Editor:
So let me see if I have this correctly: Ms. Hodgson was forced to leave the safety and comfort of the little wine cottage in the valley and venture out in the “pouring rain” to “report” on a speech to a group of people who didn’t look like her, didn’t think like her, and even drove vehicles that were not like hers (From the Publisher, “Vintage Arkley,” March 24).
One can imagine that she was even forced to converse with these individuals. I cannot begin to imagine the terror – lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Glenn Ziemer, Eureka
Editor:
The part of Judy Hodgson’s article on Rob Arkley that I liked best was where she quotes him as telling local small landowners that the big timber companies “‘spent money to make your land more valuable.'” Yeah, opening timberland to residential development will vastly increase its real estate value for owners large and small. In addition to curtailing future timber production, it will have terrible environmental impacts, while sticking the public for the extended public services required by urban sprawl. No wonder local development interests cynically scream for indefinite delay of the county’s General Plan Update, already 12 years in the making. They don’t want any plan, and they join Arkley in electing people who agree.
Nationally, Arkley also seems more than happy to stick the public for the speculative losses of banks like his own that nearly busted the economy these past few years. Hodgson notes that “Security National specialized in buying lower-grade loans at a discounted rate from the banks and making those loans perform.” When the housing bubble burst, his risky speculations sucked – until, as Arkley states, “‘the banks effectively transferred the risk to the government.'” But does he praise government for saving the whole credit system at the base of our economy? Of course not! Suddenly he shifts blame away from speculators like himself who caused the mess. “‘Now,'” Arkley snaps, “‘the governments are free-wheeling, running deficits.'” So, of course, all civilized public services must be drastically cut to cover the deficits – which saved the speculators, but not yet the rest of us. Hey, we can’t tax the speculators!
Arkley illumines the key local issue of endless urban sprawl versus smart growth as well as the dominant national issue of whether to cut public services or raise taxes on those most able to pay. Thanks for the fine report, Ms. Hodgson.
Chuck Harvey, Fieldbrook
This article appears in Shipping Jobs to China?.
Judy’s article was the best thing to see print in all of Humboldt in a very long time. A fantastic insight into a world 99% of the population rarely if ever sees. I found myself shaking my head in disbelief while reading, like it has to be some kind of twisted joke awaiting an april fool’s day finale.
This man’s companies brag about exporting local timber to China while expecting us to be happy about buying imported eight dollar two-by-fours from his proposed Home Despot? And shouldn’t school boards be reserved for people who care about education, not real estate profits? This man was the third largest contributor to former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign, and succeeded in seating his sponsered candidates in Humboldt’s own elections this past November.
Disconcerting, to say the least…
It’s safe to talk about the fact that only one in ten thousand individuals is truely homicidal, or that only one in a hundred is prone to addiction. Such long established statistics are regularly used to shape lower income populations, but as the old saying goes, crazy poor people are seen as psychotic whereas crazy rich people are treated as eccentric. Monetary wealth is a very real addiction that specific people at that meeting will never admit to suffering from. Unlike most chemical addictions, hoarding wealth and power affects far more people than just immediate associates of the addict.
Crashing plutocrat’s lairs is important.
More important is investigating and following up on how they’ve managed to control local politics and planning.
John Osborn’s NCJ investigation “Interested Parties” had just begun to scratch the surface.
Citizens cannot change what they don’t understand and the rich will buy what they must to keep it that way.