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?

Appalling

Even after nine and a half long years, it is truly astounding that decent legal access remains out of reach for this tiny neighborhood. All we in this community want is the legal right to drive to our homes over our traditional, historical route—a little over a mile of dirt road—that we and our predecessors had been continually using for close to a century.

That’s all we want: to drive on a road that had been in common, constant use since before any of us were born, to our own houses. I need to state that over and over again, because the fact is so basic and we do not want it buried under a lot of verbiage.

The consequences to us of this injustice are dire, and the spoils to those who block us may be enormous, but I want to review just the appalling nature of our predicament in this post.

It is appalling that our route home is almost indistinguishable from that of several other communities along Soledad Canyon, but only ours is blocked.

It is appalling that the organizations blocking our route home are public agencies that should properly have no interest in bedeviling us or depressing our property values.

It is appalling that a deputy of Supervisor Michael Antonovich of the County of Los Angeles will tell contradictory stories according to what suits his office at the time, and continue to pretend to be truthful.

It is appalling that Los Angeles County would place a property in the hands of an aggressive player in this drama, a player that would then withhold legal access at our only other point of entry, albeit an astonishingly rough and difficult drive of five and more miles—a drive that has already killed one of us. (His car was found aflame down a short ravine. Maybe he died of a heart attack and not the crash or the fire. His body was too charred to tell—but struggling on that bad road did not help.)

It is appalling that a public official—again Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich—who represents more than two million people in the most populous county in the United States of America cannot find a way to allow us across a legal obstacle created in large part by a commuter rail line, Metrolink, on whose board he sits with his fellow supervisors.

Whoa! Read that again!

Michael Antonovich sits on the board, he has power only a handful of people can even imagine, the unfairness of the blockage is obvious to everyone to whom any of us has spoken, and in almost a decade he has produced zero results. We cannot legally cross those tracks, though our crossing is just like all the others. That’s a zero. All that power, all that posturing, all that time, and all Michael Antonovich and his deputy Norm Hickling can accomplish is zero.

Appalling.

I hear it all the time, and I heard the accusation again just the other day, that Mr. Antonovich just wants to see his name on a sign. We really struggle to be more decent about it, but it is very difficult for us to quell suspicions that Mr. Hickling’s and Mr. Antonovich’s motives are far more nefarious. But hoping that fame will please the gentlemen, we are proud to offer the following:

This blog, and hence the names of Michael D. Antonovich and Norm Hickling, have been viewed well over 3000 times, and you know how they say that any publicity is good publicity. We expect our numbers will continue to grow faster and faster, and are looking forward to 10,000 page views soon. You can erect signs all over our properties after we have been squeezed out, but they cannot compete with these numbers in such a short time.

Furthermore, only people who drive by the signs with Michael Antonovich’s name will see them. This blog, on the other hand, is viewed worldwide! True, the thousands of page views come mostly from local citizens of Los Angeles County, but hundreds of others come from other countries. Think of it! If Mr. Antonovich wants fame, his name is now being seen and read by hundreds in

France

Malaysia

Indonesia

Canada

Australia

United Kingdom

Czech Republic

Germany

Belgium

Netherlands

Isn’t that cool?!

You’re welcome.