Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has replaced the former chairman of the California Air Resources Board with Mary Nichols, secretary of the Resources Agency during the Gov. Gray Davis administration. The occasion for the switch according to the Hun's flaks was CARB's approval of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District's decision to forestall the cleanup of Valley air for another 11 years, thereby, in the infinite legerdemain of air pollution regulations, also forestalling a possible cessation of federal highway funds. To keep on growing and adding to air pollution, you gotta have more roads funded by the federal government.
The problem with the appointment of Nichols comes clear when you see her relationship to UC Merced, the UC Merced Parkway project, and the Mission Interchange, the anchor tenant of which is the proposed WalMart Distribution Center that will add 1,200 diesel trucks a day to the City of Merced, smack dab in the middle of the worst air pollution region in the nation.
But (one can hear the Hun's brain ticking), she's a woman and a Democrat who served in the administration of the governor I defeated in the recall election. What's not to like about her?
The Hun has been schnookered by the Valley again. His legacy is supposed to be his support for AB 32, the California global warming bill that, without teeth, is supposed to do ... well, whatever. So, the Hun is against global warming and its man-made causes, some of which are connected to air pollution (if you do not remain skeptical about the power of computer modeling).
But the Hun is also an ardent supporter of the San Joaquin Valley Partnership and the San Joaquin Valley Blueprint, regional "planning processes" superceding local general plans.
The latter is co-chaired by Stockton-based Fritz Grupe, the largest developer in the north Valley and one of the principle funders behind representatives Pombo and Cardoza's last unsuccessful assault on the Endangered Species Act (2006).
But, says the ticking mind of the Hun, Grupe contributes to Democratic candidates, like Angelo Tsakopoulos does. I am safe.
However, Alex Spanos, whose construction company builds Grupe's subdivisions, is a Republican and a heavy contributor to the Hun.
It would be beyond the Hun to suspect political intelligence from the Valley. One cannot imagine what he thinks about the present situation on the Delta. Could the malevolent intelligence of agribusiness emanating out of Westlands Water District be involved with the probable extinction of the Delta Smelt? Impossible! Those people come from places like Fresno and Stockton, places that do not exist in Mondo Hun. Why Jason Peltier was assistant undersecretary of water for the Department of Interior (former water lobbyistm now future assistant general manager for Westlands via revolving door) or why RichPAC Pombo is now Stockton's water lobbyist would be quite beyond the Hun's comprehension.
The question to Schwarzenegger and Nichols is: Will CARB overturn its decision to approve the Valley air board's decision, which may have been the only course left open for it, considering it is dominated by pro-growth county supervisors like Mike Nelson, who calls the critical public "socialists" and others of Nelson's political stripe, who call them "asthma terrorists"?
Will the fine people who spoke and demonstrated before the regional air board be able to maintain their focus and publicly insist the Hun and Nichols overturn the decision?
Or, will everybody reach a happy, pointless consensus to chit-chat about it, while layer upon layer of regional planning grind on to the destruction of natural resources, wildlife species, quality of life and public health and safety in the San Joaquin Valley?
An irony local air quality activists should not be paralyzed by is that Nichols corrupted every state and federal environmental law that obstructed siting the UC Merced campus, working at the direction of former Rep. Gary Condit, former Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, and both Condit's children, who were members of Gov. Gray Davis' staff at salaries of about $100,000 a year. These activists might ask why. They could consult former Condit chief of staff, Mike Lynch, now at UC/Great Valley Center. But, here's a version they might consider after going through that exercise in mindless obfuscation.
Davis won a stunning primary victory in 1998 over two candidates far better financed than he was. He did it again in the general election by employing an ancient political strategy: he took the San Joaquin Valley. Condit and Lynch were heavily involved in Davis' campaign strategy and tactics. Condit was the first member of the Democratic Party California Congressional Delegation to announce his support for Davis.
What Condit demanded in return was UC Merced. Davis promised it and delivered it and Nichols was his tool to get the campus through almost all of the permitting process in what state Senate Pro Tem John Burton, D-SF, called the biggest "boondoggle" he'd ever seen, and what Sacramento Bee political commentator Dan Walters described as "nothing but a land deal."
It is because of the growth induced by this boondoggle land deal that the northern San Joaquin Valley now tops the nation in per capita mortgage defaults.
Neither the Hun or Nichols are friends of San Joaquin Valley air quality.
Valley air quality activists should demand CARB rescind its decision on Valley air pollution. They won't achieve their stated goal but they will reveal a bit more of how willing developers are to threaten public health and safety for their profits and what total control of the state Capitol developers exert. And they will jam the Hun, Nichols and the Legislature up against their collective hypocrisy. Something closer to what we need could fall out of that confrontation.
It should be noted that this entire political fandango is occurring during the July 4 holidays. If might be the Best of Hollywood rerun but it's lethal political crap for the 20 percent of the Valley population that suffers from asthma. The probability of fire in the mountains and grasslands is higher now than it has been since 1988, when the most destructive forest fires in California history occurred. The sky is blue as I write. The odds are it won't be by the weekend. That smoke, trapped in this air pollution basin, again will cause untold misery here in the San Joaquin Valley among the young and the elderly. I hope we beat the odds for this weekend and the rest of the summer.
Bill Hatch
7-4-07
Sacramento Bee
New air board chief named...Peter Hecht
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/255857.html
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday turned to a former top environmental official for Democratic Govs. Jerry Brown and Gray Davis to replace the ousted chairman of the state Air Resources Board. The move is being closely watched to gauge the governor's commitment to carrying out California's tough anti-global warming law, Assembly Bill 32, approved last year. In naming Nichols to the post, Schwarzenegger said he selected her to lead his effort "on clean air and climate change" based on her "30-year record of fighting for the environment. But environmentalists and Democrats criticized the characterization of the
personnel moves as a cover story for an administration that was micromanaging the air board and working too closely with industry lobbyists. Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, a leading proponent of AB 32, had charged that Sawyer and Witherspoon left their posts because "the administration was tying their hands behind their backs" and not allowing them to fully implement the law.
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8-8-06
What were they thinking?
Badlandsjournal.com
Reading this morning’s Merced Sun-Star article, “Freeway work has chopped up roads,” we couldn’t help asking the obvious question: What were our leaders – local, state and federal elected officials, their staffs, the staffs of the city and county of Merced, business and financial leaders, large land owners and the newspaper – thinking?
So, we return to the elemental parental question, when the child returns injured or having damaged his family’s or someone else’s property: “What were you thinking?”
What were the UC Regents thinking in 1995 when they certified the UC Merced environmental impact report and conceptual plan so vague it was meaningless?
What were the members of the board of the Virginia and Cyril Smith trusts thinking when they donated land full of highly environmentally protected wildlife habitat and endangered species for the campus?
What were they thinking when local, state and federal politicians began the backroom process in Sacramento, called the” Red and Green teams,” in 1998, to “fast-track” the environmental permitting process to get the UC Merced campus located on highly environmentally protected land?
What were the UC Regents and administration thinking when they ignored the opinions of the best biological experts on the ecology of that land, its own faculty?
What were Valley legislators and UC administrators thinking when they condemned the sound research in the Legislative Analyst’s Office report questioning the demographic and economic assumptions behind “Tidal Wave II,” that a tsunami of college students existed that would a new UC campus?
What were they thinking when they bussed to Sacramento enough grammar school pupils from Merced in brand new little UC Merced T-shirts, to fill the first-floor corridors of the state Capitol, cute little lobbyists for what the Senate President Pro Tem, John Burton, D-SF was calling a “boondoggle”?
What were they thinking at the county when they split the UC Merced planning process away from the county Planning Department, establishing a separate planning agency to focus on the project without any guidance from a functional General Plan?
What were they thinking when the county enthusiastically embraced UC Merced and the great growth it would induce when its General Plan did not even contemplate a UC campus? What were they thing when they kept amending it until it became an absurd document offering no planning guidance?
What have they been thinking at the Sun-Star all these years? They started off at least making good advertising dollars on months of UC Merced Supplements, written by UC bobcatflaksters, paid for by the public. Now, they regurgitate everything a new generation of bobcatflaksters utter, and call it news.
What were UC, the state Department of Fish and Game and the Wildlife Conservation Board thinking when they spent millions of public funds on easements to mitigate the impacts of the campus, a number of which have now been judged by resource agencies to be useless – not mitigating the takes of endangered species and lacking funds to monitor the easements?
What were UC Merced administrators thinking when they obliterated a municipal golf course to build the first phase of the campus without having applied for their Clean Water Act permit to build the next phases?
What were they thinking when UC proposed and the board of supervisors approved a plan to build a whole new town, the University Community, beside the campus but outside the city limits of Merced?
What was the City of Merced thinking when it violated its own ordinance against providing sewer and water facilities outside its corporate city limits, when it provided sewer and water facilities to the first phase of the campus? What is the City of Merced thinking by not annexing the campus and the area of the proposed new town? What are they thinking now about UC’s “sovereign” land-use authority?
What were the supervisors and local farm groups thinking when – after eight years of UC planning and building and many subdivisions besides with more to come – they still will not establish a ratio of acreage to mitigate for the last of farm land?
What were they thinking when they planned the UC Merced loop road, linking an interchange at Atwater with UC Merced and an interchange at Mission Ave, south of Merced?
What are the opponents of the WalMart distribution center and the Riverside Motorsports Park thinking: that local government would not attract these projects to help pay for these interchanges for this UC loop road?
What was the City of Merced leadership thinking when it refused join the League of California Cities, Berkeley, Davis, the San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center, Protect Our Water, and other groups in support of the City of Marina, et al against CSU Monterey Bay in the state Supreme Court? In that case, which CSU lost, CSU argued that state agencies should not be required to pay for any impacts from their projects that occur off the site of the project. In UC’s letter of support for CSU, it argued it would have to pay $200 million in off-site mitigations in Merced if CSU lost the case.
What was the entire leadership class of Merced thinking when not one of them even questioned, let alone opposed UC Merced’s memorandum of understanding with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? It was as if all the little Mr. and Ms. UC Merceds in the circle haven’t a clue what kind of science and technology UC does in Livermore and, perhaps, how quickly it could come to Merced. LLNL is already trying to site the most toxic level of biodefense labs just outside Tracy. A whole new generation of nuclear weapons are currently being designed at both Livermore and UC’s other national lab, Los Alamos.
What were they thinking when they unleashed rapid urban development without a ground water plan?
What where they thinking when Applegate Zoo received an orphaned baby bobcat and UC Merced adopted it as their mascot?
What were they thinking when they adopted a Williamson Act area that included virtually all of unincorporated Merced County? Did it have anything to do with farming or was it just a gift to developers buying rural land? We think the chances are that if it had genuinely had anything to do with farming, it would have passed 30 years earlier.
What are the City of Merced planners and council members thinking about siting a project in an enterprise zone that will bring in nearly a thousand diesel trucks a day, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, into one of the nation’s top two worst air quality regions?
What were they really thinking about when they turned in their resignations — Publicist James Grant, Vice Chancellor Lindsay DesRochers, founding Dean of Social Sciences Kenji Hakuta, Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, Vice Chancellor and Provost David Ashley, and Environmental Compliance Director Rick Notini? Did they think the permitting process a done deal?
What are UC Merced administrators thinking — if there are any UC Merced administrators at the moment – about having to move the next phase of the campus down onto the land planned for their University Community if they cannot get a Clean Water Act permit through normal channels and may not have the clout to get it through those other channels?
What were they thinking when UC Merced unveiled Cat Spots asking businesses to create a discount program or other incentives that will benefit student pocketbooks? The city-funded California Welcome Center will print another 1,000 window decals incorporating its logo with UC Merced’s. What about students of Merced College?
What were they thinking when UC Merced partnered with the Great Valley Center? Grants, grants and more grants? For what? Well you might ask!
And while we are at it, what were the UC Regents thinking – as some were speculating on Merced land for development — when they approved a campus in an already imperiled air quality region, heading the wrong way fast? A research medical facility to specialize in respiratory diseases?
What was Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, thinking when he introduced two bills to gut the critical habitat designation of the Endangered Species Act before teaming up with Rep. Richard Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, to gut the whole ESA?
What was the county thinking when it did not notify resource agencies about the deep-ripping or disking of – at a minimum – 6,000 acres of land in the federal critical habitat designation area for 15 endangered species?
What have they been thinking all these years as they have been breaking every environmental law and regulation and putting political pressure on every resource agency not to enforce environmental law and regulation?
What were they thinking when, having lost their sales tax increase/ transportation fund initiative in the primary, they decided to try it again in November?
What were the governor and some of his cabinet thinking when they made the Merced County Association of Governments the point agency in a San Joaquin Valley-wide regional planning “partnership” effort?
What are they thinking now that the arrogance and corruption of government in Merced, among its local, state and federal representatives and their staffs, are beginning to stink beyond the county line? Consider, for example, the federal case concerning the former DA, the Sheriff, the worst scofflaw developer in the county, other prominent investors, a prominent real estate agency and the indicted, incarcerated perp who owned land on the proposed UC Merced loop road.
Badlands editorial board
7-29-06
Merced Sun-Star
UC Merced expansion may hit a roadblock…Corinne Reilly
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12517831p-13232122c.html
After more than $500 million in building, development costs and more than a decade of planning…vision for the expansion of UC Merced beyond its first 100 acres could be forced to change… permit the university needs to build on federally protected wetlands will likely not be granted to allow the university to move forward with its current 900-acre expansion plan, according to a senior manager at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “We feel that the project they have proposed, at this point, isn’t permittable,” Kevin Roukey, the Corps’ senior project manager in charge of UC Merced permitting. Failure to secure the federal permit — or a move to an alternate location to secure it — would mean the most significant setback to date for the university, and would force Merced city and county planners to redraw current plans for the 2,000-acre University Community… A corps of engineers analysis of UC Merced’s plan - one of the earliest steps in the wetlands permitting process - revealed vernal pools of extremely rare density and quality at the site,…”Unfortunately for the UC, vernal pools at the site they’ve picked have basically been determined to be the best in the state, and maybe even the country,” Roukey said. Officials at UC Merced say they’ve proposed mitigation measures far beyond the norm, and have purchased more than 25,000 acres of land for preservation. But Roukey said university planners failed to consider the quality of the land they’ve offered for mitigation. Roukey… “The land they’ve purchased to preserve is different from what would be destroyed. Basically they went out and bought a ton of property without knowing what was on it”…mostly grassland that contains vernal pools inferior in quality and quantity to those that would be destroyed…UC Merced spent more than $15 million in state grants and private donations. Roukey said…still possible UC officials could propose new mitigation measures to save their current plans. “But he said to date, they have not presented anything that would meet permittable standards.” “Of the alternatives laid out, there are three that would be far less environmentally damaging than theirs,” said Alexis Strauss, director of the EPA’s Water Division in San Francisco. “And building asphalt parking lots on vernal pools isn’t really a good show of damage avoidance.” “Where we are in the process is not a place where anyone can make that kind of comment,” UC Merced Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey said. Tomlinson-Keasey, who plans to step down from the university’s top post at the end of August, said in March when she announced her decision to leave that she would see the campus through its next phase of environmental review; that no longer appears feasible. It could take the agency more than a year to make its final determination. Livingston - more than 20 miles away - won’t be considered a practical option…remaining two alternatives would place the rest of UC Merced just south of the university’s preferred site, along Lake Road…would place the rest of the university closer to its first phase, but wouldn’t allow for the contiguous campus UC Merced proposes. And UC and county officials say both options would devastate plans for the University Community, a massive development… About $4 million in state grants were spent by the county to develop the community plan that could now be rendered largely useless…many fear UC Merced could develop into a second-class citizen among its prestigious sister campuses. The city of Merced, which has expressed interest in annexing the community, could step up to fund a new plan;… Alternative options could draw heavy opposition from the local farming community. But some say university officials have ignored signals that came as early as 2002 indicating their plans would likely have to change, and moved forward with their first phase of development despite the warnings. The EPA registered a formal objection to the proposal in April of 2002, suggesting UC planners consider moving south. “We’ve been urging them for years to consider decreasing the footprint of the campus,” said Strauss of the EPA. “You can’t just mitigate your way around the law to get a permit for the most damaging alternative.” Istas said the choice to move forward with the university’s first phase, even without a permit for the rest of the campus, was the best one for the Valley. Congressman Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, reaffirmed his support for UC Merced’s proposal this week. “The campus is absolutely in the right location,” said Cardoza. “One way or another, it’s going to turn out OK.”
8-4-06
Merced Sun-Star
Freeway work has chopped up roads…Chris Collins
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12543596p-13255904c.html
Merced County Supervisor John Pedrozo…five trucks filled with dirt did the unthinkable — they pulled a U-turn on the freeway. That little stunt is one of the many inconveniences and dangerous maneuvers that have county and Merced city officials frustrated with the way trucks working on the Mission Avenue interchange have damaged roads and clogged up local traffic. The dirt-hauling phase of the $68 million project ended Tuesday. The bad news is that for the past few months more than 1,000 trucks a day moved in and out of the construction zone with loads of dirt… truck traffic resulted in more than $1 million of damage to local roads, said county Public Works Director Paul Fillebrown… scheduled to open September 2007.
8-3-06
Sacramento Bee
From tiny acorns… UC officials hope the new Merced campus someday grows to a mighty oak, but for now it’s struggling to meet enrollment goals…Eric Stern
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14286255p-15102788c.html
With the political power and money already behind it, it’s easy to imagine the University of California’s newest campus in Merced - in the middle of Central Valley pastureland, miles from a stoplight - as a major research institution with 25,000 students. UC Merced still has a long way to go…about to start its second year, is struggling to get students there - and to get them to stay. If history repeats itself, UC Merced could follow the erratic - even negative - growth patterns the UC system saw when it added campuses in Irvine, San Diego and Santa Cruz in the 1960s. UC Merced isn’t exactly close to the beach…is likely to fall short of its target of 5,200 students by the 2010-11 school year. UC Merced offers a chance to get a University of California diploma that might not otherwise be available…eligibility requirements for UC Merced are equally as demanding as the other UC schools, but the incoming freshman at UC Merced have the lowest average grade-point average and SAT scores in the UC system. “If you build a campus basically in the middle of nowhere, it’s not surprising that this is not going to be the first choice for many students,” said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. “There was a certain amount of gamble (from the UC)…that they could basically hang their shingle out anywhere and be overrun by applications.” He fears the $500 million campus could drain resources from the other UC schools until Merced gets its footing. “It took a long time for Davis to become Davis.”
8-2-06
Santa Cruz Sentinel
Ruling favors town over gown…Roger Sideman
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/August/02/local/stories/02local.htm
Santa Cruz city…this week’s state Supreme Court decision further obligates universities to pay for costs incurred by campus expansion… local governments now have a legal precedent to push the university to cover more of the cost…court ruling resolved a 10-year legal battle between Cal State Monterey Bay and several cities near its growing campus at the former Fort Ord. The university’s board of trustees maintained it didn’t have to pay for fire prevention and traffic, sewage and drainage improvements off the campus. UCSC’s commitment has been disputed by local government leaders who charge the university understates off-campus impacts and that it won’t fully reimburse government coffers. Contributions by UCSC are presently made on a project by project basis. Government leaders want UCSC to make a total contribution rather than having dollars come in piecemeal fashion. Wormhoudt… the court’s decision also lessens the chance UCSC would sue the city over this November’s ballot measure…voters will decide whether to force the school to address concerns over campus growth by withholding the city’s water supply. Moose, Santa Cruz’s attorney…there’s a chance UCSC would come back to the table and offer a better approach to traffic mitigation. One sticking point - who will pay for increased water use - was not addressed in the CSU decision…
7-30-06
Modesto Bee
Wal-Mart foes show up in red…Leslie Albrecht
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/12525257p-13239396c.html
Residents who don’t want Wal-Mart to build a 1.2 millionsquare-foot warehouse in southeast Merced wore red shirts to a public meeting last week about which issues should be studied in the environmental impact report on the project…meeting was meant to solicit input about which issues - such as air quality, traffic and noise - should be studied when city-hired consultants write the EIR about the proposed distribution center…how would 450 trucks driving in and out of the center daily affect Merced’s already poor air quality, said Randy Chafin of EDAW Inc., the Sacramento consulting group that’s writing the report…Marilynne Parreira asked that the impact report examine specifically how the center would affect Golden Valley students…Susan Boykin said a climatologist should contribute to the impact report…”When
we take acres and acres of trees and pave it with acres and acres of asphalt, we are creating heat islands,” Boykin said. The city will solicit comments on what should be studied in the impact report until Aug. 11. SEND TO: Kim Espinosa, Planning Manager, City of Merced, Planning and Permitting, 678 W. 18th St., Merced 95340, PHONE: 385-6858, FAX: 725-8775 E-MAIL: planningweb@cityofmerced.org
Free the UC bobcat; protesters urge…http://www.modbee.com/local/story/10649708p-11435262c.html
Businesses put out invitation to Bobcats…http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12053415p-12809017c.html
Spencer purchased land from jailed man…Chris Collins
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/12425122p-13147572c.html
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has launched a third investigation into Merced County District Attorney Gordon Spencer, this time examining whether Spencer committed a crime when he and a group of local investors bought a piece of property from a man who was sitting behind bars and facing charges from the District Attorney’s Office. The latest investigation comes on top of an ongoing criminal probe into Spencer’s potential embezzlement of public funds and an inquiry last December that found Spencer had impersonated an investigator. The attorney general is now looking into a 21-acre lot on Bellevue Road that Spencer, Sheriff Mark Pazin, Ranchwood Homes owner Greg Hostetler, and five other prominent locals purchased in 2004. The intersection of the two events created a clash that was “absolutely impermissible” by attorney ethics standards, said Weisberg, the Stanford law professor. “There was a conflict of interest. ” Dougherty, the county’s presiding judge, said Spencer never told Byrd’s attorney about his involvement in buying Byrd’s land. Kelsey said she always has been troubled that the sheriff and district attorney joined one of the county’s biggest developers to buy the land.
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12-21-04
Reply to a local planning official
Badlandsjournal.com
From:
Lydia Miller, President
San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center, Merced CA
Steve Burke
Protect Our Water, Modesto CA
To:
Merced County Board of Supervisors
Merced CA
December 21, 2004
(via fax and email)
Re: December 21, 2004 Board agenda item: 10:30 a.m. Planning - 2004 Cycle III General Plan Amendment; University Community Plan.
The following is submitted for the record regarding the Board’s consideration of the University Community Plan.
An article titled “Reply to the Chancellor on UCP” was recently posted on the Badlands website (http://badlandsjournal.com). A local planner responded with the question: What do you think will happen if we don’t plan for the growth that will result from UC Merced?
It is a serious question, we appreciate it, and will try to articulate what we think about Merced County/UC Merced planning.
The first word that caught our attention in the planners question was the word, we. Who, we wondered was the planner intending to include in the word, “we”?
Participants in the sordid political deal in which Merced got the UC in return for Condit delivering the Valley for Davis in 1998, ripping the campus from the talons of Fresno where they had committed to locate at least a medical school as early as 1965, and had land already donated in Kearney Park?
Participants in the whole cover up, inconsistency, tendentious obfuscation, regulatory-agency avoidance in the process to streamline UCM permitting run out of the governor’s and congressman’s office?
Participants in the process of gagging the press, buying the press, and intimidating reporters so that no critical questions would appear in the media about the UC project?
Participants in the UCM propaganda machine, which featured huge, UC-produced, publicly paid-for PR supplements in the local paper? Local-paper regurgitation of UCM press releases as objective journalism?
Tiny tots in UCM T-shirts lining state Capitol corridors?
Greenlining Institute, proclaiming all Hispanic students would, should, and could go to UC if only they could stay in their family homes here in the Valley?
Promoters of a campaign to name a mascot that gave the prize to a species that does not appear in Nature.
Great Valley Center’s smart-growth propaganda, emanating from that tower of planning rectitude, Modesto?
Dot-driven public focus groups confronting lists of projects that contained all pre-cooked possibilities but no project?
The Nature Conservancy?
Producers of meaningless planning documents like the CAA, CPAC, CAPS, various MCAG plans, Merced Water Supply Plan, NCCP/HCP, storm drain master plan?
Grant hustlers using the East Merced Resource Conservation District to legitimize bogus plans and be a conduit for mis-spending public funds?
Authors of numerous General Plan amendments that have rendered a weak document utterly unintelligible as a planning tool?
The red and green teams?
The black-and-blue team?
Scientists scouring the pastures for endangered species who also found a dead baby Black Bear?
Participants in the political process of suppressing ground-truthed science about the biological inventories on UCM land?
The political geniuses behind adopting a blanket Agricultural Preserve over most of the county to mitigate for UC, the most significant restriction of private-property rights in the history of the county?
Right-wing propagandists who whipped up a mob of land owners against the much less intrusive Critical Habitat Designation?
Every scofflaw in the county Planning Department?
Members of a county bureaucracy that systematically obstructs public access to public documents?
Aggregate-company and developer lawyers who write planning documents and General Plan amendments?
Private and publicly funded indemnifiers against lawsuits opposing local land-use decisions?
Politically directed judges?
Contemptuous EIR-writing, finger-flipping, harassing consultants?
Packard Foundation money launderers? Venal, punitive local political staffers, hit squads for congressmen, state legislators and the special interests who pay them?
Land-boom speculators in elective and appointed public offices?
Elected officials that constantly, publicly harass members of the public who object to what only the county calls a planning process?
Returning to the question: “What do you think will happen if we don’t plan for the growth that will result from UC Merced?”, the next word that perhaps requires more definition is the word “plan” itself. Now, what could the planner have meant by this pregnant term?
A hopelessly out-of-date General Plan created in 1992 as the result of a lawsuit brought by the public against a county that could not provide the court with evidence that there was a Merced County General Plan; a General Plan the state Attorney General directed the county to update at least every decade; a General Plan that was never followed anyway, but has now been rendered absurd by the superimposition of huge development amendments over a plan that valued the county’s agricultural and natural resources?
The donation of a large tract of land to UC by a land trust too hapless to run a golf course during the height of popularity of that sport, manipulated by a local water lawyer, (his partner under indictment for defrauding Waterford), and a county planning department unwilling to enforce environmental law on its wetlands takes?
The wholesale use of programmatic UC EIRs to secure mandates for “plans to make plans” that avoid any concrete analysis of inevitable negative impacts to natural resources, public health and safety that set a new, low, irresponsible planning standard for Merced County? ?
Lawyer-guided, side-stepping of inconvenient permits, and building without them?
The policy of UC to continually whine that UCM is the first campus it has attempted to build since serious environmental protection laws were passed, therefore it can’t really be held accountable to laws of the land?
The splitting of land-use authority in two pieces: the county and UC?
The splitting of local planning offices in two: the county Planning Department and the UC Development Planning Office?
Wholesale confusion and lack of coordination between the two offices and between one or the other or both of them with the City of Merced?
The complete lack of an adequate, comprehensive water plan for eastern Merced County?
The disturbing eagerness and insanity of UC and its speculating boosters, landowners, and surrounding developers to double and triple the size of the Merced population in what has become the worst air-pollution basin in the nation?
The willingness of the City of Merced to break its own ordinance to supply water and sewer services to UCM, once UC promised to indemnify it from legal challenges to its decision?
A resource-easement program designed to fail?
The wholesale, unrelenting stream of planning propaganda in place of accurate information, leaving the public in as much dark as could be decently managed at every step in the process? (For just one example, the completely bogus presentation of the Williamson Act as mitigation for UC and its induced development.)
Leading the public into unpleasant speculations about future suburbs that could be named Smithville, Kelseyville, Crookhamton, Cardoza/Coelho Azorean Estates, Cuidad Cortez-Keene, Lynch-Adam-dAdamoville, Tatum Corners, Wellman Retirement Community, Lyons Industrial Park?
Every project in the county driven by the heretofore not really, fully, completely permitted location of UCM?
Rumblings of bribery and corruption in the county Planning Department?
In conclusion, what do we think will happen if we don’t plan for the growth that will result from UC Merced?
Well, Mr. Planner, the only answer we can give is: what’s happening at the moment. Merced’s agricultural and natural resources are being auctioned off to the highest bidders because of what you and your fellow planners did, while subjecting the public to an endless barrage of bureaucratic procedures and documents claiming you would not do exactly what you have done, are doing and will continue to do until your actions become so transparently corrupted that even the local judiciary will be unable to blind itself to them.
Sincerely,
Lydia Miller Steve Burke
Cc: Interested parties
Attachment: Badlands article “Reply to the Chancellor on UCP”, published December 17, 2004.
----------------
11-26-02
FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT!! Another Dull-witted boy story
DQ -- UC Gravy Train
One morning, when the dull-witted boy and his friend, Hector, reached the
railroad tracks while biking to school, they encountered a stalled train.
Behind them, as far as they could see, were automobiles waiting to get
across the tracks. Looking down the tracks in both directions, they saw
thousands and thousands of sheets of paper littering the gravel, the yards
beside the tracks and the streets behind them and beyond them.
They saw it was a strange train, made up of cars they had never seen.
Instead of flat cars, box cars, lumber cars, cattle cars or car cars, each
car of this train looked like a passenger car with a suite of offices inside
it. Before them was a suite with large, corner offices with big windows for
bosses at both ends of the car and little cubicles with tiny windows for
secretaries in the middle.
But what caught their attention most of all was the name of the train.
Little Hector, as some readers may recall, was a train fanatic who knew the
names of a lot of different railroad companies by heart. But he had never
seen this one.
It was called the "UC Gravy Train." The gold letters were painted on royal
blue. It didn't even have any graffiti on it. Hector was amazed.
Just then an old brakeman passed by, walking up the track through the paper
litter.
"Why's the train stopped?" the dull-witted boy asked.
"Son, it's derailed but that ain't half the story," the brakeman said. "This
is the longest train in the history of California gravy trains. It's got 47
locomotives.This train is actually goes all the way to Sacramento, stalling
car traffic all the way."
"Wow, this UC Gravy Train is one long train," the dull-witted boy said.
"You can say that again," the brakeman said.
"Wow, this UC Gravy Train is one long train," Hector said.
"Where is it derailed?" the dull-witted boy asked.
"Right here in Merced, wouldn't you know it?" the brakeman said. "Three
blocks from City Hall."
"Why here?" Hector asked.
"Human error," the brakeman said.
"What are all these offices doing on it?" the dull-witted boy asked.
"Well, that's your staff," the brakeman said.
"What's staff?"
"Well, your staff is what makes up most of your gravy train," the brakeman
explained. "You can't have a gravy train what without you have staff, see.
The two go together."
"Well, where's the gravy?" Hector asked.
"And where's the potatoes to put the gravy on?" the dull-witted boy said.
"This is pretty deep stuff for youngsters your age, mebbe it's out of your
depth," the brakeman said.
"Try us," the dull-witted boy replied. "We ask dumb questions."
"You too?" the brakeman asked. "OK, I'll give it a try. Where to begin?
"Well, you see, you got your taxpayer -- that's the ones that work for their
livings, like me. And your taxpayer pays his taxes to your government. Your
government is run by those crooks we elect every two or four years or six
years and, of course, their staff. You still with me?"
"You mean like Mr. UC Merced and Senor UC Merced, that Rusty guy from Los
Banos, who thought about selling his water to LA once, and them others?" the
dull-witted boy asked.
"Say, you're well informed for a youngster," the brakeman said. "You must
read the newspapers."
"Nope, I can't say as I do," the dull-witted boy said. "I got uncles."
"Well, anyways, as I was saying, "you can't have your gravy train without
your politicians making a pork barrel. It's your pork barrel that attracts
your gravy train. Those are the essential ingredients," the brakeman said.
"To repeat: politicians, pork barrel, gravy train."
"What's a pork barrel?" the dull-witted boy asked. "A pig in a bucket?"
"You pour the gravy in the pork barrel?" Hector, who was still only in the
second grade, asked.
"You boys have your dumb questions down real good," the old man said.
"You're pretty close there, boy, but -- on account of it's a government
thing -- it's not as simple as it sounds. But ..." he paused and scratched
his head, "actually it is as simple as that but they make it look as
complicated as they can because the taxpayers don't like to see their money
turned to gravy but your politicians are trying to get all the tax money
they can to build projects in their home districts they can put their names
on. For instance, since Senor UC Merced won the election, he's gonna want
his name on the football field at the new UC Merced, right up there with
Coca Cola and your state Holstein Breeders Association. But he can't get his
name up on it if it don't exist so he has to get his pork barrel going, see.
"Your pork barrel is kinda like home brew," the brakeman said. "Your uncles
make home brew?"
"Yep," the dull-witted boy said.
"It sort of smells, don't it? And it attracts flies?"
"Yep."
"Well, your political pork barrel ferments just like your home brew," the
old brakeman said. "But in the beginning, it's just an idea, an idea that
looks like it's going to make money for people who like to make money, see?
But what makes the greed turn sweet, taste fine and go down like velvet is
that it ain't gonna cost them nothing. The money is gonna come from somebody
else's taxes. That's your gravy. You got to have the pork barrel to get the
gravy, understand?"
The dull-witted boy and Hector found this more interesting than a book full
of fractions.
"Now, the way it works is this: once you get your pork barrel working in
your district and your politicians working in government, the next thing you
know you got a gravy train full of staff."
"Yeah, but what's staff?" the dull-witted boy asked. "I don't understand
staff."
"You staff just shows up," the old man said.
"Where from?" Hector asked.
"Nobody knows the answer to that," the brakeman said, scratching his head.
"It's just a fact of nature that when your get your pork barrel filling with
tax money, your staff shows up. It's like them mud holes out east of town.
When you got your pork barrel working, here came the scientific staff came
in on the gravy train and the next thing you know, them mud holes are being
called "vernal pools" and new little critters are being discovered every
day. Every year, when they fill up with water, here come them fairy shrimp
-- just like staff to a pork barrel, see?"
"I think so," the dull-witted boy said.
"Then, when the mud holes dry up, the fairy shrimp go away. Some say they go
into the mud and go to sleep in little seeds. Nature's a mysterious thing,
boys. Mebbe it's the same with staff. You can never tell. But when you got
your pork barrel and your tax dollar working together, they produce staff
and a gravy train. Fact of life."
"What's a pork barrel look like?" Little Hector asked. "I never seen one."
"Well, of course your essential pork barrel is an invisible Wish. It could
start working anywhere -- like in a donut shop or over a steak dinner or at
a service club lunch speech. But it starts as a wish, a dream, a fantasy.
"It's just like an invisible little seed in the beginning, see," the old
brakeman continued. " It starts out in somebody's mind like an itch. He
can't see it, it itches and he wants to get rid of it so he starts
broadcasting it here and there around town, telling his friends and bankers.
But it won't ever amount to anything unless it's fertilized."
"How do you make something invisible grow?" the dull-witted boy.
"That would be your application of large quantities of bullshit," the old
man said. "Your farmers will say horseshit's good for trees, old chicken
shit works for other crops but to get your pork barrel out of the conceptual
stage, liberal quantities of bullshit is the only form of fertilizer ever
known to work.
"But once you get germination and growth, your genuine political pork barrel
comes to life in many different forms," the old brakeman said, "oftentimes
in the form of roads, paid for by federal highway funds.
"In fact, in Washington, DC, where they make federal highway funds, they
have a cult of religious visionaries called The Lobbyists. These mystics
believe federal highway funds are the Mother of the Pork Barrel and the
Grandmother of the Gravy Train.
"Other times it's your dams. Lord, how the politicians love a dam,
particularly out here in the West. You have no idea how much bullshit
mystical lobbyists have been spread around trying to grow dam wishes. They
say there ain't no river around that couldn't be improved by putting a
tax-paid dam on it.
"Then you got your irrigation canals," he continued. "You have to have your
> canals so you can grow your cotton so the taxpayer can pay the cotton grower
the difference between the world price of cotton and what the American
cotton grower can get his congressmen to get the taxpayer to believe it
should be worth to a patriotic American cotton farmer to grow it.
"Now, this is too deep for you or me, boys," the old brakeman paused. "Some
call your water and your agricultural subsidies the highest, most mysterious
of all pork barrels. When you talk water and agricultural subsidies you're
talking about the highest mysteries of tribal cults. Nobody but members of
the tribe understand them or get any benefit from them. These subsidies
don't leave a trace except in the US Treasury and some local bank accounts.
"Take rice," he continued. "See, your genuine, patriotic American farmer
can't be expected to grow cotton or rice for what they'd pay a Chinese or an
Indian farmer to grow cotton in their countries, could they? That ain't
American. So we pay for the canal and for half the crop. Same for rice, only
rice takes more water. And then there's your ranchers. Everybody knows the
cowboys are true-blue red-blooded Americans. Just look at their hats. So
whenever they have a drought -- or staff says there might be a drought
coming -- your taxpayer pays your rancher something for the grass that
didn't grow.
"Like I said, those pork barrels surpass human understanding because they
involve tribal religious issues.
"But here in this congressional district, they dreamed up one helluva pork
barrel, mebbe the best pork barrel ever invented -- a public, tax paid
university campus and a nuclear research lab, so mebbe some day soon you
boys will be playing Nintendo on nuclear energy.
"See, it's better than a dam because it's new technology. A dam just
produces energy from water making a turbine spin and everybody knows how to
do it now. Nuclear energy is better because it's new technology."
"Why is new technology better?" asked the dull-witted boy.
"Because when you get new technology you get more staff and a longer gravy
train and that's what your politicians and your business leaders call Real
Good," the old brakeman said. "See, when nobody knows how to use a new
technology and it could be dangerous, your staff gets bigger and your gravy
train gets longer.
"Why?" Hector asked.
"In words you might understand, son, 'just because,'" the brakeman said.
"The other thing is project gets so big and expensive nobody can calculate
how much tax money is going to go into it. Then you have to hire on more and
more staff to contain costs.
"Then you got your locals standing around the pork barrel watching it boil,
bubble, sprout and grow," he continued. "Your locals come in two varieties.
"In a pork barrel like this, the people who support it are called Leadership
and the people who ask questions about it are usually called
Environmentalists. Your leadership is Real Good because they got Faith and
your environmentalists are called dog doo because they have Doubts."
"I don't get it and I gotta go to the bathroom," Hector said.
"Third willow on the right," the brakeman said, pointing to bushes plastered
with pieces of paper beside a fence.
Hector departed the conversation to answer the call of nature.
"That's a real smart little kid," the brakeman said. "Always glad to meet a
youngster interested in the railroad. It's getting so that young people
don't learn about railroads anymore."
The dull-witted boy agreed that Hector was an intelligent boy.
"Got a sense of history, that kid," said the brakeman. "You can't teach that
anymore. It's illegal these days, I think."
"Mister, do you know who are those people in that car up front staring out
the window at Little Hector taking a pee?"
The brakeman squinted at the car for a moment, then said, "That's just
another urban planner car. I think they said there were more than 300 urban
planner cars on this gravy train."
"What do urban planners do?" the dull-witted boy wanted to know.
"It's like I'm trying to tell you," the brakeman said. "They're just staff.
It don't matter what they do or if they do anything at all. What matters is
they are staff and they show up. Urban planner staff are the ones that stand
up in front of your elected officials and give your power point
presentations of boxes and arrows and especially of maps: subdivision maps,
annexation maps, specific plan maps, urban development plan maps, spheres of
influence maps and the like. Your power point presentation is one of the
strongest ingredients of your bullshit, see?
"You look at that thing and it looks just like a train, any old train," he
continued. "But, Bud, that train has mystical powers: a genuine gravy train
can stop most human thought for 50 miles either side of the track it sits
on."
"Why?" the dull-witted boy asked.
"Because people go mad when they get near it. See, son, they just gotta get
on it! This derailment was caused by the last lawyer in the state that
wasn't invited to the party. They say he was so upset he drove his car right
into this here gravy train in the hope somehow he'd get in on the deal. All
he achieved was a few hours of posthumous fame and get me a little
overtime," the brakeman said, chuckling.
Now the car he drove into was one, just one of a dozen cars packed with
lawyers on the UC Gravy Train. Those are special cars. They got "On
Retainer" written on their cars."
Little Hector returned from the willow bush.
"Better zip up, kid," the brakeman said, "you're exciting the secretaries."
Hector, a fastidious second grader, blushed, turned around and zipped up.
"See, boys, your real gravy train -- like this UC gravy train -- just goes
on and on," the old man continued. "Right now, even as they're sweeping off
the mortal remains of that unpopular lawyer, they're putting on 15 more
cars full of land speculators at the other end -- right next to the
plutonium cars full of nuclear weapons researchers -- your 'academic
component.'"
"What's that?" Hector asked.
"Well, this is a UC gravy train, so a university campus is involved," the
brakeman explained. "You have a university, you got to have your faculty and
you have to have something for them to do -- that's your academic component.
Don't get me wrong, it's just one part of it and not a very large part of
it, unless it blows up, of course.
"The biggest part is your development community that's going to build houses
around the nuclear research laboratory. Some people like to live near
plutonium, I'm told. Personally, I prefer sagebrush, roadrunners and coyotes
when I can get them. But that would be your water problem which, like I said
before is an issue of tribal religions too deep for you or me."
"But, what do staff do?" the dull-witted boy asked, trying to get the old
man focused on the original question, just once.
"Well, you see how all these cars are connected?"
"Yeah, just like on a regular passenger train."
"You got it," the old man beamed. "They've got people in there, the
conductors say, that do nothing but go back and forth talking to each other.
A little known fact about gravy trains is that no one ever gets off them
unless they get pushed because they're afraid that if they get off them,
they'll never be able to get back on. So, to keep their places, they have to
constantly talk to each other. The conductors say this is what staff calls
'staying on the same page.' There's only one thing that can get a staffer
upset -- he's got his salary, his benefits and his position on the car --
but if he's even once accused of not 'staying on the same page' with all the
other staffers, your staffer is gonna have a panic attack because he knows
what's next. That would be when they push him off the train."
"I don't understand what 'staying on the same page' means," Hector said.
"Well, the conductors tell me it means that everybody constantly has to be
talking to each other to make sure nobody gets any ideas of their own or
even looks out the window much."
"So what do they actually do?" the dull-witted boy asked, again.
"I tole you twice," the old man said. "They run back and forth between all
those thousands of cars agreeing with each other for fear if they don't,
somebody will push them off. When everyone is in full agreement -- they call
that 'consensus' -- somebody writes up a memo and makes a diagram with boxes
and arrows on it and they make a power point presentation out of it to put
on their computers and then they show it to each other."
"It sounds sort of stupid," Hector said.
"Hush, boy. There is one thing you cannot say about people on the UC Gravy
Train and you just said it. You can't say it because every one of them but
the secretaries has not only one but two or more degrees from universities,
and their studies were mostly subsidized by taxpayers.
"Now UC has its tribe of lobbyists too, just like the highway and the water
people and the farmers and ranchers," the old brakeman said. "They all dress
in simple robes of blue and gold. They look like monks. There are hundreds
of them, each with a begging bowl, swarming over your seats of government. I
ain't saying educational funding is any less mysterious than highway money
but the approach is different. There's a holiness about educational funds
that's lacking in highway deals. I actually feel sorry for the politicians
when they get in the clutches of the Holy Order of Higher Education
Lobbyists promising salvation and better school grades in their districts.
"But back to your highly educated staff," he said. "Every one of them
studied Gravytrainology and each and ever' one knows deep in his heart, mind
and marrow that anyone who isn't on that UC gravy train is dumb as a post --
like all the taxpayers that paid for their campuses and their professors.
Once again, it comes from learning in school how to stay on the same page by
talking to people like themselves and nobody else. They ain't like you and
me, just friendly strangers sitting by the side of the tracks talking 'till
the train clears. At your departments of gravytrainology in institutions of
higher learning, the first thing they teach you is who to talk to and who
not to talk to. That's the secret of professional success and the
fundamental premise of gravytrainology."
Just then a huge rumbling and crashing split the air like the biggest
thunderclap in the universe. Both the boys jumped a foot off the ground.
"No need for worry, boys," the old brakeman yelled, "That's the sound of a
gravy train starting up again."
"Where's it headed if the project is here?" the dull-witted boy screamed.
"Why aren't they getting off?"
"Kid, you're not as bright as you look," the brakeman bellowed. "I tole you:
nobody gets off unless they get pushed off. In a pork barrel project like
this UC Merced, the last place a staffer wants to end up is in the barrel,
on the ground, at the project. You want to be ON the gravy train, not on the
bottom of the pork barrel."
"Why?" Hector asked.
"Because then that staffer ain't going to be talking to other staffers. He's
gonna have to talk to the public, the people who live here where they're
gonna build this radioactive pork barrel with a college attached to it. Now
the staffers don't know the public don't know much about the project. The
reason they don't know that is because that ain't their department. That's
your public relations department, also known as the Mothers of the Power
Point Presentation.
"Like I say, the staffer only really knows one thing: he's got to stay on
the same page with all the other staffers. But they think the public knows
all about the project. And since the public can't be on the same page with
all the staffers because the staffers ain't dumb enough to share the page
with the public, they figure the public is mad."
"Why don't they share the page with the public?" asked the dull-witted boy.
"You don't get to see the page until you get on the gravy train," the old
man explained.
"Well, how do you get to see it?" Hector asked.
"That would be your 'emerging community leader' deal, which is a multi-step
deal. Your first step would be to start parading around your town calling
yourself an emerging leader. That's a wannabe leader. Then you borrow some
computer time from your boss and look up 'emerging leader' on the Internet
and get connected with the People Who Can Help You, that's a non-profit
foundation that gets its money from people who build huge factories and want
to save what they call signature landscapes and quaint rural people. The
step after that is buying a lot of clothes that make you look like you
really don't come from your town -- Ceres, Livingston, Red Top, Fowler,
Goshen, Orosi, Buttonwillow, Arbuckle, Gridley, Williams, Lamont,
Strathmore, Clements, Milton, Hilmar, Denair, El Nido -- places like that.
Then you gotta quit sounding like you come from places like that. When
you're really almost ready for the Interview, you gotta quit thinking like
you came from places like that. Finally, if you're lucky, you get a call
which would lead you to the Interview. So then you would go up to Modesto to
meet the Rich Ladies, aka The People Who Can Help You. If the Rich Ladies
decide you really, really don't look or think like your neighbors anymore,
they'll give you a peek at one little corner of the page -- something so old
it's been released to the public -- and ask you if you can get on it. Now,
there's three ways you can make it. You can talk your way in, you can write
your way in, but the best way is to make some charts, graphs -- they love
numbers -- put a bunch of boxes and arrows around them, and maybe you'll
make it."
"Make what?" the dull-witted boy said.
"Make it on the UC Gravy Train, stupid," Little Hector said.
"OK," the dull-witted boy said, "but what's all this paper littering the
tracks and everything?"
"That's different from your page," the brakeman said. "This is your flack.
There's cars and cars up there full of writers that do nothing but write
flack. Then they got other staff people to print it. When they print it they
chuck out the door into the world. It's part of the reason people go mad for
50 miles around a gravy train.
"See this one here," the brakeman said, picking up one of the sheets of
paper. "'Chancellor Tests First UC Merced Building.'
"Hmmm," he read on. It seems that 25 of the state's finest civil engineers
designed a 'non-chemicalized, totally self-contained personal sanitary
depository of wood in a style sensitive to prevalent local aesthetic design
standards, including a moon-shaped window.' Then they hired a construction
company out of Orange County to build it. Prominent university, local, state
and federal officials did a tour and the chancellor was given the honor of
being the first person to test it."
"What is it?" Hector wanted to know.
"Boys, this is good flack," the old brakeman said. "The essence of good
flack is that it leaves you with important questions, like 'what is it?'
Real Good Flack -- and the UC Gravy Train has the finest flack staff tax
money can buy -- is kinda like the old-time Chinese Buddhists. What they say
all points to what they haven't said. Real deep and mystical.
"Now in the case of this latest flack release now littering the entire
Central Valley, what you got is the announcement of the completion of an
outhouse on a cow pasture. It has to be an outhouse because they don't have
any sewer lines. It can't be a chemical outhouse because the
environmentalists would get after them for pollution. Now the chancellor of
these cow pastures which the pork barrel, the gravy train and the staff are
going to transform into a university, and the high officials apparently went
out to this outhouse. Then, if I am translating the flack accurately, the
chancellor went in the outhouse and used it. It doesn't mention if other
high officials also used it. However, it does say that when she emerged from
the outhouse, there was a 'warm round of applause.' Good flack always has a
happy ending."
The three of them stood beside the tracks and watched endless cars full of
offices lurch slowly past them.
"Where'd you say it was going again?" the dull-witted boy asked.
"Where it goes, nobody knows, kid," the brakeman said. "It just keeps going
until the money runs out."
As if to confirm the wisdom of the ancient brakeman, a window opened in the
office car inching through the intersection and a young man, kicking and
screaming, his hands desperately grasping at the window casing, was being
slowly ejected from the opening by a crowd of men and women insistently
pushing and pushing until, finally, he fell to the gravel bed of the
railroad tracks below.
The young man, scratched and bleeding, immediately leapt to his feet and
began pounding his fists against the slowly moving office car, imploring his
former office mates to let him back in.
"For God' sake, it was just a simple observation," he cried. "You can't be
serious! Let me back in immediately. I have a masters degree from UCLA. I
didn't write it down. I didn't do any analysis on it. IT WAS JUST A SLIP OF
THE TONGUE."
His former office mates closed the window and drew the curtains.
As his office inched away, he hobbled along beside it, pounding it, crying
out in despair until it was clear he could expect no pity from those within.
He was off the UC Gravy Train.
The kindly old brakeman led him away from the train, fearing he might throw
himself under its wheels, something similarly ejected staff had done before,
causing a time-consuming mess for railroad employees when they did. The old
man brushed off the fellow's khakis and pressed blue oxford shirt and picked
up his briefcase for him, saying, "There, there, the world ain't come to an
end. There's more than one gravy train come along these tracks. Just you
wait. Life ain't over," and soothing things in this vein.
But the young man was hysterical.
"I am a certified traffic consultant," he stated wildly. "Certified, I say.
I have advanced academic degrees and certification. I am a professional."
"I can see that myself," the old brakeman said. "You look every inch the
professional traffic consultant. If I saw you in a crowded Starbucks, I'd
say: 'By Golly, that man is a professional, certified traffic consultant.'"
"That's right, I am," said the gravy-train reject. "I want that clearly
understood."
"It is perfectly clear," the brakeman said. "No arguments here, right boys?"
The dull-witted boy and Hector shook their heads.
"Well, why did they do this foul, unjust thing to you?" the brakeman asked.
"It was just a casual, totally unquantified observation based on anecdotal
information," the consultant said.
"About what?" Hector asked.
"All I said, and absolutely all I said -- and just to my secretary, that
bitch Irene -- who blurted it to my supervisor because ... well, I won't go
into the social habits of the people in that office. Beasts, absolute
beasts. But all I said was that since the UC Gravy Train had derailed, it
was blocking every intersection in Merced and streets in every city from
here to Sacramento. Judging from the line of cars of people trying to get
to work this morning at this one intersection, I said I would have to call
the LOS -- that's the Level of Service for you lay persons -- unacceptable
this morning. Then I said something about Merced City not having been able
to afford to have more than one overpass on one of its two sets of railroad
tracks in town, and no underpasses. Then I wondered -- out loud, in front of
Irene, what a fool I was --if this might pose a problem we could look into.
"It was meant as a kind of joke, don't you see?" he whined. "It wasn't
serious! I mean who cares about traffic congestion in Merced or anywhere
else along the route of the gravy train. Certainly not UC. We're building
roads around Merced. I personally have -- had -- total control of the
planning for six feet of that beltway. Did I say that I have a masters
degree and am a certified traffic planning consultant?"
"Yes, yes, you mentioned that several times," the old brakeman said gently.
"Please go on."
"Every certified traffic consultant on the UC Gravy Train at the moment is
totally focused on the traffic congestion for Phase 1 of its project --
that's the part that won't impact anything except the golfers who lost their
municipal course. Forget the rest! Forget the other phases, the new town,
the nuclear lab and all the development around it. That's what I said:
Forget it! Forget it! Forget it!
"But they wouldn't and they pushed me out and that Irene was right in there
with the rest of them, laughing as she did it. The last one we pushed out
was at night when the train was doing about 40 miles an hour. He screamed
when he landed. I think he died or something."
Suddenly, the rejected consultant sobbed, grabbed his briefcase and dashed
up the tracks to begin his fruitless pounding on the sides of his former
office car on the UC Gravy Train.
"Boys, that's the saddest part of the gravy-train business you're looking
at," the old man said. "You might wonder how come I know so much about what
goes on inside those offices. It's from dusting off young fellows like that
one, the rejects you find wandering along the tracks, mumbling to
themselves, crazy as loons. Sometimes you can see their camp fires at night
in the old jungles where the fruit tramps used to gather. They all got a
tale to tell about their part of the project and they all tell the same
tale: once you're off the UC Gravy Train, they never let you back on it."
The old man paused and scratched his head, trying to remember something.
"Oh yeah, I should tell you this. I hate to mention it -- it ain't sad, it's
just mean -- but if them little backpacks of yours contain any paint cans,
don't do it on this train. Personally, I have enjoyed the peoples' art ever
since it started, but if you're artists, consider another canvas. They got a
private crew of graffiti dicks, all former Texas Rangers, that have zero
tolerance for taggers. I mean zero and I seen the bodies to prove it.
They'll track a tagger all the way to Utah and do him in and age is no
consideration. Younger the better, is their motto. Each one of them has a
special authorization letter from very high officials to enforce this
no-tolerance policy. UC definitely don't like anybody defacing its Gravy
Train."
Little Hector said, "I never."
"Me neither," said the dull-witted boy.
"Good," the old brakeman said.
"Tell us about some of the other cars," the dull-witted boy said.
"That's a tall order, boy, and we'd be here for months if I told you about
all the cars on the UC Gravy Train.
"There's your Governor's car and your Legislature cars. There's specially
made out of bullet-proof, foot-thick black glass. Nobody can see in. Nobody
can see out. They're blocked at each end and nobody can get in or out
either.
"But the fanciest cars are for the high UC officials," he continued. "The
paint on those cars is so clean and shiny it blinds the eyes. Hundreds of
little businessmen, all dressed in blue suits with gold ties are constantly
washing and polishing the UC officials' cars. You can't see inside those
cars because they have thick, brocade curtains of blue and gold. The
businessmen who clean the cars say the thread in these curtains is made of
pure gold. Every once in awhile one of the high officials opens the window
to give an official address. Official UC addresses are done by the official
dangling his or her backside out the window and permitting the businessmen
and prominent local officials to kiss it.
"Down the line you might see more than a hundred cars with fly-specked
little windows. That would be your secretarial pool cars. You'll see women
answering telephones behind the little windows. They all say the same thing
to whoever is calling. The message is: 'whoever you're calling is out of the
office.' That's an essential component of a gravy train and staff."
"Why?" Hector wanted to know.
"Well, your key difference between staff and ordinary people is that staff
has secretaries to tell anyone trying to call that staff is out of the
office. Otherwise you wouldn't be staff. Get it?"
"No," Hector said.
"Well, you're young yet," the old brakeman said. "You see those plumes of
smoke up ahead, looks like burning rice fields?"
"Yeah," the dull-witted boy said.
"That's your public records cars. See, to get back to the beginning, your
pork barrel, because it's a public project using tax money, has to comply
with all local, state and federal regulations. That means about half the
staff on the gravy train are constantly writing reports on the development
of the pork barrel so the public will know what's going on. Get it?"
"OK."
"But since your leadership don't want the public to know anything about the
pork barrel except flack, as soon as those staff reports are written and
read by leadership, they run them over to the incinerators in your public
records cars before the environmentalists get hold of them. Get it?"
The dull-witted boy bit a finger nail and said nothing.
"I know it takes awhile," the old brakeman said.
"But all the public records don't get burned up because copies of them go to
place like the natural resource agency cars. Now these cars look kinda like
old-time Pullman cars, a little worse for wear. The blue and gold paint is
chipped and you can see the old Pullman green underneath it. That's because
there's more money in pork barrels than there are in resource agencies. And
there's only a handful of people in each car. But you can't see these people
because the windows are blocked by signs. Each sign is just one big letter.
Put all the letters together and they spell, 'Sue us, please!'
"Then you got your punishment cars," he continued. "There done in an Old
West motif, real graphic and meant to show the public what can happen if
anybody asks any dumb questions and does anything that displeased any
powerful person on the gravy train.
"You got a few emaciated journalists prowling around open cages begging food
from passers-by. Then they've got a former congressman tacked up to a cross
with real nails. Then they've got the skin of a baby black bear tacked up
for some reason, right over the hide of the guy who shot it, making a
charming Western tableau. Then they've got their wanted posters -- mainly
pictures of vernal pools. They've got see-through padded cells for
consulting biologists who went nuts trying to prove they could build the
project without threatening endangered species.
"Then you have your road-kill panels," he continued grimly. "Oh, yes. Car
after car fitted out with tall, white walls on which they tack up dead
squirrels, skunks, coyotes, mice, dogs, cats and whoever else they can
scrape off the roads. If you look at this project from a raptor's point of
view, it looks like Sherman's march to the sea, burning crops all the way or
maybe what the Spanish did in Peru when they burned all the amaranth.
"Next to the flack cars, you find your newspaper cars," the old brakeman
explained. "The newspaper cars are connected to the flack cars by fax
machines. In the beginning of the gravy train you could still see through
the windows into the newspaper cars but that hasn't been true for a year
because fax flack has filled the newspaper cars entirely. Sometimes, if the
train is stalled and you're near a newspaper car you can still see movement
inside. Sometimes the paper seems to move about and you can imagine there
are editors within but you never see them anymore and they sure as hell
can't see you. Every once in awhile some editor gets so burned out, his
frying mind sets fire to the fax flack and one more local newspaper
uncouples from the line.
"Next to the newspaper cars, you have your dog-and-pony cars. They're set up
like theater stages, complete with adoring audiences of reporters and local
leaders hanging on every bark and whinny. One stopped near where I was
working on the track for several hours. It drew a crowd because people are
naturally curious when they see dogs and ponies dressed up like college
professors.
"So, we're all standing there watching the dogs bark, the ponies whinny, the
local leaders acting like they understand every word and asking important
questions about growth and prosperity and the reporters scribbling away in
their notebooks. But, boys, none of us out here on the track could speak
either dog or pony so we couldn't make head nor tails out of it.
"My personal favorite car on the UC Gravy Train is a special glassed-in car
full of naked lawyers who were too stupid and corrupt to be of any use on
the project. They don't feed them anything so every couple of days or so
they hold a trial, convict one of their mates and eat him. It's something to
see."
"Then, of course, you got your boosters -- confetti and pompom girls. A lot
of those cars are filled with school kids and your ethnic minority groups.
No gravy train can do without your smiling children and your smiling,
grateful minority people -- just glad to be here in the US improving
themselves through education. They tend to work on your politicians' hearts
and minds. Who ain't gonna vote for more tax money for a university in their
region after your school children and your minority leaders have come to
them begging for the chance to be Real Successful Americans like that
traffic consultant and telling you that if you don't vote for that campus
and the nuclear research lab in your backyard you're just condemning those
people to ignorance and privation.
"Then you got your school teachers and your school administrators cars," he
continued. "These look like floats at the homecoming parade. They are alters
made of wire and blue and gold paper napkins. It ain't Christian exactly
because they're worshiping a Golden Bobcat, a creature that does not occur
in nature but which they highly exalt anyway. They kneel all around it and
pray 24/7.
"The UC Gravy Train goes on and on," the old brakeman said. "You got your
developer cars and your land speculator cars. The only way you can tell the
difference is your developer cars have little slit windows about an inch
thick that double as rifle ports. Land speculators don't have any windows at
all.
"Boys, you see that boxcar coming up?"
"Yep," the dull-witted boy said.
"Well that's my car and I'd better hop it or I won't get any lunch. See you
later."
With that the spry old brakeman disappeared in the open door of the boxcar.
The boys were hoping to see the cannibal-lawyers cage but gave up after a
couple of hours and went home.
