Being Reasonable

Within the last several days a few people have commented on my restraint in this blog and in my online radio interview with Jeff Rense. One, Mr. Rense, complimented me on it, while others may have wished I would be more forceful. I am sure there are many with an opinion one way or the other, and since I have been wanting for some time to talk about it, this seems to be the right time. I’ll get back to Mr. Novak’s email in another post.

Every morning I wake up saying to myself, “What if they actually mean no harm? What if they have a perfectly honorable agenda and we are unavoidable collateral damage?”

I want to believe that the people running Los Angeles County, the California Department of Fish and Game, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (or Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority—take your pick), and Metrolink (aka Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCCRA) and aka Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA)) are all decent and empathic people who are horrified at the thought of hurting their subjects. Maybe they are doing the very best they can to unravel our access problem. Maybe two of the organizations just simply cannot open up our access, for whatever legal or idealistic reasons, and expected the other two would be more open minded. I want to believe that the decision makers in these agencies are ethical and caring, but stuck in some kind of principled dilemma.

I said I wanted to believe that. I did not say I did believe it. I mean, for our legal access to be shut down by four separate entities all in the same brief time span? What, they just accidentally happened to be on the same schedule?

But I do want to leave the door open to the possibility that this is all a sad, decade-long misunderstanding. Because if it is, and I come on like gangbusters, it will be as hard for Messrs. Antonovich and Hickling, Fish and Game, Metrolink and the Conservancy to back off honorably as it was for Johnson to quit Vietnam.

Also, if it should be the case that those folks have been carelessly wrong-hearted, I would like it to be as easy as possible for them to have a change of heart. Being screamed at does not make it easy to give in to the screamer.

And, finally, just in case all these players are in it for their own gain, whether egotistical, dogmatic or financial, the world will know. And the world will recognize our tone as reasonable and their actions as unconscionable.

Works for us.

By the way, speaking of numbers, I stated a month ago that we were dedicated to assisting Michael Antonovich in case he was engaged in a quest for fame. This blog had enjoyed some three thousand pageviews and was perused around the world in ten different countries. I will not list the countries this time, because there are more than twenty-five of them, and our pageviews have almost doubled. I’d give a number, but it is changing too fast. 

Not bad considering that we started all this only last November.

And I just want to say, in case our international readers get the wrong idea, that this is not an example of American democracy in action. The five incumbents on the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors are known as the “five little kings.” Each one “represents” a couple million people and is so difficult to unseat by election that they are now subject to term limitations. The head of the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (why do these organizations have so many aliases?) is also beyond the reach of the people and never has to stand for election. 

This is not how America properly works. The America we love and take pride in has a system of checks and balances that are meant to prevent this sort of bullying, a system of laws—which by the way prohibit actions like those taken against us—and elections. Some people’s human nature leads them to seek and exert unreasonable power over their fellow citizens, but please understand: this is not the American way. Nobody’s perfect.

Just OPEN (RATTLE) THIS FREAKIN’ (RATTLE RATTLE) GATE!!! RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE.

There. Is that better?

BIWT

“Because I wanted to.”

In my family, that is one of the most common answers to the question:

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I wanted to.”

Here we are, legally landlocked. Our little neighborhood is cut off through the actions of the very people you’d expect to be devoted to preserving our lives, not ruining them. Why have the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, California Department of Fish and Game, and Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy blocked our community’s legal access to the world, while our own Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich stands by pronouncing that there is nothing he can do? They are not telling—not in a believable way. But we know.

Why are the people who run Metrolink, Fish and Game, and the conservancy working together to render our property worthless?

Because they want to.

The explanation that my own two little girls have given me over the years, and sometimes even my own grown up wife—“Because I wanted to”—really says it all. My girls’ explanation is a non-explanation, but is really the only true one. “Because I wanted to,” augmented by an examination into just what she gets out of her actions, tells more than she wants to admit. It tells that her bottom-line motivation is selfishness.

And don’t give me that hogwash that every action is at bottom selfish, or that we do good just to make our own selves feel good. That may be—very trivially—true; but there is such a thing as good and evil. You know it, I know it, my girls know it, even Michael Antonovich, the SCRRA, Fish and Game—and even Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy knows it!

It’s just that they calculate to gain more out of selfishness than they stand to lose feeling crappy about themselves. We don’t know what they calculate to gain. They won’t say, but it must be of more value to them than right action.

Personally I hope I am a healthier human being than that. And I imagine that I am in that regard much closer to average than public officials are. The degree of crappy I would feel for ruining the property values of a dozen families is much greater than almost any monetary gain.

Do you wonder where you stand between selfish gain and right action? Aren't you just a little tempted to dash off an email or note to Michael Antonovich or your favorite legislator or the newspaper, or us?

There is another non-explanation for dirty behavior: “Because I can.”

Who says, “Because I can”? A wise-ass. Someone with no regard for the feelings of others and the consequences of his actions, right?

Why would Metrolink close our railroad crossing and leave others open? Why would Fish and Game allow culverts all along the Santa Clara River, and even assist a movie company to install one near our old crossing, but prohibit us from crossing? Why would Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy quietly acquire property at the end of our only other access route and refuse us an easement through it? Why?

Because they can.

Not Corrupt!

The other day I typed “Los Angeles Second Most…” into Google, and Google, as is Google’s wont, finished my sentence for me.

Now Los Angeles might well be the second most populous, the second most affluent. Los Angeles has the second largest school district. Perhaps LA County is the second most prone to earthquake. 

No! Google says that the Los Angeles area is the second most…CORRUPT!

Ours has been named the second most corrupt area in the country, second only to Chicago.

Actually Google didn’t say that; University of Illinois at Chicago Political Science professor Dick Simpson and colleagues released a report that said so, back in February of 2012. The fallout continues twenty-one months later. Google presented me with hundreds of articles on the subject, far more than I choose to count. Some articles call out the City of Los Angeles, others the county of Los Angeles, and still others seem to indict practically all of southern California.

Is that true?! Well, then, no wonder honest public officials are not beating a path to our neighborhood. Could it be that there aren’t any straight-arrows in office?

I do not want to believe it! I do not want to believe that Michael D. Antonovich is out to collect all the loot he can. I do not want to believe that he is scheming to displace neighborhoods just to put his name up all over the region as a creator of green space.

I want to believe that the California Department of Fish and Game, Oasis Park, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCRRA) just happened to close off our passage in the same year, just by coincidence. See, if I can believe that, then I can believe that they are compassionate and reasonable people, who, as soon as they realize the great inconvenience and losses they have caused, will act immediately to restore our right-of-way.

So NO! Don’t say CORRUPT, because then I can never convince any of them to move to the side of justice, no matter how carefully I write! If corruption was their motivation, then I would have to be fearful of my own government representatives.

Please somebody convince me that nobody has done squat to open our historical access to the world only because somebody made a mistake, somebody didn’t know, somebody is working on it.

Well, here, this feels good: Norm Hickling, deputy to Michael D. Antonovich, is working on it. Norm has been working on it for nine long years; but oh dear, Norm has not found a single correctible mistake.

Well, thanks for trying.

Here, let me try a logical argument on the railroad. Norm says the railroad is key.

A US Department of Transportation Secretary’s Action Plan (May 2004) advocates closure or consolidation of unneeded railroad crossings.  The emphasis is on “redundant” and/or “particularly hazardous crossings.”  The crossing in question is neither.  The report suggests closures “with no other adjustments to the road network,” or, “in other cases short extensions of access roads.”  Neither is the case for this closure.

 In 1994, the report states, there were 110,000 private highway-rail crossings, and “most private crossing accidents occur at industrial/business crossings.”  According to information in the report, the probability of an accidental death in any one year at a rural crossing is miniscule.   

In a logical discussion, then, we would assure SCRRA officials that we understood their desire to comply with that action plan, but that our crossing was not unneeded, not redundant, and not particularly hazardous. We need it, there is no other crossing we can use, and the crossing has been accident free since anybody can remember, except (to be fair) for one lady on foot who attempted to flag down a freight train fifty years ago.

The railroad guys say, “We have looked at that crossing and the curves are so tight you can’t see very far.”

Then we say, “And yet there have been no accidents. You see,” we say, “in the canyons, trains are forced to travel at a very slow rate, and the chance of an accident is correspondingly reduced. We may not be able to see far down the line, but we have more than enough time to see the train coming.”

And the railroad guys say, “Hmm. We see your point. It still makes us nervous, though.”

And we say, in the spirit of compromise, “Maybe there is a way to put up a flashing light. Would you like a flashing light?”

But apparently the railroad guys don’t want to talk to us. Michael D. Antonovich, who sits on the rail authority board, could, in light of the argument above, be extremely persuasive. We are beginning to face up to the fact that he will not do that, and we will need someone to persuade him.

But we still hold out hope. So don’t tell us anyone is beyond reach. Don’t tell us any of these people are corrupt!