cc of My email to Supervisor Steve Kinsey 11-27-11

Dear Supervisor Kinsey:

Looking back one year at the roster of the Board of Supervisors and with my 81st birthday almost upon me I trust you will understand the urgency I feel to get something off my chest before it is too late.

Yes, the Measure B parcel tax passed by a generous two thirds majority in the November 8 election and I, who opposed the Homestead Measure A parcel tax in 2009 lost this time too, leaving the reasonable appearance that I’m just an old crank who opposes parcel taxes. Which is not true, Sir, just not true, and if you will bear with me for a couple sentences I will tell you why, and how that bears on the Evergreen Avenue project in HomesteadValley.

My professional career - that is, the employment period with the savings plan which provides a modest income in my retirement - lasted thirty one years with the California Department of Transportation, commencing December 1, 1960, when I believed that population growth and economic development were good and should be encouraged, and that freeways were the lubricant to a prosperous and happy future. I was foundering at the time in an interlude of insanity. Thus, when I saw your name conspicuously among our conspicuous leaders who in public “Proudly Support the HighSchool Parcel Tax RENEWAL” my heart was overcome with a deep and troublesome disappointment. I am not against parcel taxes, but the 3% per annum automatic increase boggles my comprehension of reality, which was forged at the last job I had before Caltrans, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

In the light of the consistently dreary economic news I could not in good conscience endorse Measure B and its 3% kicker and still claim sanity formyself. (Recall that Measure A had only a 2% per annum increase!) THAT iswhy we are on opposite sides of the parcel tax issue and I am terribly saddened that we are separated on that account.

But the question here is whether we are equally separated by the issue of Evergreen Avenue, which I believe is being rammed down our throats (or up our…) by the same inexorable grind of the wheels that just gave us MeasureB.

Thanks for listening, and best wishes always,

Ray Cook

Oremus (Let Us Pray)

"From ghoulies and ghosties and
long leggedy beasties;
From things that go bump in the night" -
and From the insatiable lust for more money
that inflames us and leaves us no peace -
Oh Lord deliver us.
Amen

Measure B isn't about money.
Measure B is about MORE money.
3 per cent more will be fine,
every time,
but we gotta have it.

Vote NO on Measure B
(Tough Love)

(more money more money more money more money
more more more money more money more more more...)

FYI

(This is the complete text of an email I sent to Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey yesterday, Friday, May 13, 2011 at 9:22 am, which I couldn't post here then because Blogger was out of commission.)


Dear Supervisor Kinsey:

My first job after graduating from university in 1957 was "Management Trainee" at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco - 400 Sansome Street in those days (at the corner of Sacramento Street) - where daily I had my hands on millions of dollars in cash or securities of one sort or another, and had to account for every dime of it. When some years later the time came to leave for greener pastures, the Fed's gift to me was a deep and abiding sense of Fiscal Responsibility.

Now, in a single anonymous document, (the front page editorial in its Homestead Headlines issue for May 2011, "Measure A Funding Update...,") the Homestead Valley Community Association has soared to unbelievable heights of creative writing and sent my feeble old heart into convulsive spasms of disbelief.

Best regards,

Ray Cook

Gratitude

The May 2011 issue of "Homestead Headlines," the Homestead Valley Community Association's monthly newsletter, arrived in the afternoon mail. If you haven't received your copy yet, get one ASAP.

Best regards,

Ray Cook

MORE Good News !!

Tom Stienstra's column in today's San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday, March 27, 2011, Sporting Green, back page) has the Disciples of Progress turning handsprings of joy! Check it out!

Ostentatious Philanthropy vs Wages

THEOREM: "The magnitude of Ostentatious Philanthropy is inversely proportional to the welfare of the working class."

PROOF: Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, March 7, 2011: Long-Run Impact of the Crisis in Europe: Reforms and Austerity Measures. Quote: " However, a long-run solution to Europe's problems requires economic reforms that increase competetiveness and REDUCE LABOR COSTS (emphasis added - ed.) in the peripheral countires. Such reforms could promote convergence of the euro-area economies and enhance the long-run sustainablility of monetary union."

Saint Patrick and the Editor's Sidebar

Tying it All Together - PART 9 - posted March 17, 2011 - Saint Patrick's Day.

In the March 1996 edition of their journal, "Right of Way - for the Right of Way Professional," the International Right of Way Association published an article entitled, "Columbus Meets Saint Patrick, A Vignette of American History," written by one their members, which recounted that member's eviction of an American Indian woman from her ancestral home. The editor chose as a conspicuous sidebar this quotation from the article: "Her ancestors were witness to the transfer of land through discovery, conquest, revolution and war - polite names for theft and violence."

Which brings us full circle, to "Tying it All Together - PART 1, posted January 27, 2011.


Happy Saint Patrick's Day, all,
from shaggy old Ray, and recall
something today
that YOU should have done,
(except nailing him to the wall !)