This bailout bill has really veered off the proverbial tracks. As this editorial states, “It would be a “catastrophe” if we don’t pass a stimulus bill – but it would be a much, much bigger catastrophe if he allows THIS piece-of-junk stimulus bill to pass.”
“This is not a joke – it’s a genuine outrage, an insult to America’s intelligence. It’s a giveaway to every Democratic pet cause and inside-the-Beltway butter-my-bread program there is.”
The US economy is about to collapse from this excessive spending.
In last week’s Rants ‘n’ Raves I posted my opinion that Pierluigi Oliverio is bought and paid for by an out of town developer. I gave details. You can read it by going back to last week’s page.
Someone [I suspect it’s Oliverio himself] got highly indignant and claimed that no on has ever heard of any neighborhood meeting.
I and a couple of other volunteers personally passed out the following flyer to every house in the affected BAREC neighborhoods:
To ALL North of Forest and South of Forest Neighbors
This is a follow-up meeting and status on the light at Forest Avenue (west) and Winchester Blvd. In summary, the City of San Jose is in the process of allowing a developer to remove the above mentioned traffic light, impacting our neighborhood and going against their own statements. Learn about our efforts to stop the action and a possible solution. We will talk about what has taken place to date and allow for more questions and answers. As always, we invite the local council representative to attend. Please encourage him to attend by calling him: Councilmember Oliverio: 535-4906.
Date: Tuesday, February 3rd
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Church of the Valley, Fellowship Hall, 400 N Winchester<i>
In response, people called Oliverio’s office.
Then in the meeting, it was announced that Oliverio had promised to send a staff member, rather than attend himself.
But no Oliverio staff member attended. None. There was a call from the podium for Oliverio’s staff member. No answer. It was announced that Oliverio’s office had assured someone would be in attendance.
It should be pointed out that Oliverio has not accomplished <i>one thing of substance regarding the BAREC property. Not one. He has never made a motion in the Council to support any of the neighborhood’s concerns, and he has voted 100% of the time in favor of the out of town developer, and against the wishes of the neighborhood.
Readers can decide who is telling the truth—the neighbors, who are concerned with the way Oliverio’s out of town cronies are causing big neighborhood traffic problems—or the council member who always ducks and hides out from his constituents.
Right now, “infill” or “transit orinted development (TOD)” is all the rage. VTA says “In TOD neighborhoods, the design, configuration, diversity and intensity of uses emphasize a pedestrian-oriented environment and makes transit use more convenient.”
BAREC is near valley fair, Santana Row and a VTA bus station. It is a perfect site for TOD, but if we can’t build it there, why would expect to build it anywhere else?
Can anyone still take Jamie McLeod seriously after her whining in the Mercury News yesterday?
The plastic bag fee that McLeod wants to impose on low income seniors is another example of how out of touch she really is with the community.
Santa Clara already allows residents to submit their plastic bags for recycling, and the fees imposed hurt low income seniors, a group who McLeod has consistently attacked. She voted to raise fees at the Senior Center, and McLeod also opposed the ban on Megan’s Law registrants camping near our schools. Now this plastic bag fee which McLeod says is supported by the people. Wrong! McLeod also refuses to deny that she is looking for a job that will be created by the funds collected by the fees. Jamie McLeod is a career politician with few ethics and a lot of arrogance. Pleading for labor support, McLeod then attacked labor when it asked about her record of opposing working people. McLeod’s political career is headed for a landfill project.
Today I went for a walk along the new portion of the Los Gatos Creek Trail that just opened up, across the creek from Orchard Supply.
It would have been a much nicer experience if the creekbed wasn’t full of hundreds of discarded plastic bags.
I read that plastic bag manufacturers are getting set to lobby against the proposed charge on plastic bags. How about if they were forced to clean up the pollution they inflict on the rest of us?
The latest Resident had an article about an Irish priest who’s telling his parishioners what a difference a charge on plastic bags made to the environment in Ireland. My copy is in the recycling bin and I don’t remember his name. However, I applaud his efforts.
If the fee is paid by everyone, then seniors, who can ill afford any extra fee, would pay it, and suffer more from it.
A plan to develop BAREC was approved by the voters in Santa Clara. McLeod has voted to raise fees on senior citizens, matter of record. Au Nguyen at a council meeting, who has given thousands to McLeod, said a fee is tax. This is, by the McLeodites own admission, a tex.
McLeod refuses to deny that the rumor that she is angling for a job that will be created by this fee.
McLeod refused to answer questions aout this proposal a candidate forum in October 2008, and so she is lying when she says she has solicited input.
McLeod also attempted to defeat a ban on felons camping near schools, check the record.
BAREC is in Santa Clara and not San Jose.
The Santa Clara City Council and Santa Clara Planning Commission decided to develop that piece of land. There was even an election and the voters of Santa Clara said develop the land. Call the City of Santa Clara 408.615.2200
The bag fee should apply to everybody. Being considered low-income shouldn’t absolve folks from doing their part to keep our city clean.
It should apply to every bag, to every customer. There’s an easy way to opt-out of the fee.
Instead of everybody arguing about how the four-for-a-dollar fee hurts poor people, you should remember that paying this fee is designed to be COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. If you don’t like the bag fee, don’t pay it.
With GOP blessings, we spent billions upon billions of US dollars to destroy Iraq, wrought unecessary death and destruction, and then spent billions upon billions of US dollars to “nation build.” New Iraqi roads, bridges, schools, basic infrastructure; we even paid the salaries of their so-called soldiers.
Yet now our President and the majority of congress want to spend billions on our good ole US of A and clean up the disaster of the last 8 years, and the GOP and people like you are outraged…HUHH? I’m sorry, but if we’re going to spend that kind of federal money, I’d rather it be on our country than wasting it all overseas.
Patriotism anyone?
You’re right, excessive spending (unnecessary wars and tax cuts for the filthy rich) has sent our economy to the brink of collapse! Let’s be thankful for change.
with respect to 10Mhz, Seniors also remember the days when people like you did not come crawling back to live in your old room in a home they paid for and you.
14. I don’t agree with the argument that people who manufacture products bear no responsibility for the way their products are used. Perhaps they don’t bear 100% of the responsibility, but certainly more than zero.
Your argument is essentially the same as saying that the manufacturer of children’s toys made of toxic material shouldn’t be held responsible if negligent parents allow their children to chew on them. It’s the same argument that the automakers made objecting to being forced to equip cars with seatbelts.
Disposal of manufactured products at the end of their lifetime is part of the cost of the product. Why should this cost be paid by taxpayers, either by hiring people to clean up the mess or by donating our time to clean it up as volunteers? Or by having the value of our property reduced because it’s surrounded by garbage?
#4 complained:“I read that plastic bag manufacturers are getting set to lobby against the proposed charge on plastic bags. How about if they were forced to clean up the pollution they inflict on the rest of us?”
The manufacturers don’t throw the bags in the creek—literers do. How about if the litterers were forced to clean up their messes?
We have anti-litter laws on the books, but other than Arlo Guthrie, no-one has ever been prosecuted under them.
This so-called bailout bill is the single largest collection of earmarked pork that has ever been considered by the U.S. Congress. It will fatten lots of wallets, but any positive effect on the economy will be purely coincidental.
#9—everything I’ve read says the bag fee is mandatory.
#12—too bad Congress doesn’t subscribe to the notion that charity begins at home.
Most plastic bags are recycled bags, or should be. I don’t think the issue here is really plastic bags destroying the planet, fees or no fees, I think it is about the way people discard them. Companies should encourage citizens to reuse them, or do what several grocery stores do, give them a cash credit for bringing in your own bags. These kinds of taxes are just that taxes. No store is going to absorb the cost of a plastic bag fee without passing it on to the consumer in some way.
We each need to take personal responsibility for how we treat our planet. When I go walking, I always bend over and pick up trash I see on the ground, and I never dump my trash on the ground. If each person did the same thing, this discussion would be mute. For those who don’t comply, that is what littering laws are for.
As for companies that put products in unnecessarily huge containers, or ones with toxic chemicals in them, they should be held accountable for that. But just remember, no fee, penalty, or tax is ever absorbed by them. They will always find a way to pass it back onto the consumer, hence the term capitalism.
#20 – the fee is completely optional. If you don’t like it, bring your own bags and don’t pay it.
Or, just use no bag at all. Do you need a bag of anykind? I often seeing people with one or two items put in a plastic bag at checkout. Use the rule “if you can carry it up, carry it out”. Meaning if you don’t need a cart to get your stuff from aisle to checkout counter, you don’t need one to get it to the parking lot.
McLeod has tried to sneak this fee past us by claiming that she solicited input a year before the decision was made. Not true, and the reason her gang is trying to slip and slide this matter is they know the people are against it. The fee is mandatory despite what the McLeodite who posted on this blog said. It is a mandatory fee, and it is, by McLeod’s own admission, a tax. She claims that the lobbyists are the only people against it,while it has been shown that many small business owners and consumers are against it, and McLeod, who has consistently been making negative comments about senior citizens has had her gang make similar nasty comments on this thread.
The regular folks are against this fee, and McLeod is simply out of touch with their wishes.
Creekbeds littered with plastic bags are a perfect opportunity for job creation. The more plastic bags, the more government workers can be employed to clean up the mess.
This would be perfectly consistent with the Obama model of governance- get Government to CREATE problems thus creating a perceived need for yet MORE Government to solve those problems.
In this Brave New World, the most patriotic thing we can do is to throw our garbage on the ground.
>> “I read that plastic bag manufacturers are getting set to lobby against the proposed charge on plastic bags. How about if they were forced to clean up the pollution they inflict on the rest of us?”
Blaming the manufacturer of a highly successful product for its irresponsible use is not fair. I am in favor of the tax, and don’t even disagree with your suggestion that they be involved in a solution, but lets respect some common-sense laws of cause and effect, please.
The Governator is mandating state workers to take two days off without pay each month. I have another idea—have them WORK two days a month without pay.
This bailout bill has really veered off the proverbial tracks. As this editorial states, “It would be a “catastrophe” if we don’t pass a stimulus bill – but it would be a much, much bigger catastrophe if he allows THIS piece-of-junk stimulus bill to pass.”
Read the full article here:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02062009/postopinion/editorials/come_on__o__bring_bacon___not_pork__153842.htm?page=0
“This is not a joke – it’s a genuine outrage, an insult to America’s intelligence. It’s a giveaway to every Democratic pet cause and inside-the-Beltway butter-my-bread program there is.”
The US economy is about to collapse from this excessive spending.
In last week’s Rants ‘n’ Raves I posted my opinion that Pierluigi Oliverio is bought and paid for by an out of town developer. I gave details. You can read it by going back to last week’s page.
Someone [I suspect it’s Oliverio himself] got highly indignant and claimed that no on has ever heard of any neighborhood meeting.
I and a couple of other volunteers personally passed out the following flyer to every house in the affected BAREC neighborhoods:
To ALL North of Forest and South of Forest Neighbors
This is a follow-up meeting and status on the light at Forest Avenue (west) and Winchester Blvd. In summary, the City of San Jose is in the process of allowing a developer to remove the above mentioned traffic light, impacting our neighborhood and going against their own statements. Learn about our efforts to stop the action and a possible solution. We will talk about what has taken place to date and allow for more questions and answers. As always, we invite the local council representative to attend. Please encourage him to attend by calling him: Councilmember Oliverio: 535-4906.
Date: Tuesday, February 3rd
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Church of the Valley, Fellowship Hall, 400 N Winchester<i>
In response, people called Oliverio’s office.
Then in the meeting, it was announced that Oliverio had promised to send a staff member, rather than attend himself.
But no Oliverio staff member attended. None. There was a call from the podium for Oliverio’s staff member. No answer. It was announced that Oliverio’s office had assured someone would be in attendance.
It should be pointed out that Oliverio has not accomplished <i>one thing of substance regarding the BAREC property. Not one. He has never made a motion in the Council to support any of the neighborhood’s concerns, and he has voted 100% of the time in favor of the out of town developer, and against the wishes of the neighborhood.
Readers can decide who is telling the truth—the neighbors, who are concerned with the way Oliverio’s out of town cronies are causing big neighborhood traffic problems—or the council member who always ducks and hides out from his constituents.
Right now, “infill” or “transit orinted development (TOD)” is all the rage. VTA says “In TOD neighborhoods, the design, configuration, diversity and intensity of uses emphasize a pedestrian-oriented environment and makes transit use more convenient.”
BAREC is near valley fair, Santana Row and a VTA bus station. It is a perfect site for TOD, but if we can’t build it there, why would expect to build it anywhere else?
Can anyone still take Jamie McLeod seriously after her whining in the Mercury News yesterday?
The plastic bag fee that McLeod wants to impose on low income seniors is another example of how out of touch she really is with the community.
Santa Clara already allows residents to submit their plastic bags for recycling, and the fees imposed hurt low income seniors, a group who McLeod has consistently attacked. She voted to raise fees at the Senior Center, and McLeod also opposed the ban on Megan’s Law registrants camping near our schools. Now this plastic bag fee which McLeod says is supported by the people. Wrong! McLeod also refuses to deny that she is looking for a job that will be created by the funds collected by the fees. Jamie McLeod is a career politician with few ethics and a lot of arrogance. Pleading for labor support, McLeod then attacked labor when it asked about her record of opposing working people. McLeod’s political career is headed for a landfill project.
Today I went for a walk along the new portion of the Los Gatos Creek Trail that just opened up, across the creek from Orchard Supply.
It would have been a much nicer experience if the creekbed wasn’t full of hundreds of discarded plastic bags.
I read that plastic bag manufacturers are getting set to lobby against the proposed charge on plastic bags. How about if they were forced to clean up the pollution they inflict on the rest of us?
The latest Resident had an article about an Irish priest who’s telling his parishioners what a difference a charge on plastic bags made to the environment in Ireland. My copy is in the recycling bin and I don’t remember his name. However, I applaud his efforts.
#6: Come on Rowan: “The plastic bag fee that McLeod wants to impose on low income SENIORS…” (emphasis added)????
Everyone would pay the fee. This is not a bag tax on the over-65 set, although I guess it makes a more compelling case when you present it this way.
I enjoy reading your comments and considering your point of view but sheesh! Play fair, dude.
If the fee is paid by everyone, then seniors, who can ill afford any extra fee, would pay it, and suffer more from it.
A plan to develop BAREC was approved by the voters in Santa Clara. McLeod has voted to raise fees on senior citizens, matter of record. Au Nguyen at a council meeting, who has given thousands to McLeod, said a fee is tax. This is, by the McLeodites own admission, a tex.
McLeod refuses to deny that the rumor that she is angling for a job that will be created by this fee.
McLeod refused to answer questions aout this proposal a candidate forum in October 2008, and so she is lying when she says she has solicited input.
McLeod also attempted to defeat a ban on felons camping near schools, check the record.
Smokey,
BAREC is in Santa Clara and not San Jose.
The Santa Clara City Council and Santa Clara Planning Commission decided to develop that piece of land. There was even an election and the voters of Santa Clara said develop the land. Call the City of Santa Clara 408.615.2200
The bag fee should apply to everybody. Being considered low-income shouldn’t absolve folks from doing their part to keep our city clean.
It should apply to every bag, to every customer. There’s an easy way to opt-out of the fee.
Instead of everybody arguing about how the four-for-a-dollar fee hurts poor people, you should remember that paying this fee is designed to be COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. If you don’t like the bag fee, don’t pay it.
#5- The development of BAREC will directly affect traffic as well as other things in D6, that is why Smokey is justifiably concerned.
You know what’s sickening HJ #1,
With GOP blessings, we spent billions upon billions of US dollars to destroy Iraq, wrought unecessary death and destruction, and then spent billions upon billions of US dollars to “nation build.” New Iraqi roads, bridges, schools, basic infrastructure; we even paid the salaries of their so-called soldiers.
Yet now our President and the majority of congress want to spend billions on our good ole US of A and clean up the disaster of the last 8 years, and the GOP and people like you are outraged…HUHH? I’m sorry, but if we’re going to spend that kind of federal money, I’d rather it be on our country than wasting it all overseas.
Patriotism anyone?
You’re right, excessive spending (unnecessary wars and tax cuts for the filthy rich) has sent our economy to the brink of collapse! Let’s be thankful for change.
I can’t help but wonder how this kind of stuff keeps happening when we can send aid overseas so quickly, and our own citizens are still suffering.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-02-08-fema_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno
Seniors are old enough to remember the days when people carried their own shopping bags to the store.
with respect to 10Mhz, Seniors also remember the days when people like you did not come crawling back to live in your old room in a home they paid for and you.
14. I don’t agree with the argument that people who manufacture products bear no responsibility for the way their products are used. Perhaps they don’t bear 100% of the responsibility, but certainly more than zero.
Your argument is essentially the same as saying that the manufacturer of children’s toys made of toxic material shouldn’t be held responsible if negligent parents allow their children to chew on them. It’s the same argument that the automakers made objecting to being forced to equip cars with seatbelts.
Disposal of manufactured products at the end of their lifetime is part of the cost of the product. Why should this cost be paid by taxpayers, either by hiring people to clean up the mess or by donating our time to clean it up as volunteers? Or by having the value of our property reduced because it’s surrounded by garbage?
#14: “Blaming the manufacturer of a highly successful product for its irresponsible use is not fair.”
Cigarettes are also a “highly successful product” whose irresponsible use causes a lot of problems. Do you also let them off the hook?
#4 complained:“I read that plastic bag manufacturers are getting set to lobby against the proposed charge on plastic bags. How about if they were forced to clean up the pollution they inflict on the rest of us?”
The manufacturers don’t throw the bags in the creek—literers do. How about if the litterers were forced to clean up their messes?
We have anti-litter laws on the books, but other than Arlo Guthrie, no-one has ever been prosecuted under them.
This so-called bailout bill is the single largest collection of earmarked pork that has ever been considered by the U.S. Congress. It will fatten lots of wallets, but any positive effect on the economy will be purely coincidental.
#9—everything I’ve read says the bag fee is mandatory.
#12—too bad Congress doesn’t subscribe to the notion that charity begins at home.
Most plastic bags are recycled bags, or should be. I don’t think the issue here is really plastic bags destroying the planet, fees or no fees, I think it is about the way people discard them. Companies should encourage citizens to reuse them, or do what several grocery stores do, give them a cash credit for bringing in your own bags. These kinds of taxes are just that taxes. No store is going to absorb the cost of a plastic bag fee without passing it on to the consumer in some way.
We each need to take personal responsibility for how we treat our planet. When I go walking, I always bend over and pick up trash I see on the ground, and I never dump my trash on the ground. If each person did the same thing, this discussion would be mute. For those who don’t comply, that is what littering laws are for.
As for companies that put products in unnecessarily huge containers, or ones with toxic chemicals in them, they should be held accountable for that. But just remember, no fee, penalty, or tax is ever absorbed by them. They will always find a way to pass it back onto the consumer, hence the term capitalism.
#20 – the fee is completely optional. If you don’t like it, bring your own bags and don’t pay it.
Or, just use no bag at all. Do you need a bag of anykind? I often seeing people with one or two items put in a plastic bag at checkout. Use the rule “if you can carry it up, carry it out”. Meaning if you don’t need a cart to get your stuff from aisle to checkout counter, you don’t need one to get it to the parking lot.
McLeod has tried to sneak this fee past us by claiming that she solicited input a year before the decision was made. Not true, and the reason her gang is trying to slip and slide this matter is they know the people are against it. The fee is mandatory despite what the McLeodite who posted on this blog said. It is a mandatory fee, and it is, by McLeod’s own admission, a tax. She claims that the lobbyists are the only people against it,while it has been shown that many small business owners and consumers are against it, and McLeod, who has consistently been making negative comments about senior citizens has had her gang make similar nasty comments on this thread.
The regular folks are against this fee, and McLeod is simply out of touch with their wishes.
Creekbeds littered with plastic bags are a perfect opportunity for job creation. The more plastic bags, the more government workers can be employed to clean up the mess.
This would be perfectly consistent with the Obama model of governance- get Government to CREATE problems thus creating a perceived need for yet MORE Government to solve those problems.
In this Brave New World, the most patriotic thing we can do is to throw our garbage on the ground.
Speaking of playing fair, 10 MHz,
>> “I read that plastic bag manufacturers are getting set to lobby against the proposed charge on plastic bags. How about if they were forced to clean up the pollution they inflict on the rest of us?”
Blaming the manufacturer of a highly successful product for its irresponsible use is not fair. I am in favor of the tax, and don’t even disagree with your suggestion that they be involved in a solution, but lets respect some common-sense laws of cause and effect, please.
The Governator is mandating state workers to take two days off without pay each month. I have another idea—have them WORK two days a month without pay.
I bought my own bags at Trader Joes but I keep forgeting them :O(