[Kzyxtalk] Development for development's sake.

[Marco McClean]

Re: the mill site controversy. I just went to Costco in Rohnert Park to 
get my eyes examined. The prescription doesn't change from two years 
ago, my old glasses are good enough, because no more can be done for my 
vision until I have cataract surgery, which of course I can't pay for, 
and the insurance won't pay enough for, so like millions of others I'll 
have to wait until I get social security and Medicare and all that. I'm 
still safe to drive, and I can still do my radio show, thank Christ.

Anyway, I went to Home Depot to get heater filters for my mother, and it 
occurred to me to mention here that if you want a cheap filter for ash 
and smoke inside your house, for the wildfires coming rather sooner than 
later this year, now would be the time to buy a $10 box fan from the 
thrift store and a flat furnace filter to tape to it, while they still 
have stacks of filters in the store for like five dollars each. Because 
once the fires start, those all go really fast. A bedsheet will work but 
not well; it's like the difference between a real surgical breathing 
mask and the crappy ones people were knitting for themselves and sewing 
together out of old t-shirts and tablecloths.

And it took awhile to get between Costco and Home Depot because of the 
casino traffic, even with all the new lights and intersections and road 
widening they put in to deal with it. As I understand it, white 
developers cobbled up a Chinese puzzle of a legal deal that let them put 
up an Indian casino here a few years ago. And there's a lot of cheap 
frame particleboard and plaster hotels and stuff going up everywhere, 
you know, for the ancillary prostitution and drug deals and private 
meetings and art theft and ransom negotiations and so on. Before you go 
along with development for development's sake on those hundreds of 
millions of dollars in prime vacationville oceanfront real estate in 
Fort Bragg, because you think anything's better than nothing there, and 
wouldn't if be nice if Junior had a character-rounding sheetrock job for 
a couple of months, get a look at Rohnert Park lately, and compare it to 
the Biff-caused future in /Back To The Future 2/, because it's getting 
there. It's almost there. It took hardly any time at all.

Back-To-The-Future-2 casino king Biff was modeled on Donald Trump, even 
then. I don't know if you knew that.

Sierra Railroad Corp. wanted all that Fort Bragg land to make a fortune 
for themselves. So far, they seem to think all they have to do to get 
away with it is stick to the plan and sue or ignore or simply shout down 
anyone who puts up a fuss. Here's an idea: Apply the law, make them 
clean the poison out of the soil and plant a nice park of native 
vegetation, and then eminent-domain it right back from them, for the 
same pennies on the dollar they got if for. And when they go /Ow! It 
hurts! You're hurting our obscenely rich bosses monetarily! They've 
already counted their chickens!/ then, dang-it, that's the breaks. They 
gambled and they lost, fair and square. Know when to fold 'em.

-- 
Marco McClean, memo at mcn.org
https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com