Sonny Star, the Gigolo Press, still claiming it got it right on RMP

The Merced Sun-Star missed, mangled and mutilated the Riverside Motorsparts Pork story so badly in alliance with its advertisers bent on stupefying its readers that it still doesn't get it after all this time: Condren and the County changed the zoning on the land to give the planning department and whoever ends up with it almost unlimited powers to develop it as they please. Without that chunk of private property adjacent to the former Castle Air Force Base, now under County control, the base project cannot get foreign trade zone status. And without that status, many local rice bowls will be broken. Condren has a thousand acres to sell under the most permissible zoning available, regardless of the outcome of the CEQA case.

But, for Sonny Star, a new ensemble for another spring makes all last year's bad go away.

The Merced Sun-Star got exactly one story right throughout the approval process for Riverside Motorsports Park: a relatively small one about how approval for the track project hinged on the Merced County Board of Supervisors overriding the Castle Airport Land Commission's refusal to shrink the safety zone on the airport sufficiently so that on paper it would be "safe" to send planes into the Castle strip over the race track. This story evidently caused so much consternation in the chambers of commerce among those "decent" investors that the actual hearing on the override, Sonny Star showed up in force -- two reporters plus the managing editor. The result was a story that added to public confusion.

All the while, RMP was buying those inserts, the greatest campaign to bribe Sonny Star since UC Merced.

Sonny Star, Cameron does not say, endorsed the RMP project.

However, after the approval and Condren stiffed his local investors, Sonny Star printed all kinds of nasty rumors about him in a hit job rivalling the one they did on former DA Gordon Spenser. In both cases Sonny got all the news except any actual indictment, and in Condren's case, all the news came mysteriously after the supervisors had approved the project. In this regard, Sonny's coverage had as much political impact as Supervisor Diedre Kelsey's ex post facto "town hall meetings," which she conducted as if they had the force of public hearings on the project, when they did not.

Also, during the build-up to the project approval, Sonny steadily ignored or bashed opponents of the track, adopting an attitude toward the project as critical and illuminated as that of Carl Pollard, a Merced City councilman at the time, who mumbled things about "jobs" before the supervisors and planning commissioners from time to time.

"Trusting gang of county supervisors"? Badlands published a memo from Condren written over a year before project approval bragging about having four of the five in his pocket already.

"Decent bunch of racing enthusiasts"? While one of those blameless civic leaders, Kenny Shepherd, was managing RMP's Altamont Speedway, a local resident who opposed the reopening of that track was buzzed by helicopters while the project CUP was violated so many times that even the lords of Alameda County government, who frequently forget that that county's line extend over Altamont Pass, were moved to punitive action as residents sued.

The only mistake Condren seems to have made in his long con on Merced County and local investors was in his choice of lawyers, the bloviating Tim Taylor in the lead, whose reply brief in superior court boiled down to a lecture to the San Joaquin Superior Court judge appointed to hear the case: "Now dear," he seemed to say, "we all know that CEQA exists, but you and I know it doesn't really matter, don't we." Taylor and his associate on the RMP case left the firm now suing Condren, and left them holding a $150,000 bill. Presumably his lawyers are holding a million or two of shares in RMP. We have not heard yet from the managing partners in Taylor's new law firm.

Condren and Sonny Star both allege that the credit crisis is making it difficult to impossible for him to raise the necessary funds to build the track. This raises the question of the congressional district in which the project is located, represented by Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, which remains very close to having the highest mortgage foreclosure rate in the nation (second only to Detroit at the moment, according to the lastest reports). Cardoza's political philosophy boils down to: "This office does not get involved in local affairs (although his office is located on the third floor of the County Administration building) except when it comes to making three attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act on behalf of my friends in finance, insurance and real estate." It is a very dubious proposition that Condren didn't see something like the credit crisis coming. The financial press was full of warnings as early as 2006 and Condren's intelligence is not as corrupted as either Cardoza's or Sonny Star's.

Badlands Journal editorial board
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2-16-08
Merced Sun-Star
Condren caught sitting on his last limb...Steve Cameron
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/196/story/145051.html
...A member of Condren's original investment group -- a decent bunch of racing enthusiasts who lost every penny and then were dumped from RMP entirely -- recalled something Condren confided in them quite early in this miserable affair.
"Merced County is the perfect place for the project," Condren told them, "because it's poor, they're hungry for any big new idea and they're dumb enough to approve anything."
Sadly, Condren's cruel analysis was correct, at least in part.
RMP did sail past a trusting gang of county supervisors who should have done a whole lot more homework.
He also found a lot of honest, hopeful Merced County business folk to rally around him -- promising the moon but later failing even to pay his bills.
It's ironic that Condren, who has masked so much of his business in a blizzard of confusing documents and legal mumbo-jumbo, now finds his ultimate exit speeded up by a group of angry attorneys.
Talk about justice with a smirk. This is it.
One of the first rules of the free-market jungle is never forgetting to pay your lawyers.
But our boy John did it, signing a promissory note for $147,000 to clear up his bills with the firm of Somach, Simmons & Dunn.
When he couldn't or didn't come up with the money, they sued...