John McCain at Hope Ranch

Santa Barbara indymedia seems inactive so this is being posted to indybay.

Hardly anyone in the local community had heard about John McCain's fundraising visit planned after his appearance in Fresno. I had to search online for any information. So the turnout was probably smaller than it might have been. McCain is supposed to have another event at 7:30am Tuesday at the Museum of Natural History, where he will give a statement on energy policy.
I bicycled in, and found a local member of an organization calling for impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Many people would agree, and are frustrated that even though the democrats have held congress since 2006 and there are many key pieces of evidence for impeachment, nothing has really gone through. In past decades, proceedings have been held for ethically less significant events such as Clinton's perjury scandal, Iran Contra (which didn't indict Reagan), or the Watergate burglary + coverup. We stood by the gate of Hope Ranch because it was a good landmark, and the existence of private security seemed to add legal confusion about the ability to conduct a free speech event on the road.

A large group of Ron Paul supporters took the intersection near Hendry's beach along with a number of antiwar activists. They reported largely positive responses. A lot of drivers in the area did seem bemused, as though they'd never seen such a novel thing as a political event on their street. The Paul supporters were pretty smart and made a lot of good points.

It was really great to have a variety of residents stop to talk to us, with many expressing agreement or asking questions. By no means was this neighborhood fixed in one perspective. Some kids needed help with the word 'warmonger'. After almost no police activity, McCain's motorcade finally went by with about a dozen police around 6pm while we were talking with a taxi driver who follows politics like sports and was telling us all sorts of recent details about the campaign. He said he had played an Obama speech on the radio when driving an attendee from his hotel.
One person supporting us said that the main road through is a public road, but that most side roads would be considered private, where owners own the road to the center line of the street. A few people yelled McCain support, and someone took a picture and warned that Fritz would not be happy to see us on his sidewalk. One irate woman stopped two times to inform us that a different HOA runs the land to the south of Hope Ranch, and that we were very rude to stand there, and she went on for several minutes, asking questions which have no answer. She said we needed to ask permission to stand at the road, and also said that she knew the owners were at work so we could not ask, implying that we were legally required to leave and she was calling the police. Later, both Fox News and KSBY parked on this curb to interview the sign holders. Fox provided very good coverage of our side of the event and gave Andrew H. time to comment on McCain's support for coastal oil drilling, which already occurs near Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara suffered a major oil spill in the 70s, and regularly has small marine and land-based spills at refineries.

The Hope Ranch area composes a several square-mile area of coastal Santa Barbara. It lies between UC Santa Barbara and downtown, and the main bicycle route passes through part of it. Some good people, such as Snoop Dog, have residences there. It easily outclasses many other wealthy neighborhoods, with estate-style lots of several acres, really fancy houses, beach access, and equestrian space. To its credit, it isn't gated, with a gatehouse, however, there is almost no public parking space in the area except for a small overlook. Here is some description of Hope Ranch - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Ranch,_California
http://www.hope-ranch-santa-barbara-real-estate.com/homes-for-sale.htm
It is unclear whether the wikipedia paragraph about the private security force policing the Home Owners Association (HOA) is accurate. Surely, any private entity such as a department store or large estate can hire security, however, I doubt that private security have arrest capabilities other than citizen's arrest under the framework of government. Secondly, wikipedia implies that normal police don't patrol there. What if the security uses different discretion regarding enforcement of laws, and chooses not to enforce certain laws or to act in a biased fashion?

I still have lots of questions about legal use of the public road, or private roads. At a normal house, one cannot call the police on jehovah's witnesses or girlscouts for entering the property, or set up extreme security precautions. At this event, private security were barely seen and the CHP didn't give a glance, but would a homeowner be able to demand that protesters leave the road?

Tickets were $1000, with $10,000 and $40,000 special tickets entitling the purchaser to a special photo session and discussion time with McCain. John McCain is well known for the McCain Feingold campaign finance law, and falling behind Obama in fundraising so far, he is still accepting public finance system. Obama has now reversed his pledge to use public financing. McCain seems to have earned him a reputation as a centrist or liberal republican for several pieces of legislation that he backed in the past, including McCain-Feingold. Indeed, Kerry was considering McCain as a running mate in 2004 as he took a campaign strategy of emphasizing his pro-defense, moderate nature.
Rush Limbaugh has been speaking negatively about McCain as the liberals' favorite republican, yet, McCain is not popular among any demographics of democrats and has spent several years recasting his key positions as very solidly conservative. He has even pandered to fairly odious figures such as John Hagee in order to secure backing from the religious right.
The economy and foreign interventions are by far the most significant issues of this campaign, and McCain has made clear that he will barely deviate from the Bush whitehouse positions on either of these. One man walking by remarked on a sign referring to McCain's pledge to maintain a permanent, or 100 year presence in the middle east. He called us leftists and said that U.S. presence in Korea has maintained peace. An honest assessment of U.S. international affairs during the 20th century would include the dozens of countries in Central and South America, Africa and Asia where our military or intelligence agencies have toppled governments and conducted unjust campaigns. The Ron Paul supporters talked about alliances with Kucinich fans and others with antimilitary sentiment (now the majority of the public) to achieve an exit from Iraq which the democrats haven't delivered upon.
McCain admits that his weak point is the economy. It seems like no one in this campaign has admitted that our national debt has balloned from ~$5 trillion to $9 trillion dollars in the last eight years. The latest rhetoric just involves bickering over whether Obama will raise your taxes or McCain will cut them more. This implies that there is no plan to pay this off at any time, or to admit the awful truth. The reality is that a period of rapid inflation is expected after expensive wars such as WWII and Vietnam because it makes the amount owed proportionately smaller, yet anyone with savings will watch their funds diminish. If they continue to ignore the compounding debt, debtors holding treasury bonds have the choice of being a sucker, or devaluing the dollar currency debt. Either way, everyone (particularly those with old wealth) will have to pay one way or another.