Amador Gets Stiffed

Interconnectability is a key ingredient in successful public transportation. Obviously, it gets people where they want to go. But it also increases ridership system wide. For example, someone from Jackson going to Sacramento first takes a bus from Jackson to the Sutter Hill Transit Center to depart for Sacramento. This incremental increase in ridership adds revenue and reduces subsidy. Our service to Sacramento connects to Sacramento’s light rail and buses, Amtrak and Capital Corridor trains and Yolo Bus to the airport. While the transfers necessary to reach the airport seem like a big hassle, they also are a bargain compared to long term parking fees at the airport. Since this attracts riders in addition to the regular riders, it’s something to encourage. Calaveras County is now connecting in Stockton to the Ace Express train over the Altamonte Pass to San Jose. This new service is being closely watched.

Amadorians have asked about service to Placerville and other locations, but especially to Greyhound in Sacramento. The powers that be in Sacramento didn’t want the Greyhound passenger-types mingling with the environmental generation commuters from Auburn. The lower income folks are now stranded up on Richards Blvd. Their Green Line light rail service ends at 7:30 pm along with some spotty bus service that ends at 9 pm. These connections to Amador Transit are cumbersome at best. For all these reasons, $68,000 of our transit and road funds are now going to a sadly, so but essential, consultant study.

This would not have been necessary if the Sacramento Valley/Amtrak Station project, a rushed through Obama stimulus project, had achieved its potential. Amador is one of about six counties that operate bus service into downtown Sacramento. They all follow different routes with inconvenient transferring, often on streets where watching the drunks stagger is the primary amusement. What if they all connected at the Sac Valley Station? Passengers would have a safe, indoor place to wait with restroom and food facilities. There could have been convenient one transfer access, often at nominal fares, to dozens of cities and other locations around Sacramento. But this didn’t happen.

I was on the station stakeholder’s committee and advocated the best I could, constrained by my position of representing Sacramento Regional Transit. My contributions to the pedestrian track access design were well received. But the committee had its own attitudes. While there were many black members, which wouldn’t have occurred a half century ago, it was OK for everyone there to make fun of the Sikh cabdrivers (does anything ever really change?). Casino buses serving primarily the Chinese community parked nearby. They weren’t welcome, either.

Further complicating the bus access situation is the lack of spaces for Sacramento buses. Many possible patrons were lost because of the excessive walking required between the commuter trains and the bus to their final destination. Next to the Sac Valley Station sits the federal courthouse. The esteemed judges did not want public buses stopping there. This was appealed and won, but Regional Transit’s leadership style was keep the peace and don’t ruffle feathers, so nothing changed. Personally, I would have written both Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein. I can just imagine Feinstein’s conversation chewing out those judges. And while those feasible additional bus stops would help, they wouldn’t compensate for the lost potential of this project. Nevertheless, the station renovation serves the desires of its favored constituents “…as a civic gathering point with offices, retail areas, a cafe and possibly even a rooftop cocktail lounge.”

Amador County, along with much of rural Northern California and also Sacramento urban area residents, are now stiffed for a half century or more. Where were the Greens? Many were tagging allegedly endangered frogs in some dangerously unrestored meadow in the high Sierra. Those in Central Sacramento were lobbying for bike lanes on congested streets. The Greens are often the first to lobby for transit subsidy, and seemingly the last to understand how to use those funds wisely.

Copyright 2017, Mark L. Bennett  

People Get Ready

I’ve chosen this title from Curtis Mayfield’s 1965 gospel style hit song because we need to get ready for an attack on what I consider the soul of our beloved Amador County. The already painfully apparent and still ongoing storm damage to our roads is a perverted blessing for those wanting to raise the sales tax. I have discussed how this is the Caltrans corruption tax at length in my Ledger article “Roads, Buses and Bikes”. Anyone can probably read on the internet the bipartisan reports from the State Auditor and the Legislature Analyst’s Office along with Caltrans' testimony before the state legislature to verify my conclusions. Based upon my involvement with local transit the increased sales tax people are working behind the scenes. Sometime this year and most likely as the spring budget deliberations begin, a road show of manipulative public meetings may begin. Will the present Board of Supervisors and the Amador County Transportation Commission vote to support a “self help” tax? Will a public vote turn into class warfare between the more affluent (and recently arrived), and those of us who simply can’t afford it?

The compromise and/or sell out study for the Wild & Scenic designation for part of the Mokelumne River will probably be finished during the tenure of the present BOS.  Will selfishness rule the day and prevent future generations from freely making their necessary decisions about local resources?  Or are those behind these two schemes waiting until they can try to unseat Brian Oneto in two years? Could we have a rubber stamp board that could lock us into higher taxes and diminished resource freedom for decades to come?

Another straightjacket, although of a possible shorter duration, is Amador County rejoining insidious ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability). Our prior BOS cancelled our membership. But I would be shocked if certain forces in and around our county weren’t plotting to reinstate our membership in and assumed agreement with ICLEI. This would mean subservience to their restrictive globalist land use designs.

“People Get Ready, There’s A Train A Coming.” But this one is going in the opposite direction of Curtis Mayfield’s train.

Copyright 2017, Mark L. Bennett

Who are David Nicholson and Steven Frisch?

Many of us local politically-minded folks have been engaged in Facebook wars. Two leading antagonists are David Nicholson and Steven Frisch. Nicholson is truly amazing. As much as I strain my brain, I still find it difficult to conceive of how an adult, whom I presume Nicholson to be, can exist and be totally naïve about how the world really works. Whenever this is pointed out to him, he ignores reality. He endorses illegal immigration, but refuses to acknowledge that many illegal immigrants work under slave labor like conditions because they have no civil rights. He minimizes Islamic terror and presents Muslims as some innocent minority hounded by racists and white nationalists. However, Muslims are not a race and many are Caucasian. He discards any information from a source he disagrees with, and calls everything else fake news. He considers our president to be a fascist without any proof. He denies Muslim immigration jihad. He posts opinion pieces from left wing sources as gospel truth, and sets himself up as the ultimate arbiter of truth by rejecting far too many other sources. He seems intelligent, but evidently uses his intelligence to rationalize away reality. For that reason alone, he is dangerous.

Our latest row was about the recent attack on a Quebec City mosque from an article by Pamela Geller. Ms. Geller is an accomplished author and journalist currently living under death threats for defending the civilized world from Islamic terror. When news of this attack came out, the establishment press blamed two known white nationalists without any factual basis. This was then discredited and a Muslim bystander was then blamed. It appeared to Geller and others that the attack was motivated by a dispute within Muslim ranks, a very obvious conclusion given 1400 years of Muslim history. But it did turn out to be a crazy, white nationalist. Situations like this are commonplace in the confusion when a story breaks. We all have seen media print retractions a day or so later, and we all accept this since reporters are human. However, Nicholson claims godlike abilities to discern truth, discounts everything Pamela Geller posts, and considers her a bigot without any substantiation except his own prejudices. This is a childlike view of the world, and another of his many instances of immaturity.

Often his posts read like riddles, I have to reread them several times in an attempt to understand them. I am still flummoxed by his calling Milo Yiannopoulos a misogynist for giving a talk about Muslim misogyny. When I disagree, he has frequently called me a racist. Never mind that Muslims aren’t a race, whatever his few cherished news sources tell him is truth. Nicholson constantly expects perfect people and pure situations. While I personally find it hard to forgive Putin for his many sins, the real world says a deal (and oil related) to destroy radical Islam is a good deal. We worked with Stalin to destroy the evil of Nazism. That’s the real world of imperfection and choice.

David Nicholson and Steven Frisch both share the technique of answering a question with a question and of changing subjects. And both have accused me of having perceptual or behavioral disorders. Frisch is the president of the Sierra Business Council. Although located in Truckee, they meddle in the affairs of Amador and other counties. This group believes in the total fraud of human-induced global warming and the restrictions that entails. They partner with several land trusts that remove land from most productive uses and invariably increase costs/prices for the rest of us. And they partner with ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability) that “… help cities to initiate, implement and monitor programs on promoting community well-being in the areas of health, sanitation, security, peace and happiness.”  This statement makes it rather explicit that they can define what happiness is and monitor us to see if we comply with their definition. They work with the European Commission, part of the European Union super state whose popularity is shown daily by the mass revolts of its constituents. And while the Europeans have many concerns, the most prevalent is the loss of their freedom to determine their destiny and maintain their culture amidst the multicultural onslaught of immigration jihad.

ICLEI promotes “Sustainable City-Region Cooperation” which “builds the conditions necessary to advance sustainability on the local, regional and subnational level.” This means that us Amadorians cannot use our resources nor have a vision of our future that isn’t subservient to someone else’s proscriptive ideology. ICLEI is structured to get around elected governments. It is rule by “the experts” living elsewhere. Better get ready for a career changing bed linen for the visiting Bay Area elite.

ICLEI is a repudiation of the Renaissance, the 18th century age of Enlightment and the founding documents of the United States. I would no more support ICLEI that I would the Nazi or Communist parties.  So if you encounter Steven Frisch or David Nicholson on Facebook be prepared to goosestep to their concocted environmentalist and globalist new world order or be severely rebuked.

Copyright 2017, Mark L. Bennett

Men are Men, Women are Women

The English that first settled New England were primarily farmers. When they saw that the Native American women were the farmers, they figured their men as wusses.  But as they encroached upon their territory, they were in for a rude surprise. We all know of families where the men handle the finances, and others where the women do. Certainly the women’s movement of the last half century and the suffragettes before them has been an event of equality and dignity.

But we live in a time that preaches diversity, yet enforces a barbaric code of gender identity. Mere children are undergoing sexual reassignment procedures because they feel like the other sex. Childhood is often a confusing time of learning and exploring. Some girls are tom boys. Some boys play with doll clothes and may become fashion designers. What has happened that we don’t hang loose anymore or accept realities that don’t threaten anybody?

Our abundance is based upon a specialization of labor that requires extensive training and has extended adolescence. This has increased the fertile period for confusion since one elects or is forced into an adult role at a much later age. Coupled with this has been the sexualization of childhood and internet access to materials once only found in dank shops in seedy neighborhoods. So the span in which one searches for secure identity has expanded to probably 20 years, in many cases.

For many, computer gaming has replaced group activities often at local churches and outdoor activities which ground one and teach awareness of real dangers. It’s also the perfect baby sitter and frees up time for texting. As I’ve said before, we are witnessing a new social synthesis and we are in the first innings. Certainly the destructive and unnecessary violence surrounding the anti-Trump demonstrations maybe a harbinger of what’s to come.

Copyright © 2017, Mark L. Bennett