jaywalking when they want to. You may get out in a while with no follow up or a ticket, but the experience is sobering for even the attitude deficient.

If this was a drug situation, police would have all kinds of intelligence activities underway, heavily funded by the feds and state, keeping the special drug unit busy filing paperwork and cross-filing drug busts, year-long stakeouts on suspected dealers, and lots and lots of overtime. More drugs are recovered with stop and frisk than intelligence leading to raids, etc. (It seems from news accounts.)

Getting to the heart of the matter, it should come as no surprise to anyone on planet Earth that adolescents and young people of a certain mindset love to party, especially if it's illegal and irritates everybody else nearby, preferably with a whiff or more of danger to spike the excitement level. Sideshows fit that bill perfectly. Hit and run; piss off the whole neighborhood with the loud noises; drink and smoke pot, take pills and shiver with tension as the gang-bangers show up acting all tough and murderous, struttin' and brandishin' -- a perfectly attractive show for this crowd. Westworld. Road Warrior. The mindset is well prepped by movies, media and the sad shape the world is in today.

The bright idea to deal with it is so lame: let's put on a sponsored activity for youth where they can demonstrate their prowess driving specialty vehicles in a safe and drug free environment!!! And scratch your heads when that wonderful idea doesn't gain traction amongst the targeted sub-culture.

If the behavior is intolerable, put a stop to it. Take the cars away and arrest people. Don't even need to prosecute. 30 days of impound fees or no car; confiscate on second violation. Arrest and book attendees, no prosecution necessary. Fines for second and third, loss of driver's license for fourth. It is perfectly doable and within the framework of existing police and prosecutorial practices.

Just sayin ...

 

[Written to a friend in Wisconsin who lost a friend arguing over Trump.]

As for Pompous Ass in Charge of Everything, I find the less I discuss it with his adoring groupies, the better off we both are, particularly if they are old friends. I almost lost my best friend over Bush, but after two years of not talking, he too concluded that Bush was full of shit. Not that I was blameless here. Bush lied about a lot of the actions he took back then. The planet continues to pay dearly for those lies and errors in judgement.

 

The Big Asshole is different. People who follow and support him do so for many reasons, a few of which are coherent, but most are founded in fear and loathing, as Hunter Thompson would say. They are afraid of losing the cherished conceit that white males are the Lords of the Universe, notions of self-worth and place on the planet that are under assault everywhere.

This cherished shibboleth is being dismantled by the people most damaged by white 'supremacy,' starting with women and non-whites, a vast majority of the world's people. The assumptions of natural superiority over other races and cultures are diluted with world population increases, diminishing white populations, and increasing anger from others for the intolerably rigged financial and legal system that has enabled ownership of everything to be held by a very few people.

The US Constitution is finally being seen for the bald racist enabler it is today, and those who worship the 'white supremacy' embedded in it are terrified that their credo will be abandoned as the fairy tale it is. Supremacists and their supporters are now at war with a world that can no longer tolerate the system it raised. 

 

Mr. T attracts yahoos and wealthy Brahmins alike: the ignorant want to preserve their unearned dignity and the wealthy want to preserve their constitutionally and legally embedded rights to steal everything they can get their hands on.

These fears have a basis in reality. Their reactions are predictable. It is so much easier to cling to ignorance and custom than to accept painful necessary change [striking at dignity?], even when it leads to bloodshed. There lies the history of humanity.

Assaults on white supremacy and wealth concentrations are being energized by climate change, population increases and world events  placing intolerable demands on the distorted worldwide financial and political order, both of which are based on infrastructures inherently incapable of coping with these stressors and meeting vital and mortal challenges in progress.

My conclusion

The situation will continue to generate vitriol and violence that will unhinge existing social order. I'm a pessimist that way, but optimistic that I can stay safe long enough to avoid major hardship and slip this mortal coil knowing I am so lucky to have lived a wonderful life in an amazing period of time. Being white and male no doubt made a lot of that possible and I'm not proud of that, just grateful in a weird way.

SDC and Affordable Housing

One of the state mandated -- and widely lauded -- goals of the final decisions about the future of the Sonoma Developmental Center is that it include Affordable Housing to a substantial degree. Laudable sentiment, no doubt: the phrase drips with political wisdom and pulses with social approbation. However, there are many factors arguing against developing substantial, useful affordable housing in Eldridge.

While not all people who need affordable housing have to work, or even can work, they are in need of services and public transportation, none of which cam be found within miles of the SDC. The property is publicly accessed by a single road: Arnold Drive. While not as remote as portions of the West and Northwest county, the lands of the SDC are situated on what is is arguably the most remote spot in the First District, surrounded by its highly regarded open spaces and mountains, snuggled up to the picturesque village of Glen Ellen, home of American icon Jack London, in the center of the romantic Valley of the Moon.

There is no functional public transportation to the SDC. From Santa Rosa, a bus would have to either drive through Glen Ellen on Arnold Drive or pass the first entrance to go to Madrone Road, cross over to Arnold and go back to the SDC to pick up passengers.

Access from Sonoma is no better. Buses would have to get to Arnold either further south or come up Highway 12 to Madrone Road, etc. Both H12 and Arnold already bear heavy traffic loads. 

Assuming that many, if not most, residents of SDC affordable housing would have to commute, the increases in traffic on Arnold Drive either way would be red flagged by the required EIR. Kids  have to get to school, deliveries have to be made, shopping trips have to be made; the list goes on. 

The unpleasant fact is that the SDC does not have the access it needs to develop serious public housing, the kind of access demanded by every state and regional planning document published over the past 40 years. The constraints of housing, maintaining and providing for the needs of 4,000 non-commuting patients with a concentrated infrastructure that was in many ways self-sufficient is substantially different from providing housing for a general population of residents.

The same constraint -- access -- will be a major consideration for any enterprise considered for the area. Any kind of business is going to require people who come and go, traffic that can ill be supported by the existing one street. While the  work-from-home ethic emerging from Covid-19 adaptation is no doubt here to stay, it's future impact on low income commute necessities remains to be understood.

From the SDC, you have to drive a couple of miles over narrow twisting roads to get to Highway 12 or the wide spots of Arnold Drive, and once you get to that point, you still have many miles to go to get to businesses and services. Increasing Arnold Drive's traffic capacity is a daunting and tremendously expensive undertaking that will have to be made a public expense. Widening roads and underwriting public transit have been two of Sonoma County's biggest expenses over the past 30 years: Highway 101's third lane and SMART have not resolved existing traffic to anyone's satisfaction other than the contractor's who have dined out on taxpayers for years.

The concept of turning the 200 non-park acres of the Sonoma Developmental center into vibrant community of affordable housing surrounded by economically viable enterprises generating enough tax base to offset the state's costs is magical thinking, at best. Museums, cemeteries, non-profit headquarters, etc. are all positive uses, but will not generate the $43 million payback the state is seeking under the current situation.

Stand back and take a good look at the big picture. How do you get there? How do you leave there? There are lot's of good uses for the place, I'm sure, but any use that involves high volume movement of people and goods is not among them.

What I believe

Incarcerating children is wrong.

Gerrymandering by any party is not a good idea.

Tax havens are essentially places for thieves to stash their loot.

High taxes for extreme wealth and estate taxes are necessary to prevent overconcentration of capital.

The natural outcome of unfettered capitalism is monopoly. Without restraint, the largest pile of money will absorb the rest.

Corporations are not people. They live forever. See above.

Spend more time on improving myself than improving others will result in a better me and less friction with others.

Philosophy is the pursuit of making good choices for one's self; politics is the pursuit of making choices for others. See above.

If the people spent half the time paying attention to government and those who govern as they do on sports, this would be a better governed planet.

Ignorance is no substitute for learning. Learning implies change. Change is necessarily anti-conservative. Ignorance is antithetical to survival; conserving it is not appealing.

There's no fight like a family fight.

Politics - local

When a source first shared the Sonoma Valley Capacity Threshold Study, he said it wasn't public and that it wouldn't become public until after the Stakeholders' working group that informed the consultant -- GHD -- meets formally with the Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Council on the fourth Wednesday of November. Margaret Spaulding and Matt Dickey are the North Valley members. I blew the Study off at first since it wasn't public and I couldn't do anything with it, and my source was worried about even giving it to me. This was in July, I think. It sat, unread, downloaded into the bowels of the KP Library directory.

Fast forward to October. I bestir myself to read the Summary and Conclusions, fully expecting another whitewash of the traffic impacts of winery events. But no! These folks, international and unbeholden to local interests, actually took a hard look at existing and projected traffic and came up with a list of recommendations, some of which would be anathema to the wine/tourist industry, including removing two major industry events from the September calendar to relieve overcrowding.

At the minimum, the Study concludes that big events do impact traffic on Sonoma Valley's poor roads, and that there is little likelihood of the roads ever being improved -- no money. Following that logic, the Study suggests tempering events and monitoring scheduling, limiting parking offsite, using offsite parking and buses for very large events (over 2,000 people). But, wait! There's more.

On Oct. 21,  most members of the Sonoma County Planning Agency were escorted on a Mobile Educational Workshop sponsored by the Sonoma County Vintners, that visited three wineries for presentations on the intrinsic value of the wine industry, presumably to be kept in mind when making decisions on various winery/tourism related development applications they may consider, including events, more events and maybe some more events, all basic to shoring up the industry. The planners were educated on the importance of selling wine directly to consumers, which requires consumers to be present at the point of sale.

After reading the Study, my first reaction was that the Industry was going to set their hair on fire and go nuts. Silly me. They set the county's hair on fire and are driving them nuts. They are lobbying against the study -- in my mind -- before the public even gets to see it, which doesn't strike me as very civic minded. That the Planners went along with it is also disturbing to a high degree.

Seventy-five tomorrow

Hmm, don't know where that came from for a working title. This is just a diary of a long, hot day, but somewhat positive in that I refocused my blurry mind and aching tired body toward eating well and exercising from the getgo this morning and experienced a remarkable turn around in how I feel nearly 11 p.m. this evening. I have been feeling awful for weeks now, with very high blood sugar postings in gthe 200 and 300s and higher. Yet continuing to eat bad food, lots of breads, pasta, rice, sweets, cookies, biscotti, you name it. I have always tended to indulge myself with little provocation -- a full moon, my birthday month, week, day, special year, holidays, whatever small hook to place a holiday from wisdom or even sensibility.

I have been feeling awful and the reason is simple. My blood sugar is out of control because my diet has been crap. Eating well for three meals today, starting with a two hour nap after breakfast of a banana, V8 can and a hard boiled egg, with insulin, and later a solid veggie salad lunch at Kaiser, with insulin, and followed up by driving to Sonoma -- no tiredness, no nodding off. Amazing.

Also took a timed 20-minute walk up the canyon before breakfast. 10 minutes got me to the General.e

BS at 85 before heading to Roses for shamefully good birthday dinner: lamb bbq, ratatoulle, garden tomatoes, artichoke with sauce -- all fresh, mostly Rose's garden, followed by Beverly's special crushed pineapple upside down cake (two good size servings and the rest safely (so far) shut in the car outside.

Bought $120 in good food at Olivers -- no bread, lotsa veggies.

OK -- 11:01, test and shoot ... 218 from the cake and cup of coffee I had an hour ago with cream and sugar. Taking 40 units nighttime insulin. bet BS is fine in the morning.

Game of Thrones

GoT fun to predict 

I'm almost embarrassed to be writing about a TV show, but I am hooked on Game of Thrones and consider it to be a remarkable piece of storytelling in an almost mythic sense. The TV show became much more than the novels through some very strange congruences of people and money and timing. The show itself reflected it's structure, coming together at a time of tumult and confusion in the public body concerning leadership, religion, fate and a rapidly changing physical reality.

I wander. While I have absolutely no idea what will happen next week, I'm having a lot of fun working through some alternate scenarios that could happen, however unlikely.  At least they could if I were writing the show. My favorite is that all the power mad rulers, wannabe rulers, minions and sycophants manage to weaken themselves enough that the long suffering serfs rise up and slaughter them all, declare a nonarchy and agree to go home, raise vegetables, animals, and children and never, ever follow blood mad idiots again. I'd like that world.

My next favorite would be the missing fire god to pop out of nowhere and toast every man, woman and child on the planet for no reason other than it's an irritable sort of fellow having a bad day. It moves on, leaving the planet cleansed of erstwhile intelligence.

Less imaginary (within the bounds of the show's structure), there are only a few possibilities: Dany takes over with her soldiers and the cycle starts over with a new mad Targaryan on the throne -- let's hear it for gender equality, and a diminished, presumably non-propagating dragon in reserve which will probably  eat every ruminant in the kingdom over the coming years.

The kind hearted diminutive Lannister could take over after the young Arya Stark knocks off Dany and her leaderless minions melt away into the ocean from whence they arrived. Or maybe Tyrion does Dany in and Arya takes over. Yawn. No way no how is any sympathetic character gonna win in this game.

My money is on -- something most of us won't see coming, something that doesn't quite finish off the show, with the makings of a sequel buried in it. I'm a certified cynic when it comes to big money making enterprises being willfully abandoned. If not a sequel, certainly a remake. Or half a dozen storyline spinoffs, or some sitcoms and cartoons ... even so, these folks have made "different" pretty amazing.

Posted 5 days ago by jaygamel