How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
Opinion
“Threat: A statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done.”
Make no mistake about it: Rent control for mobile home parks is coming to the city of Lakeport. The process to make rent control law is now in progress, and, it is inexorable.
The owners of my park, Fairgrounds Village, have begun the counter-attack: They have sent out a letter, which offers a 10-year lease, allegedly tied to the consumer price index, but demanding a minimum of 3-percent increase in space rent annually (whether CPI, and thus Social Security benefits, which are tied to CPI, go up, or not), and a maximum of 8 percent.
The owners failed to point out in their letter, that if a tenant signs a long-term lease (defined as any lease over 12 months), that tenant is not eligible for rent control.
Not content with lying by omission, and apparently desperate, the owners then resort to a threat: Residents who refuse to sign the 10-year lease “can expect large rent increases … ”
Interestingly, I was invited recently to attend a meeting of management and a selected number of tenants. After the meeting, I spoke with one of the owners. I told him that I lived very humbly, but, that I had never been happier, and they I did not need much, but that I did not want to be homeless, and that if rent increases continued to exceed Social Security benefits, I would be.
I told him that what brings me joy is hiking and kayaking and bicycling, and my friends and family, none of which are high ticket items. And, that being forced out of retirement, I was working with young people, and that my work was more satisfying than anything I had previously done in my life.
The owner told me that he had gone on a two-year mission to a third world country, and admired the people that he served because they were very happy while being very poor.
Later, it hit me that our lives were mirror images: I began my working life seeking my fortune and devoted my energies to my business, and now, late in life, I found service rewarding. He, on the other hand, began his career at the service of the poor, and now, he was busy amassing material wealth, and, if the poor got in his way, then, they would have to be dealt with by whatever means necessary.
I thought about the classic film, “The Magnificent Seven.” Yul Brenner, the leader of a group of gunmen, takes the side of the villagers against the marauding bandits. Eli Wallach, playing the leader of the bandits, cannot understand that turn of events. He wonders out loud why a gunman would take the side of the peasants. The bandit explains to the noble gunman, “If God did not want them shorn, he would not have made them sheep.”
My first emotion, when I read the letter, was anger. I thought, “These guys go right for the jugular.”
Then, I felt a sense of compassion: How pathetic these owners are, that in their consciousness, money trumps morality, and that they are so desperate for dollars, that they would resort to threatening and intimidating old folks.
I want to tell the owners: Gentlemen, you have lost your way.
Nelson Strasser lives in Lakeport, Calif.
- Details
- Written by: Nelson Strasser
It’s a sad commentary. Signs being vandalized and stolen are one thing – seems to be the nature of political campaigns in Lake County. It’s wrong, but done apparently in the dark of night so there’s not much risk of getting caught. Oh well.
Then, there are the sheriff’s debates. First, let me applaud the students at Yuba College and their professor for conducting a fair and orderly debate. Nicely done. Also the debate at the Middletown Luncheon Club was also fair and professionally moderated. Another nice job.
As for the debates in Kelseyville and Middletown, sad commentary abounds.
In Kelseyville, the sponsors of that debate (Lake County Peace Officers Association) had already endorsed sheriff candidate Brian Martin, an important fact not disclosed to the audience. Sometimes these stunts, once exposed, have unintended consequences at the voting polls. Time will tell.
Then there was the debate in Middletown (Middletown Area Town Hall) where the questions seemed geared to put incumbent Sheriff Rivero on the defensive and the only question allowed from an evident Sheriff Rivero supporter was rejected by the moderator.
Maybe in the big scheme of things debates don’t matter all that much. They seem to draw mostly supporters of the respective candidates, who square up on opposite sides of the room – like rival teams – complete with cheerleading squads.
It is said that in love, war and politics anything goes. Maybe it does and maybe fair play doesn’t really enter into the picture. It is, after all, politics (and love/war relationships).
Thankfully, there is one place in the political arena where fair play is assured – the privacy of your home or the voting booth at voting time.
We the people. Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?
Nola Montgomery lives in Lower Lake, Calif.
- Details
- Written by: Nola Montgomery
Galileo promulgated the notion, at the time heretical, that the earth revolved around the sun. However, in 1615 the Inquisition knocked on his door and demanded he recant his heresy.
Threatened with torture, Galileo swallowed hard and recanted has blasphemous notion. However, he later published the idea of a sun-centered planetary system, and, thereafter spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Considering the alternative, things could have gone worse for Galileo. (Heresies against money draw even harsher responses than those against god: 900 environmental workers have been killed in the past decade, mostly because they threatened profits).
I had thought that things are different now and that new ideas, which threatened the “conventional wisdom,” were no longer met with resistance, especially in the scientific community. I had thought scientists were trained to ask questions, and they are, but that does not mean that they embrace the answers.
For example, in the book, “The Sixth Extinction,” Elizabeth Kolbert describes a more up-to-date version of an example of resistance to new ideas.
In 1980, Walter Alvarez discovered a strata of clay in the earth, in a certain area that he was investigating. Walter got a job at Berkeley, where, co-incidentally, his father, Luis, worked as physicist.
The father and son team, by way of measuring the iridium in the clay, hypothesized that a huge asteroid had hit the earth, causing a large amount of dust to enter the atmosphere. This cataclysmic event, the team hypothesized, led to an extinction of dinosaurs as well as other animals.
The notion of a catastrophe wiping out the dinosaurs was not readily accepted. In fact, many scientists found it fanciful, one even calling it “codwaddle.”
Eventually, other scientists found similar strata of clay in other parts of the world, and, the crater where the asteroid struck has been located, in the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico. Eventually, the notion of a catastrophic event on earth leading to extinctions became accepted wisdom.
Similarly, the idea of global warming, which does have scientific consensus, is being met with intense indifference, in the main.
If we accept the consequences of global warming we would be compelled to act. And yet, we are able to ignore terrible things that are happening to the planet, even as I write. The oceans are acidifying, and as a consequence, the coral reefs, and the teeming life they support, are dying.
The temperature on the surface of the earth has remained constant for the last decade because the ocean has absorbed the added heat from greenhouse gases.
However, excepting that glitch, the earth has steadily warmed, graphed as a steep incline, since the industrial revolution; in other words, as a result of human activity. And, it will begin to rise again.
We have to come to terms with the simple fact that we have to find joy and comfort in our lives without burning fossil fuels, or we won’t have lives at all.
The issue of life trumps all others. It is time for what Freud called a “reality check.”
Nelson Strasser lives in Lakeport, Calif.
- Details
- Written by: Nelson Strasser
The most sacred act humans perform daily is choosing what to eat (and drink).
I live in Hidden Valley Lake and am increasingly distressed about the subject of animal cruelty inflicted daily on literally millions of enslaved animals on factory farms, then transported to slaughterhouses to have their throats slashed. So we can eat their dead flesh.
Most human beings have become addicted to eating meat, many of them two or three times a day!
This seemingly normal multitude totally disassociates from what they are eating, as if the meat product was “invented” at the supermarket and placed under cellophane for their consumption. In reality, of course, they are subsidizing a holocaust of cruelty.
We love our pets, but our compassion for them is so selective as to mock all reason. All animals want to live just as people do!
It’s the Easter season, a time for resurrection, rising above our lower nature, seeing anew with clear eyes, helping the helpless.
Please sign my petition urging Pope Francis – who takes his name Francis from Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and the environment – to champion a vegetarian-vegan diet: http://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/urge-pope-francis-to-declare-himself-a-vegetarian-1 .
Jim Perilman lives in Hidden Valley Lake, Calif.
- Details
- Written by: Jim Perilman