the 1940s, back east, many people died at the age of 62. So, here again, it delighted my optometrist husband when a 75-year-old woman came to be examined, and when she was finished she asked if he had time to examine her 95-year-old mother. All things considered, life was good then. People liked each other. Then came the university, and the educated elitists, and things changed. Some of the professors brought along their extended families, and once they came they wanted to close the gates of Santa Cruz. They also brought their new left philosophies and began to impose the same upon their students and the rest of us. Now, sometimes we endure vicious political polarization, and the fanatic left only have elitist sense. A community can function only with common sense. And the elitists do not like common.
So, they wanted to stop growth – all growth. Therefore, for the past 40 years, No Growth became the leaders’ agenda. They became business unfriendly, and we have been going downhill financially ever since. Our reputation in the country and the world has become totally negative – and we are totally broke – and now our elitist leaders want business to come back to Santa Cruz. How simplistic. Their arrogant, unreasonable restrictions and regulations have chased business away for decades.
By the way, I never gave our City Council or county supervisors the right to speak for me in the world arena by saying that ours is a Nuclear Free Zone and that peace is patriotic, whatever that means. These leaders were voted into office to fix the potholes and not wax global. And what gives them the right to say that the U.S. Navy is not welcome here in the Monterey Bay area on the 4th of July or at any other time?
For years, they having been hiring experts for large fees to come and evaluate our problems. Well, the latest expert came and was paid $50,000 just to tell the city that the trouble with Santa Cruz is that it is business unfriendly. Duh! Many of us who live here have been telling that to our liberal leaders for years. So this is the saga of foolish, misguided Santa Cruz political leaders. And about growth… It becomes more crowded here every day.
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(November 2, 2005) The University of California, for the past 30 years considered among the finest schools in the nation, is no longer a true place of higher learning where the exchange of ideas in all disciplines is encouraged and welcomed. It is evident that many students graduating from publicly financed schools like those in the UC system are being shortchanged. UC campuses have become one-sided political factories, graduating large numbers of leftist, brainwashed students, many of whom were taught to hate America, hate our government, hate God, and hate religion, any religion; and they are always offended. How could this happen?
I reported sometime back that the hiring of teaching personnel in all UC campuses for years has been 85% liberal, 15% conservative, by design. Who gets the blame for the imbalance? The answer is the highly paid elitists at the very top, the Board of Regents, the UC president, plus the various chancellors, all of whom make policy for the entire university and all of whom know how unjustly they are using their power.
Speaking of those top-of-the-heap policymakers, several weeks ago, newspapers reported that the regents et al – presently earning almost $400,000 each per year – claimed that they needed a raise, so they proposed a creative way to receive raises by asking the public to donate to a special fund. This went over like a lead balloon. Most newspaper editors were offended and responded negatively. These top-gun elitists, by this callous and crass proposal, added to their joint political biases and have lost respect and credibility as fair leaders of the UC schools. Many already receive enormous salaries, hefty pensions, medical coverage, free homes, and moving allowances. And this omission of the valid need to give raises to the poorly paid employees and staff in lower levels of the system magnifies the greed and absence of sensitivity of these elitists. It is an outrage. Are these the leaders we should trust to make decisions for our grown children? Think about it.
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(March 12, 2006) About the forthcoming meeting at the Resource Center for Nonviolence (a nonsensical name for a group which revels in creating emotional violence all the time) leader Scott Kennedy chooses to invite speakers to spew their hate for Jews. Kennedy lost his credibility as a reasonable, non-biased person when years ago it was reported that he made several visits to Israel to have an audience with the Palestinian leader and terrorist Arafat so he could kiss his ring and, by implication, compliment him for killing Israelis.
Unlike many local Jewish community leaders, I am not outraged by the visit of Professor Norman Finkelstein. Probably I developed an early tolerance for bigots when as a little girl living in a Brooklyn, New York German neighborhood in the early 1930s, I was scared and bewildered when often I was called “a dirty little Jew girl”.
I believe that Finkelstein, who minimizes the Holocaust and refers to Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel as a clown and the highly respected Simon Wiesenthal Center as a gang of heartless and immoral crooks, is himself an irrational self-hating Jew who grew up in a Palestinian area where from early childhood he was educated to despise Jews. Inasmuch as he became a professor, he should have known better, but he opted to spread hate.
Both Finkelstein and Scott Kennedy are to be pitied because both exist to disseminate venomous hate, the emotion which decays one’s own soul. What a blessing it is to live in a country where free speech exists. Despite others’ protests, Scott Kennedy and Professor Finkelstein will continue to spread their poison but will only infect bigots. While anti-Semitism is an incurable social disease, let us hope that those infected are in the minority.
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(August 4, 2006) As residents of Santa Cruz for six decades, our family remembers it as a bit of paradise when people respected and were kind to each other.
It was a sad day many years ago when the so-called “Resource Center for Nonviolence” came and stayed. Led by its leader Scott Kennedy, the Resource Center set out to introduce, at every opportunity, unadulterated hate for the state of Israel.
In truth, the organization should be called instead “The Resource Center for Hate and Violence” because sooner or later, hate begets violence. Its modus operandi has always been to invite speakers who bemoan the Arab issue and blame Israel.
You should know that the name “Palestinian” is newly adopted. It’s a made-up word. Israel was called Palestine for 2000 years. “Palestinians” sounds ancient, but it’s really a modern invention.
Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no Palestinians. I borrowed the last paragraph from Dennis Miller, comedian turned researcher, and also the next two paragraphs which are awesome and priceless. “As soon as the Jews took over in 1948 and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know – say hello to the Palestinians weeping for their deep bond with their lost land and nation.
So, for the sake of honesty, let us not use the word ‘Palestinian’ anymore to describe these delightful folks who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out that they are being taped.”
Well said, Dennis.
To continue… under Arab leader Arafat, whose ring Scott Kennedy bragged that he kissed on his various visits to Israel, an Arab country of their own was offered and refused many times. The Arab agenda was, and still remains, the total annihilation of the state of Israel and all their Arab brethren from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, etc., love using these displaced Arabs as political pawns.
So, the other night during another Resource Center sponsored talk by the Arab ambassador to the U.S., Ambassador What’s-His-Name, once again lamented the condition of his stateless people. Give me a break.
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