Although billed as “informational,” the presentation (by Ft Bragg developer Jim Burns with the assistance of a consultant from Rancho Mirage) consisted primarily of a sales pitch for tapping into the Clearlake Redevelopment Agency's remaining $7 million to subsidize the police department – even though that money is desperately needed to revitalize the community's economic base, and even though, as pointed out by former city councilman Roy Simons and former planning commissioner Rick Mayo, such use of RDA funding is highly questionable from a legal perspective.

The misunderstandings started with the capacity crowd, most of whom were wearing brand new “Support Clearlake Police” T-shirts and had apparently turned out on this blustery evening on the assumption that the meeting would revolve around a proposal to disband the police department and turn its functions over to the county sheriff – a notion that may or may not have merit, but was not on the agenda.

The presentation then continued the theme, starting with the delusion that Clearlake is Oakland (an error pounced upon by many of those present), and that a high tech combination of remotely controlled cameras and an interactive Web site could put an end to a supposed crime wave.

Underlying these assertions was the assumption that the police department is underfunded despite dedicated Measure P sales tax support, a generous budget that consumes more than half of all municipal expenditures, high salaries for top officers and abundant overtime payments.

Most basic of all, the argument rested on the fundamentally flawed premise that because economic deprivation tends to be associated with a comparatively high crime rate it therefore follows that reducing criminal activities will result in prosperity, and consequent attainment of redevelopment agency core objectives of reduced blight and increased property taxes. This flight of logical fancy precisely reverses the actual chain of causation.

It might help to draw a lesson from the ecological concept of “limiting factors,” which examines an impoverished habitat to determine just which element is most lacking.

For example, if birds are scarce because of a shortage of nesting places, there's no point in increasing the food supply; if forage is unavailable, providing extra water won't help a depressed population rebound.

To improve the prospects for a given species, it's necessary to determine the specific limiting factor which prevents it from thriving, and to concentrate resources and efforts on expanding that limitation.

As Clearlake's residents have pointed out over and over again, the single element that hinders prosperity the most is antiquated, dilapidated or nonexistent infrastructure – dirt roads, potholes, lack of streetlights and sidewalks, inadequate parking, etc.

This impairment is particularly devastating in the Lakeshore Drive business district, where it is impeding the development of the visitor-based economy that offers the city's best chance for a brighter future.

In Clearlake, infrastructure is the limiting factor, and improving infrastructure is by far the most appropriate use of the redevelopment agency's precious resources.

Local voters reaffirmed this message resoundingly in the Nov. 2 city council election, and are surely expecting the newly formed council to act upon it.

Victoria Brandon lives in Lower Lake, Calif.

Business is business, and the No. 1 business of the first world is the manufacture and sale of weapons.

So if you are living in the third world and we either kill you directly or your village happens to be wiped out by our weapons which we supplied to the dictatorship that rules your nation, do not make the mistake of becoming troublemakers by adopting radical ideologies, it is just bad for business.

You see, we do not care who kills or rapes or tortures whom. We never have, we never will. It is irrelevant to us because we usually manage to profit politically and economically from all sides, never neglecting any opportunity to do so. Our only concern is about people or organizations who actually threaten our profits, our control and influence, and our cheap and easy access to your resources.

So do not take it personally when your son or your wife are tortured and killed in front of you by paramilitary forces that have been trained, armed and financed by us, as happened in Guatemala for example. It is just business, understand? We hope you do, and God bless.

What is it, you are still whining about injustice, about genocide?

Look here, someone has to bleed for our economies to soar and for our first world dominant positions to be maintained. And we have a privileged class to protect. You are not called the Third World for nothing, because in terms of survival, human rights or anything else you come last. So if our weapons are to be used on anyone, they might as well be used on you, since you have demonstrated, ever since we invaded your nations in our glorious colonial days, a great aptitude for dying.

While you get agitated because living under abject poverty, inequity and injustice, tyrants rise to the occasion to keep you in line through terror and to do business with us, and these tyrants are almost always gold mines for us.

Why you ask? Listen, don’t push it, we are loosing our patience with all your questions.

Tyrants are gold mines because they keep the world out of balance and in a state of war or heavily armed peace, and obviously legitimize our almighty power and our research and development programs for the deployment of ever more lethal weapon systems, such as the space weapons program which is meant to control you, the restless starving Third World masses, and which was another great idea from Nazi Germany by the way, to whom we owe so very much.

Furthermore, tyrants are usually on our side because fighting like us against democracy or people power, to facilitate the rape of the world resources by our powerful and unstoppable corporations, that are themselves financed by the powerful finance capitalists known as banking interests, which are indistinguishable from what we call our national interests.

However your dictators, most of whom are puppets propped up, armed, controlled and financed by our governments, can on occasion become our enemies, like Saddam Hussein or Manual Noriega, when they disobey us and start tyrannizing on their own, which not only is against all the rules but shows blatant ingratitude.

So you see we cannot loose, stealing your natural resources by causing you to go deep into debt and become dependent upon us, a technique we are also using on our own hapless people to keep them in voluntary slavery, in the lines of endless production and consumption through the creation of artificial needs, and by manufacturing and selling the weapons that oppress your people and destroy your nations.

Now, at long last, do you see the straight line to the bank? Yes? So quit questioning our cultural superiority, and be good and keep your families in the line of fire, so that we may test our new war games and sustain our high standards of living.

Have a nice day.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport, Calif.

I've decided to write a few essays about current events. This is not a diatribe against Christianity, it is an attempt to set the historical record straight.

The first current event of importance is the mobilization of American Christian fundamentalism against a “foreign” religion; in this case Islam.

This is as traditionally American as apple pie. Numerous modern presidents have sought to sustain the myth that the United States was founded as a Christian nation for their own political reasons and, in today's divided America, it is again a useful tool in getting angry, disenchanted Americans to renew their discontent at having a black president with apparently liberal leanings trying to direct the course of the Nation.

One of the 14 recently identified pillars of fascism is when religion is consistently mentioned and utilized by a government’s leadership or opposition, to bolster its support and justify its actions.

Numerous examples of this type of social bigotry can be found in our checkered past but the most recent is the attempt by many of today’s conservative fundamentalists to try to depict the Founding Fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.

An example of this is an excerpt from the Web sit of Barbara Martin. “According to the Preamble to the Constitution for the United States of America (1787) the founders were 'We the People.' 'We the People' were all free, white and of the original stock of Europe … They were Christians, recognizing, acknowledging and accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord, the one and only God and their only Sovereign, and the Nation they ordained and established is a Christian Nation.”

This is patently untrue.

Having escaped from the state-established religions of Europe, only seven out of every 100 people in the 13 colonies belonged to a church when the Declaration of Independence was signed.

It was not that the Founding Fathers were hostile to religion; they simply did not believe that religion was a pillar of liberty. The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and what they viewed as the absurdities of the Old and New Testaments.

It is important to note that the first Constitutional Conventions opened without prayer and both Jefferson and Madison refused to utilize public prayer even when pressured to do so.

Here is what some of the Founding Fathers wrote about Bible-based Christianity.

Thomas Jefferson: “I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.”

Jefferson also wrote, “Christianity … (has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man. … Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.”

Jefferson referred to the Bible as a “dunghill.” “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

John Adams: “Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!”

“Where do we find a precept in the Bible for Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?” Adams wrote.

Also attributed to him: “The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”

Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, passed by the U.S. Senate in 1797. The treaty was written during the Washington administration, and sent to the Senate during the Adams administration. It was read aloud to the Senate, and each senator received a printed copy.

At that time it was only the third occasion a vote was unanimous and there is no record of public outcry or complaint in subsequent editions of the papers. Article 11 states: “The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

Thomas Paine: “Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses ... I would not dare so dishonor my Creator's name by (attaching) it to this filthy book (the Bible).”

“It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible,” Paine wrote.

He also wrote, “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of … Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”

James Madison: “Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together,” and “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”

Another of Madison's writings: “During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

“What influence, in fact, have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society?” Madison asked. “In many instances, they have been upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy.”

George Washington: The first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian and championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion.

When John Murray (a Universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment.

On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to attend.

Ethan Allen: “That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words.”

Allen noted that he was generally “denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.”

When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised, “to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God.” Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those “written in the great book of nature.”

Benjamin Franklin: “As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion … has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble.”

No one categorically disputes the faith of the Founding Fathers. To speak of inalienable Rights being endowed by a Creator certainly shows sensitivity to our spiritual selves.

What is surprising is that fundamentalist Christians think the Founding Fathers' faith had anything to do with the Bible. Without exception, the faith of our Founding Fathers was deist, not theist. It was best expressed earlier in the Declaration of Independence, when they spoke of “the Laws of Nature” and of
“Nature's God.”

To be sure, Islam and Christianity share a contentious past, but to insist that the Country favor one religion over another is at odds with the Constitution.

On the other hand, it is very much in keeping with the dissatisfaction of those who imagined themselves superior to all – racially, morally, socially, politically. How far the once mighty have fallen; brought down by arrogance and greed, they churn and stir the seeds of insurrection rather than join their brothers and sisters in perfecting one Nation.

James BlueWolf lives in Nice, Calif.

It is a great concept, from my perspective, because I implemented that same idea when I was chief deputy district attorney in Santa Cruz County.

The actual feat had to wait for the right time to be accomplished, however. There had to be free county space of sufficient size and security, and the caseload, available staffing and office functions had to be workable.

In order to do that here in Clearlake, you have to consider that the staff of the district attorney is not currently large enough to give up the ability to assign attorneys, investigators and victim advocates to cover others when they are in a different court, in trial, out on vacation or training, or more importantly, to cover the caseload. When the staff is large enough, that is not a worry.

We currently have a domestic violence team, a child sexual assault team, an elder abuse team and a narcotics district attorney who are assigned to all the cases in their specialty even though they are in both Southlake and Northlake.

That means you cannot assign them to just the Clearlake office, even though it would be wonderful for those victims, witnesses and law enforcement officers located in the south county to be able to only go to a Clearlake office.

Felony district attorneys are only in Clearlake one day a week, and are required to be in Lakeport in court two days a week and two more days if they are assigned to do a trial in Lakeport.

There are two and sometimes three courts in the north that take trials and only one in Clearlake, so it is much more likely that felony district attorneys will be in Lakeport.

There are two district attorneys assigned to the misdemeanor cases in Clearlake. They are only in court one day a week and one additional day the third week of the month. They also are more likely to be assigned to trials in one of the courts up north. They are also required to be in the settlement conferences that are held in court in Lakeport.

You can see that there are days when the attorneys who might be handling cases that occur in the south county will not be able to be there. As a matter of fact, all of them may be required to be up north on the same day.

If the new district attorney covered the office on those days, that would be very helpful, but Don probably would not be familiar with every case filed in that court.

Also at issue is the availability of files in the Clearlake office.

To handle all the facets of office work that are done with the case files, it would not work to send staff to do it in the Clearlake office, because they are needed to cover each others work in the main office.

One would need to wait until more staff is hired so you could have duplicate functions covered in each office. A number of the important functions have only one person doing that job.

My suggestion to Don Anderson is that he hold office hours in the office in the Clearlake courthouse a couple of days a week, with announcements to the public so there will be a regular time when they know they will find someone there. That way, while he is looking into the money and logistical issues, he can also assess the need and response of the public.

It will be a lot easier to sell the Board of Supervisors on the expenditure of extra funds if he has the stats to back up the idea instead of just having the idea.

Jon Hopkins is the current district attorney of Lake County. His term ends in January.

This raises an issue of changing Lucerne from a tourist destination to a county government satellite that could change the dynamics of the area.

My feeling is this investment is counter to the intention of the redevelopment expenditure previously spent. The county has invested millions of dollars already into creating the entire Northshore as a tourist draw.

From my perspective, I see a need for the supervisors to spread a little of the taxpayers money around

in different areas of the county.

My belief is, they should be looking at what area of the county could benefit the most from government investment. They should look at property already owned by a government, rather than grabbing one more piece of private land. They should be looking at what location suits the largest amount of people when they spend taxpayer dollars.

The airport property in Clearlake is a better suited site for construction of a government complex to

service the citizens already begging for satellite services.

The capital expenditure required to build a multi story complex could be spent building a single story building of greater square footage. The building could house county service representatives from varying departments. The sheriff’s office could be expanded to better accommodate the employees working the south district.

Given the politically sensitive issue of the current proposal for a Lowe's, and the money some claim

will be spent defending the Lowe's project; this could be a viable alternative for both the county

representatives and the Clearlake representatives to consider.

Those who are concerned about environmental impacts in the county could argue that a government

service building in the city of Clearlake would decrease the amount of emissions by lowering driving to

Lakeport. The roadways will see less wear and tear, traffic could be lowered and perhaps a few more

deer will live to see another day.

The citizens of the Southlake district will save thousands of dollars in making single reason trips. It would be a shorter trip to conduct county business. Given the tight budgets many are living with, it could make a difference in their quality of life.

The city of Clearlake would benefit from having a dependable source of income from a reliable tenant.

This also creates a complex where state government, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, could lease space and as needs arise additional buildings could be built.

The property is large enough that the city of Clearlake could maintain a portion of the roadway section to sell off or lease to business requiring a smaller building footprint.

The city of Clearlake would be able to spend their redevelopment money on the preexisting areas of

commerce. Lakeshore businesses can benefit from a revitalization process once the funds are freed

from the airport.

Although most people do not realize it, there is a greater area of the county in the south district then

there is in the north district. The taxpayer money in the county seems to be spent disproportionately in the north over the south.

The Board of Supervisors is a compilation of people who are supposed to represent their own districts and the county as a whole. The health of the city of Clearlake, the service of all county residents in all parts of the county, and a resolution to this ongoing discussion over the airport can all be addressed.

The supervisors need to look at the city of Clearlake as part of the county family and not the red-headed stepchild as they have in the past. Clearlake can once again be the shining jewel she once was.

The county is going to spend the money, so why not service the Southlake and the citizens?

Keith Buter lives in Lucerne, Calif.

As their politically conservative counterparts, they seem to believe that God wants all of us to become filthy rich, regardless of the cost to the environment or to poor nations.

But here wealth is defined in specific cultural, social and historical terms, that have absolutely nothing to do with either natural or divine law.

The natural order is merely concerned with the fulfillment of real needs, not with the accumulation of unnecessary possessions or symbols of riches. Trees do not grow more roots that they need, and lions do not kill more zebras than they can eat.

Only humanity is concerned with the building of capital, which leads to wealth and is erroneously associated with the idea of abundance by pseudo-spiritual new age gurus.

The rule of abundance is to satisfy actual needs in harmony and accordance with natural law, not to satisfy greed in accordance with competitive and alienating social standards.

Abundance leads to sharing, not to the selfish individual hoarding of wealth. As nature does not hoard its riches, neither does the natural man or woman who lives according to natural and divine law.

When sharing is allowed as a constant practice, the question of wealth, of capital, becomes irrelevant. No one needs be a millionaire, no one needs to live in a mansion or own an estate, as all share in the bounty of the earth, and none is left behind to suffer abject poverty, exploitation, abuse, neglect.

The spiritual way is to be contented satisfying authentic basic human needs, not to seek wealth and luxury according to the myth that we all can and must become rich within a destructive and predatory system.

The pseudo-spiritual crowd as well as the conservatives who espouse the view that God rewards the virtuous with gold bullions and punish the sinner with poverty miss the fact that the accumulation of capital, or wealth, is only relevant in a system funded on alienation and insecurity, a social structure rooted in the unintelligent and unnatural principle of the survival of the fittest.

Contrary to the common myth, it is natural for nature to cooperate, and unrealistic to perceive nature to amount to nothing more than a chaotic and meaningless food chain, a grouping of digestive systems equipped with fangs and claws that have no other purpose or preoccupation, beside procreation, than struggling endlessly to eat one another.

In truth natural and reasonable predation is part of a natural cooperation, for the natural predator, unlike man, does not seek the total annihilation of the prey.

Only man, in his delusion, seeks the total elimination of competitive elements, and absolute supremacy over all life. Only man experience near absolute insecurity because of having created warlike social conditions whereby he has become its own greatest enemy, and can trust no one, not even himself.

Only man needs creating 100,000 laws enforced by threats and coercion to protect himself from his out of control and totally unnatural predatory mindset.

These topics are however not discussed by people who are not accustomed to question anything, who are educated to comply rather than think, and to think as taught rather than feel.

For if people felt with their heart and soul, they would understand the natural human drives of cooperation, of needing to give and share, of compassion, of social harmony and equity.

They would feel the total absurdity of merciless competition, of having created a society that resemble a battlefield, where the victorious, the winner, crushes and enslaves the so-called weak, the meek, the disadvantaged. Where the powerful, privileged or ambitious takes advantage of the misery or failures of others….and single mothers, adolescents, families become homeless while the filthy rich becomes forever more bloated with obscene wealth and more controlling and arrogant.

It is possible that a majority of people vaguely feel something is rotten in Denmark. The widespread use of alcohol, hard drugs, anti-depressant medications, tranquilizers, the epidemic of mental illness and addictions seem to speak of a general state of malaise among the general population, who appears to be falling apart and to reach for whatever is available to attempt to cope with a crazy-making social structure and culture.

Yet as no vision of sanity is offered, and the population is made to believe alienation, competition and insecurity are natural conditions, and reality is harsh and life destined to be as hard and cold as a tombstone, the only solution people envision is personal escape or individual survival, in whatever forms these selfish paths take, that perpetuate the pathology of the system.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport, Calif.