The phuture of LA as seen from the 91 Freeway

I was heading back to LA from the Temecula Valley where my, soon-to-be F*&*#d Buyer, relative saddled himself with a fixed-mortgage PUD in a soon-to-be ghost town.

Some arsehats at CalTrans decided it was a good time to rack up some overtime in order to saddle us with more future unfunded pension obligations and close the 710 freeway. So I had to continue on to the 110 to go south from the 91 Riverside Freeway.

Low and behold some youths of the local population availed themselves of the opportunity to commence havoc on the highways.

(background)

Everyone and their lead-footed mother knows that the CHP lacks any funds for extra staffing for CalTrans related work. This means when you see a patrol car sitting inside some ramp closure, there are no patrol units on the roads nearby. You can forget about getting any fast help from the CHP if there is a CalTrans Closure within 5 miles of your location.

These kids knew that and decided to play cowboy on the highway. One girl plopped her arse on the window-sill and drove her POS car sidesaddle!!!!
The other underemployed friend in the passenger seat stuck her foot on the gas pedal. Then her friends in at least 6 other cars started to do their own CHP style "traffic break". Weaving side to side and scaring the bejesus out of all the law abiding folks in the rear. Pretty soon all of the sheeple slowed to a crawl watching the wasted youth of America prance around in front of them like self-appointed gods.

I wasn't going to have any of this and continued on at 65 mph. Everyone in my car screaming at me to back-off and submit. I ignored them because I know that real thugs just stand up in the sunroof, turn around and pop of caps in some "fools" hood. I held my ground and drove right through them. They all gave way. All of them met my stare and gave way. None of them were bad-ass enough to meet my challenge of their false authority. Each of them watched me pass on with firm resolve ignoring the banter of my passengers.

(truth be told none of them looked like they could afford to get their dated cars banged up in a TC, I had no qualms about that since I really do have insurance. And for all of you that think I am some jive arse fool, talking nonsense, know this, I drive through south central LA almost on a weekly basis and I don't mean on the freeways. I got out of my car and went about my business even during the riots)

anyway......

They closed in behind me and continued to terrorize those that did not stand up to them.

The chatter in my car fell off to stunned silence as I worked my way past the misguided youth.

All lot of you reading this will think my actions were reckless and a danger to my family. Your right, there was a better than even chance that those punks could have turned violent. I was aware of that possibility before I committed to my actions. I continued on in spite of my misgivings.

But what is more reckless, staying with the crowd and letting others heard you into subservience, or standing your ground and declaring that what is mine is mine and no one can take it away from me.

That my friends is the phuture of California. It is between those that hold their ground and the thugs and miscreants running ruff shod on the unfortunate majority that will be addled with all of the burdens of the recent and fleeting excesses.

Those thugs can take the form of disaffected youth or paper pushing creditors. Either way you are hapless if you don't hold onto what is yours and do your damnedest to keep it away from the takers.

A Phuture Reflection on the Collapse of the (Inland) Empire

DATELINE: Temecula, Summer 2008

Looking back now it seems so easy to slap your forehead and say "Of, course", but not so long ago it would have taken a real gut-check to open your eyes and ask "Why is all of this here?"

Look around out here in the IE, every boarded-up commercial space covers a storefronts dedicated to filling homes up with superfluous brick-a-brak to fill all that extra space and toys for all those spots in the multi-bay garage.

All those families that escaped the tight confines of rental units in Orange, LA and San Diego, burst upon the IE and into the spacious 3/2 homes with garages and yards needed to do something to keep from staring at all that extra drywall.

"Honey lets' toss out all that old furniture that we brought from Garbage Grove last year and take that 40 grand of equity and really do all the rooms right?"
"Wow, honey can we!!!!! YEAH!!!!!

"Honey, I'm bored"
"Well, No-Worries Lending called and said we can pull another $60K out of the guest bathroom, let's get matching jet skies for the whole family!!!!!!!!

"Honey, I'm bored"
"Hey, we just got a mailer from Grows on Trees Financial, the bede in the master bath get us another $45,000. What do you want to do?

"I don't know, let's be prudent this time."

"Start a college fund?"

"No silly, Phase 3 is opening behind us. We split that $45 as a down on two units and then we'll sell one when phase 4 finishes and drop the other one in two years so we can keep every dime of the $500,000 profit. Beatty next door told me that is what she and Frank are doing.

"That sounds like a great idea!"

It all made sense back then, life is good, I'm living the dream! I deserve the 7 piece mahogany bedroom set, 60" plasma, ATV, JetSki, and Jacuzzi tub.

And the housing industry obliged them. Making sure that everyone got a chance to live the good life and that was going to last forever. But everyone pushed it to far, and little by little, all of the little players who tried just a little bit harder to get their tiny percentage of the pie, pushed it just a little bit more. And that is why we are here today.

Everywhere along the line from the guy who owned that barren empty land to the loan originator who got that family to sign the papers for that tiny patch of former orange groves, only had to concern themselves with maxing out their random opportunities. "Everyone was getting rich, why can't I expect a little bit more." But all these little bits add up, and pretty soon you are going to run out of folks that can pay the monthly nut that finances all this good fortune.

Did you really think we were going to keep spending like crazy at the Lowes, Staples, B-B-Q City, Bob's Billards, ATV Town, Best Buy, Kohls and the like.

What happened when the big chain stores started seeing same store sales drop from the one year old stores sprinkled all over the IE like pixie dust. Those big shot CEO's started to shutter the under-performers. They have to prop up their falling stock values with big pronouncements on cut-backs and efficiencies. Wall Street wants answers, it doesn't matter if they are excuses.

The big chains retreated and forced everyone to travel farther to more established stores. This made traffic even worse in the IE. But the same store sales numbers looked better and Wall Street loves it when you lop off under-performing liabilities, take a one time $30 mil write down and promise better times ahead for your stock. Everyone should be really happy that they did this, right? Your Retirement depends on that 401 K ,don't it? It's bad enough that my home is not worth what I paid for it but now you tell me my retirement depends on Home Depot same store sales? Now my portfolio is racing my home to see which hits bottom first. Great! Dow 1400 in 07' and 8000 in 08'?

When the big anchors in the corner mall close, the little mom and pops and Quiznos next door will die a quick death. All of those folks in the service/retail market left out of work and not be able to pay the option ARM monster mortgage pushing foreclosures up even more.

Home prices sank and the commuters who were the only ones left with incomes ended up in a deeper funk. Driving in traffic longer, eating up that $6/gal gas. Getting home too late and too despondent to go out to the movies or the restaurant.

And "poof" even more places started closing down. No more Macaroni Grill in BFE Wildomar, you have to drive 8 miles into downtown Temecula for a meal or a movie.

To heck with that, they all said, and just got 50 .lbs frozen bags of stuff at Costco and went back home to watch on-demand movies.

And just like that, the service sector in the IE shrank back down to what it was in 1990's in terms of how many people were need to be employed to service a ghost town of commuters trapped in negative loan to value mortgages sprinkled in between all those empty homes.

How much longer will these poor souls languish in these ghost towns? How can they sleep at night wondering if tomorrow, another neighbors' driveway will have a U-haul truck parked and packed up for someplace else.

When will the good times come back to the Empire?

Why don't I count, but want to count you.

Here are some reasons why I should be President:

• Parents and other folks, who hoped the best for me, when I was growing up, always reminded me that, when I grow up, I can become President one day. When I was little, the future, hoped for by my elders, seemed to hold such promise. Men were walking on the moon when I first opened my eyes to this world. No generation born before me was witness to an event as momentous, unifying and pivotal to the future of mankind and sadly no generation, after mine, was born with men looking down from the heavens, covering the world with the tip of their thumbs as they crossed the plains of Frau Moro. What went wrong for me? For us? I got on the ride, we call life, at it's absolute climax and it has been downhill, for all of us, since.
• The Constitution states the I have to be 35 years old and a citizen of the United States. That part was easy. The Poll Tax is abolished so pretty much everyone can vote for me. But in order to get my name on the ballot, I have to file a lot of paperwork. But the paperwork is different in each of the fifty states and I have no idea what the rules are for ballots for ex-patriots and the outlaying territories. If the Democrats and Republicans can bearly manage to get on every ballot, what chance do I have?
• In school they taught me in social studies and government class that anyone can be elected in this country. They even taught by example, holding elections for the student body. This was my first exposure to the truth, because it brought me face to face with the popularity contest we Americans pass of as Democracy. I declined the encouragement of my teachers to run for office. I did not feel compelled to stand in front of the student body and do my rendition of Sally Fields' Oscar acceptance speech. If I wanted it bad enough like Pedro, I could have won an office, I just don't think I would have treated the office with any respect. The rewards of office rang hollow to me, if I had only to say anything to get it. The people who got elected to the student body were rewarded with the responsibilities vital to the education of the students who saw fit to put them in charge of organizing dances and putting the yearbook together. WOW! I don't know how I could have gotten through school if the popular clicks weren't slavishly toiling away at paper streamers and glitter decorations. But then again you only get out of something what you put into it. Is' my fault for not wanting more out of student government, but they did give me the chance to learn what self-government is and is not. Thank you teachers for that.
• I've managed, so far, to not get convicted of any treasonable offense. I'm not sure how long my luck will hold out, since almost anything you do or say can be construed to run afoul of the Patriot Act nowadays. But that's all I have to say about that.

Here are just a few of the reasons why I can't be President:

Those nice old folks and my parents never mentioned that I would have to find a way to spend nearly a billion dollars to convince people to vote me into office.

There are only two ways to spend that kind of money.

1. I have to take it out of my own assets.
2. Or, I have to convince, cajole, connive, beg, borrow or steal it from someone else.

I am not a billionaire so option one is out of the question for me. Thanks to the generous tax policies and boom markets of the previous administrations, there are lots of fresh billionaires who can spend that much or even ten times the going rate for the office. It turns out that most of them are content to sit on the sidelines and only the 'loons' have tried to buy their way into the office. In fact more billionaires have spent more time and money trying to get off the planet than have gone into politics. Does that relfect more poorly on their priorities or the value of being president?

Option two is the popular path to the oval office. Why risk your fortune when you can find plenty of others willing to advance their interests through your ambition. I can't bring myself to do this. I can't fool myself into thinking that rising through the ranks of a political party won't leave me beholding to others that have put me in the spotlight. I can't abide by a platform based on capturing the slightest majority of the electoral college demographic. The president is supposed to read, comprehend and execute the duties of the Constitution as the leader for every single American. Very few of the recent ones have had the self-discipline to constrain his focus to the tasks laid out in the Constitution.

In the movie 300, Xerxes's proclaims that he is willing to sacrifice the lives of all his armies for his glory and kingdom and King Leonidas retorts that he, on the other hand,is willing to die for any of his men. For any of you who watched this scene, how many of the presidents who have served as your Commander-in-Chief can you imagine to be like Leonidas? How many of them resemble Xerxes? In all honesty, how many, if any, have lived up to your expectations as your leader?

It is a hard job, and it is very hard on the mind and body of the one who becomes President, but that still does not excuse the recent lack of quality and integrity of those to hold the office. The choices we have for this office are only as good as the process by which they are elected. This system only leaves room for those with the money, cunning and guile to wield enough influence to prevail. No one can consider honorable the methods by which our candidates for president are selected.

I foolishly continue to hope that my choice for the next leader will be based on my faith to entrust in someone who can do a better job of it than I can. Someone who will uphold and defend the Constitution in it's entirety. Someone who will wake every morning and ask themselves "What do I need to do today to ensure that every single American has an equal chance to do the best for themselves and this country?"

There are, by far, more obstacles to my Presidency, most of them bear some manner of influence on how I can't imagine doing the things, I have studied or witnessed, current and former president commit in the execution of their duties as my president. Any other reasons I can imagine, pale in comparison to the caveat of campaign fiancees. I literally can't afford to get into the rest of my reasons why I can't be the President of the United States of America.

If you, on the other hand, can imagine faithfully executing the duties of the office of the President of the United States, please let me know if you will campaign for the office in 2008. If you can't get yourself on the ballot, I will write you in mine. But first, you have to convince me that every American, not just the ones that vote you in, deserve having you in-charge for four years.

I eagerly await a correspondence with someone worthy of my vote.

A vote that I do not ever wish to make in vain, again.

A vote that I will rigorously protect from the charlatans.

A vote cast in gratitude to the sacrifice of those that defended my right to do so with their lives and limb.

If you feel up to the task, please reply below and convince me that I should trust you with my life, liberty and happiness for the next four years.

If you find yourself disinclined to bear the heavy burden that is the Presidency of the United States please, also, reply below.

Please only recuse or nominate yourselves. If you think higher or lessor of others, then please forward this petition to them. I fully hope to receive a unique reply from every citizen of this country.

Count me out

I will not seek, nor will I accept, a nomination for the Presidency
of the United States of America for the next election.

Although I have met all of the requirements for eligibility for this office in accordance with the Constitution of the United States, I would consider the duties and obligations of this high office to be beyond my power to faithfully execute.

It is with a heavy heart that I, as a citizen of these United States, must recuse myself from the solemn obligation of executing the duties for this high office, once held in the highest regard by generations before me. I cannot in good conscience wield power in a manner that will force me to sacrifice the liberties of the citizens for whom it would be my solemn duty to protect from all enemies foreign or domestic. I cannot knowingly seek the endorsement of my fellow Americans at this time of national crisis.

A crisis whose resolution I cannot foresee surmounting without sacrificing the life, liberty or happiness of the very same citizens who would have me elected to this office. An office, whose soul purpose is the execute the will of the people upon whom I will be forced, by providence and lack of honest foresight of those that came before, to inflict upon with burdens, unimaginably incongruous to the principals we Americans have held so dear for generations. Ideals we have sacrificed our bravest and brightest to achieve only to squander away.

I fear I will lack the resolve to make the hard choices that will have the most heinous consequences for those citizens of this country that have contributed the most blood, sweat and tears for the continued welfare of this republic. I look upon with dread to the inevitable bickering and bargaining I must endure to wrest control from those that have benefited most and given so little in return for their good fortunes.

I fear that the impotent rage that our foreing policy has become in the eyes of our friends and enemies will hamper our ability to advance the interest of our nation abroad. I rue the day that the president will be compeled to acquiesce our most vital principals of free trade amoung free nations because the only alternative we have left for ourselves is ashes in our mouths.

I am as certain of my doubt to do what is best for this county in the future, as I am certain that my lack of effort in the past has contributed to mess we are in now. I never took the chance to ask my fellow citizens to do something to make things better. Never taking the effort to ask is this the best we can do? And having the courage to act on the need with a solution.

May all who serve this great nation, have the courage to do what is best for the freedom of every soul. And may everyone of our citizens have the courage to seek out and find the best amongst us to serve this country.

Sincerely,

Me