Reality Intruded

This follows in the same vein as my last posting. They started with the suggestion of a writer friend who loved my stories and suggested doing an oral history. So here is another episode of my political evolution from starting adult life as a liberal and learning through reality intrusions. I don’t want this to be interpreted as sour grapes; I’ve had my successes, along with the evitable mistakes.

In the early 1980s, I bought a vacant lot in LA along with a business partner. It was to be politically-correct infill housing, and we hired the absolute best to design and engineer. The building department plan checker was in awe. I can’t imagine the most strident environmentalist objecting to anything. We were then ready for a construction loan, but interest rates soared (the lesson I learned was to never be late in an economic cycle). My partner said to wait, and I couldn’t risk it alone without putting up my home. While we were sitting it out, I received a citation for having an unweeded empty lot. So my partner and I, along with his teenage daughter, worked a long day and manicured the lot, leaving some isolated and healthy green plants. But we then got cited for an incomplete lot cleanup, and therefore were forced to kill those remaining plants (they were edible plants we could have harvested. But this was our private property in theory only). Now in full compliance, but without any vegetation, the winter rains pushed much of this downslope lot into the property below. We then got cited for this problem that was created by our compliance with the previous citation (the lesson I learned here was that while regulation and reality seem like separate worlds, they are not. Regulation is government profiteering). So I put a crew together, and we moved all the dirt back to the vacant lot and built a retaining wall.

(An added irony to this was that, in my much earlier appearance before some environmental board, I had to promise to replace imaginary former trees. I told them I had approved plans without trees and that there were never any trees on the property beforehand. A board member then quietly told me that I was being naive, and that I should understand that this is necessary for approval despite everyone knowing that it’s total bull. Agree and forget it.) While we watched the interest rate climb, I had to renew my approvals. But the building and planning departments kept giving me different answers since each was controlled by a differing attitude and probably involved in an inter-agency power struggle. I also went before a property tax reduction board. I might as well have been a priest being entertained at an ISIS camp. By this time, a new tenant had moved into the building next door and decided my lot needed fertilization. So they threw their child’s diapers there. So now they really had me. Raw sewage. The citations became so frequent I forgot how many there were because I quickly discarded them (but not by tossing them into a vacant lot).

So why did these situations occur? It probably wasn’t because they were mean and nasty; most people aren’t, and I have no reason to assign those motives. But it’s possible that they saw me as a capitalist pig that was OK to abuse. And while there is truth to that possibility, the likelihood wasn’t as overwhelming then as it may be today (I was certainly a bootstrap capitalist; my capital was saved up living in a studio apartment and later working two jobs). But the real reason was obvious. They got promoted on the number of supposedly valid violations and citations they wrote up. Those inspectors are probably now retired with fat pensions. That is how the system is set up. It benefits its enforcers and designers at the expense of everyone else.

In the name of the poor or the unprotected, the Progressives steal from the middle class and share the take between themselves, the expert and enforcer class, and the governing elites. I see this consciousness all around me. Some people believe that taxing poor people five cents a bag at store checkout will cleanup ocean pollution. Others think that a sales tax increase for roads that subsidizes Cal Trans corruption is the way to go. And some feel that our one railroad is so unimportant to our economic well being that they are willing to sacrifice it for an imagined Utopian future. 

So I started out being considered a liberal, and now I’m considered a conservative. But in many ways, I don’t see where I’ve changed. My sentiment is the same. I’ve always been for the everyday person, the average citizen, “the little guy”. When I planned the bus system in Modesto, I increased service in black and Hispanic areas. I asked my assistant if I did this because I’m a bleeding heart liberal and I believe that these people deserved it, or did I do this because I’m a hard-nosed conservative who believes that bus service should go where more people put money in the fare box. “Good question,” she answered.

Finally my partner said that he not only wanted out of the development project, but that he’d totally had it with the liberal tyranny and was leaving the United States. At his time many of my other friends were leaving LA and scattering across the map. This added to my growing decision to leave. No one would buy the project until finally an immigrant from Iran purchased the land and plans. We took a huge loss. He must have bought it under the illusion that America was the place presented on Voice of America broadcasts. I picked up the pieces of my finances and bought a cheap house in Amador County. And I never returned to that site to see what happened.

PS: Where and when I grew up was in arguably the most organized crime controlled community in the US.  At first California startled me with how clean everything was. But it didn’t take me long to see that what the Mob skimmed off in Buffalo is the government take in California. And while I can hardly condone organized crime, I do appreciate their honesty about themselves compared to the sanctimonious attitude of the experts and bureaucrats here.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett