Knocking Santa Cruz Off A "High Horse" Citizens NOT Affluent & Their Children To Be Poorer

Sigh... Sorry 'bout the mess @ bottom I thought I checked the html before posting.

As he often does, Ray goes to heart of the issue.

California coastal college towns all suffer from the same problem-no jobs. San Luis Obispo (home to Cal Poly) has gone as far to have an official city policy discouraging recent college grads not from the area from staying. The policy is very upfront in saying there are no jobs for those grads. The reality is the coastal towns economies are driven by tourism (never a high paid sector of the economy), and in the case of Santa Cruz being a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. So, unless the local kids will be taking over their parents' business, there's little future in Santa Cruz.

I know local kids who tried to take over their parent's business. At least three of them. Two were loooonstanding local businesses too. The city is hostile towards them in the wake of ownership change. Sees higher revenues in a bar or office space instead of a ... small paint store lets say, and by way of the property owners collusion make it impossible to stay in business if only due to massive lease increases forcing them out of business.

This town is CORPORATIST. Fascist if you add the North Korean type minders, aka Private Patrol security guards and cameras foisted off on the residents as needed due to rapes and assaults in city garages, but somehow ended up surveilling every inch of Pacific street instead. The city panders to the COMMERCIAL PROPERTY OWNERS above all else, including VIABLE COMMUNITY. Which interferes with the short term profits REI group investors need to see.

It DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY! I cannot see where it has benefited what's left of Santa Cruz' workers or ANY OTHER RESIDENT at all.

Cities CAN limit and control the type of housing built and the kinds of businesses they would like to see.

We can see quite clearly what our Fascist government operators would like to see Just them, and a clip joint city that no one comes back to once they've been here.

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“R.D. Laing described the essence of the hidden machinery of dominance in his book The Politics of Experience:

>> “All those people who seek to control the behavior of large numbers of other people work on the experiences of those other people. Once people can be induced to experience a situation in a similar way, they can be expected to behave in similar ways. Induce people all to want the same thing, hate the same things, feel the same threat, then their behavior is already captive - you have acquired your consumers or your cannon-fodder.” <<

The essence of dominance is not force (which is only deployed when there is no other way to maintain dominance) but the molding and internalization of a specific set of beliefs about how the world works. These beliefs include a set of values and myths that guide our behavior and how we experience the world around us.

All the structures that dominate our society and economy (the central state, crony-capitalist cartels, the Federal Reserve, the financialization/banking sector, those benefiting from Empire) need do is persuade us that their dominance is not only inevitable and natural but ideal.

We can delineate the core beliefs that enable their dominance with a set of simple if-then statements. If we believe what they want us to believe, they have won and we have lost: their continued dominance is assured without force or even persuasion.

1. If we believe that debt is inevitable, they have won and we have lost.

2. If we believe that what we wear, buy, drive, display and consume defines our identity and place in the world, they have won and we have lost.

3. If we believe that we express ourselves through what we buy, consume, display and own, then we have entered a state of permanent insecurity and adolescence; they have won and we have lost.

4. If we believe that without its Empire, America would perish, they have won and we have lost.

5. If the “news” leaves us fearful, anxious, frustrated and angry, they have won and we have lost.

6. If we believe that being connected to and consuming digital media during every waking hour is not just necessary but desirable as a display of coolness and status, they have won and we have lost.

7. If we believe fast food and packaged food is cheap, tasty and convenient, they have won and we have lost.

8. If we believe we would perish without a payment from the Central State, they have won and we have lost.

9. If we believe that measures such as the unemployment rate and gross domestic product (GDP) are meaningful metrics, they have won and we have lost.

10. If we believe that our identity and self-expression flow from our membership in various “tribes” defined by signifiers such as sports team logos, corporate logos, tattoos, programs and music we consume, brands and other consumables, they have won and we have lost.

11. If we believe the America of today is the perfection of all that is good about America rather than the suppression of all that is good about America, they have won and we have lost.

12. If we believe that learning and intellectual accomplishment are to be scorned as “elitist,” they have won and we have lost.

13. If we believe that health results from consuming handfuls of pills, they have won and we have lost.

14. If we believe it is normal to transfer the vast majority of our earnings to the state and a handful of crony-capitalist cartels, they have won and we have lost.

15. If we believe the world is controlled by secret cabals over which we have no power, they have won and we have lost.

16. If we don’t know what to do with ourselves when shopping, buying, consuming and entertainment/news are unavailable, they have won and we have lost.

17. If we believe there is a meaningful difference between the two political parties, they have won and we have lost.

18. If we believe we are entitled to convenience, state support, etc. as a birthright, they have won and we have lost.

19. If we believe we are powerless to change anything other than our current mix of consumption, they have won and we have lost.

20. If we believe that lying, cheating, fudging the numbers, exaggerating our victimhood or accomplishments, gaming the system and being silently complicit in others’ lies, fabrications, deceptions and embezzlements are required to get ahead, they have won and we have lost.”

Charles Hugh Smith, “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hugh_Smith

You'd hate Fresno. If you think SC is bad, you haven't seen bad. We have video policing-a retired federal judge just gave it kudos after completing an audit. Privately owned video cameras are everywhere, which isn't surprising-we are the home of Pelco, now Schneider Electric, the largest manufacturer of surveillance equipment in the country. Norse thinks SCPD is terrible-they're beign compared to our PD. Medical marijuana cultivation is outlawed in our county, and our Sheriff's Office is aggressively enforcing the ban.

I looked at the list in your post. It's ironic that the Left created most of it.