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Opinion
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- Written by: Ray Perry
Lake County is a great place to live. It has clean air, good schools for the kids, college campuses conveniently located on both ends of the county, two hospitals, well maintained major roadways, open spaces, an up and coming wine industry.
There are lots of mom and pop shops and businesses instead of huge malls that give Lake County a unique atmosphere.
There is also a good amount of quality housing for very reasonable prices compared to the rest of the state that attract buyers for second homes as well as retirement. We are not so far away from major metropolitan areas that it makes a trip to Lake County a major ordeal.
The jewel of Lake County is our lake. Everything seems to get its life; it’s identity from the beautiful lake that many of our small communities nestle up to.
Recently we have seen news reports that several business have been closing down due to lack of customers that are turned off by the condition of the lake. There are reports that tourism is down because of the economy and the lake’s condition.
Even though we know that Clear Lake is a natural lake, that it has been this way for thousands of years, there are reports that the lake has been steadily getting worse over the past couple of decades.
Some of our Realtors report that many of their buyers expressed a concern over the condition of the lake and we have heard reports of business not wanting to locate in Lake County because of the smell.
Our Realtors are very concerned about these issues that seriously impact the economic survival of Lake County. We need a healthy clean lake to support our businesses, wildlife and property values.
The Lake County Association of Realtors (LCAOR) understands the benefits that will be achieved with the passing of “Measure E.” This includes the enjoyment of the lake for recreational purposes: boating, water skiing and fishing.
Tourism will increase leading to profitable businesses in Lake County which then results in more jobs. Also benefiting will be the wildlife that depends on the lake as their natural habitat.
We expect a clean, healthy lake will bring about increased property values resulting in more tax dollars for Lake County to work on other projects.
LCAOR supports this small increase in the Sales Tax which will be held exclusively for the preservation of our beautiful Clear Lake.
“Measure E” is a win-win for business, nature, county residents and the visitors who come to enjoy the beauty that nature has given Lake County.
Ray Perry is president of the Lake County Association of Realtors, serving Lake County, Calif.
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- Written by: Nelson Strasser
John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath. It is a novel about the 300,000 souls escaping the dust bowl and migrating west to California.
Some were from Oklahoma, but they were all called, derisively, “Oakies.” They sold what they could, at bargain basin prices and bought cars and headed west.
There is a standalone chapter about a used car lot owner. The owner of the lot knows the farmers are desperate and is a sociopath (someone who knows the difference between right and wrong, but does not care).
The owner of the lot has a selling frenzy, taking advantage of the farmers’ desperation, and overcharging for junk vehicles. The farmers have to go 2,000 miles with their family and possessions aboard those jalopies.
I was thinking about how the novel was timeless. In fact, the situation in our senior mobile home park is analogous to the plight of the “Oakies,” except, we are the “oldies.”
The new owners have raised the rent. Under current law, there is no legal limit as to how much they can raise the rent. There is only a practical limit: starving us out, which would kill the geese that lay the golden eggs.
There is no choice for us. We have nowhere to go, and no means to get there. And, even if we had the energy and the means, we can’t easily sell our mobile homes, and as the space rent goes up, our equity plummets. We are a captive audience.
Meanwhile, the owners are making an 8.5 percent (before the last raise) return on their investment of almost a million and a half dollars. Evidently, they want to boost it higher, and the easiest way to do this is to increase NOI (net operating income).
This can be accomplished by raising the space rent, and they can do that with impunity, because the only limits they have are conscience and satiety.
In this regard, satiety is unattainable because they can’t answer the question, “When is enough, enough?
So, I made a presentation before the Lakeport City Council. I brought a petition for rent control signed by almost every resident of the park. They listened politely, asked some questions, thanked me and sent me on my way. I was unfamiliar with the process, so, I was surprised at the outcome: none.
My next step in the democratic process is the initiative. This will require signatures from a percentage of the registered voters in Lakeport.
I am writing to let you know that I will be around and about in the near future, asking for your help. Let’s put it on the ballot and let the citizens of Lakeport vote “yes” or “no.”
Nelson Strasser lives in Lakeport, Calif.
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- Written by: Roberta Actor
The Lake County Chamber’s recent call for “caution” regarding Proposition 37 ( Fulton and Magliulo: Food labeling – a cautionary approach ) is completely off-target.
The FDA does not test GE foods for safety – they rely strictly upon the testing that the companies choose to do and merely “evaluate” the carefully selected information that the companies choose to submit regarding the results of safety testing.
FDA whistle-blowers have been complaining for years that it’s more like a rubber stamp process and that evidence of harmful effects has been routinely covered up or ignored.
The FDA requires no long-term safety studies and none are done by the companies requesting approvals. After all, they want to get their product onto the market as quickly as possible, let’s not let caution get in the way of profits!
The FDA believes that GE foods are safe until they are found to be harmful. That means that instead of actually being cautious, doing independent research that will really show whether these product s are safe, caution has been thrown to the wind and all of us are the biotech industry’s unwitting experimental subjects.
When Proposition 37 passes, the law allows manufacturers to add the information about GE ingredients when they make other routine changes to listed ingredients on their labels.
So as far as the hair-on-fire claims that this will make food unaffordable and the poor will starve, anyone who reads labels knows that food producers reprint and redesign labels regularly, and changes to ingredients and formulations occur fairly regularly.
Complaints that the law doesn’t cover this or that are intentional distractions from the real issue, the right to know.
The law was intentionally designed to have a limited scope. This is a good thing! In fact, if the exemptions didn’t exist, the same parties who are complaining about them now would be complaining that there are no exceptions and how that’s unfair to this or that food industry or agricultural sector.
The argument that shoppers should just buy Certified Organic products if they want to avoid GE food is also defective. Many times there is no organic version of a product available, yet there may be a conventionally-produced product with no GE ingredients sitting next to a similar item that contains GE ingredients.
With labeling we’d have that information, and more than 90 percent of consumers believe that we should have that knowledge available to us when we buy groceries.
The only opponents to labeling are those who profit from GE products and their promoters in the FDA and USDA.
Those big players in the national chamber are telling the local chamber to get with the program. Ironically, these biotech insiders in the national chamber are accustomed to tax subsidies and preferential treatment by regulatory agencies – they don’t want a fair free market full of buyers who have the same information as sellers – they don’t really believe that a truly the free market will work out for them!
The issue of labeling and choice is not complex at all. It’s obvious that we Americans have the same right to know what we are eating as the citizens of the European countries, Japan, Malaysia and Australia.
Is the chamber really telling us that it’s so complicated and difficult for us ordinary American shoppers, voters and taxpayers to comprehend, that we should NOT be entitled to the same rights as the British or French people? That we should reject the right to know what we are eating and just listen to the experts who know best at the FDA?
Executive Committee of the Lake County Chamber of Commerce, are you serious? I’m pretty sure that most of your local members would not want to argue that we Americans should have fewer rights than people in Europe or Malaysia.
Roberta Actor-Thomas is a software consultant in Lakeport.
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- Written by: Barbara Christwitz
I read food labels because I insist on knowing what I am feeding my body. I trust those companies such as our local Amy’s Kitchen Inc., which want me to know as much as possible about their ingredients.
Therefore I am going to vote “Yes” for Proposition 37.
Additionally, I cannot help but wonder why the following companies – based on the California Secretary of State’s records – give hundreds of thousands and yes, millions of dollars to oppose Proposition 37.
They surely are spending a wad of money to guarantee that we consumers remain ignorant of our foods’ ingredients.
What do they have to lose if people are fully informed? Apparently, a great deal.
Here is a sampling of some of the amounts of campaign contributions which oppose Proposition 37 as found by www.gmolabeling.org/who-to-boycott-that-are-against-gmo-labeling-and-prop-37/ .
Monsanto Co.: $4,208,000
Pepsico Inc.: $1,716,300
Nestle USA Inc.: $1,169,400
Kellogg Co.: $632,500
General Mills Inc.: $519,401.17
Hershey Co.: $498.006.72
J.M. Smucker: $388,000
Barbara Christwitz lives in Clearlake, Calif.