Comments by Carl May
March 27, 2008
Barry, Maybe not the video and production skills (though I'm not so sure about that with the number of local filmmakers around), but there is a lot of creativity going on in our area. Visual and performing arts, writers, scientists, innovative businesses, and so on. Many of these people stay below the local radar, claiming their fame beyond the coastside. It's fascinating to discover the creatives who live and work here, sometimes in one's own neighborhood. The human history and parade of characters…
March 26, 2008
"In HMB, for example, the Public has 4 opportunities to object to a given Project before it is approved. 1. ARC. 2. The Planning Commission. 3. The City Council. 4. CCC, or litigation. I hardly think anyone’s first amendment rights are being violated.
"I won’t take up space here refuting Carl’s arguments further, as they are all biased."
Put another way, when in doubt, get off point and punt.
Carl May
March 26, 2008
Guess what, Greg. The right to petition the government is in the First Amendment of the Constitution--or are you one of those who thinks they can do better dictating to their fellow citizens than the law of the land we now live under? Developers and builders should pay for every bit of new development, including all new infrastructure made necessary. The existing situation is already being paid for by existing users, so isn't that eminently fair? You aren't one of these "welfare developers" are you,…
March 24, 2008
I would guess that most readers of Coastsider are not going to take the opinions of a right-wing "property rights" advocate at face value. But I would also guess that relatively few followed the Sagebrush Rebellion, the development of the "wise use" movement, and the history of the largest, most anti-environmental (on many fronts, not just land use), most pro-abuse legal combines in the West, namely the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the Pacific Legal Foundation. If you don't know of these…
March 23, 2008
Anyone who knows the genesis and history of Proposition 20 and the ensuing California Coastal Act of 1976, as now amended and weakened many times, knows there are thousands of data-loaded pages of evidence to flesh out any of the assertions made in my previous long message above. Nice try by those who like to treat anything that goes against their short-term, private, wealth-building schemes as blankly obstructionist. But, in fact, they merely demonstrate their ignorance and lack of factual; support…
March 22, 2008
Perceptive, Barry. Maybe others will start to realize the shadowy but long-standing desire by some politicians to commercialize the natural resources in the state parks--much more than they are already commercialized. This has been an underlying thread for at least the last three Republican governors--Deukmejian, Wilson, and Schwarzenegger. Probably Davis on the Democratic side as well, but I didn't follow the connections as much during his term. People would probably be surprised to learn the backgrounds…
March 22, 2008
People who find coastal protection in overpopulated California inconvenient for their personal wealth-building schemes have been grinding away at the Coastal Act for decades. In fact, the state-legislature-created Coastal Act of 1976 already diminished the letter and intent of Proposition 20, the popular people's initiative that forced the folks in Sacramento to implement coastal protection. In the American system, all statutes and regulations protective of the natural environment erode at one rate…
March 07, 2008
I never cared much for Al Gore--his was a terrible overall campaign for President in 2000. (This led to idiots blaming Ralph Nader--they are still at it--for Gore's inadequacies, for the failure of the Democratic Party to appeal to a fair number of political independents, and for an election determined by the courts--as if Nader was somehow influencing the judges.) Didn't vote for Gore then, but do admire his decision now against trying to politically exploit positive recognition for work on a decidedly…
March 04, 2008
John, Worrying about millions is so mid-20th Century Everett Dirkson. Where would the underground interstate at Devil's slide be if people fretted over millions? Or even hundreds of millions? Some of us imagined the new-millenium adult hereabouts would perk up when the issue involved billions, but the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge proved us wrong. (Much to the delight of those flying under the radar and scamming us for mere antiquated millions.) If you want to get widespread attention down there…
February 27, 2008
Leonard, You need to know that the L.A. Times, and almost all of the rest of the increasingly narrow megacorporation-owned media in this country, is two-faced on copyright matters. They want their own copyrights to be inviolable and last forever, but they want the copyrights on outside material they wish to nab and use freely to be flimsy and easily overridden. The latter is merely a way to reduce the cost of content and thus increase profits in the corporate media mind. Understanding that is important…
February 27, 2008
No, Jonathan, Creative Commons is--and is promoted in a manner--that encourages all those who want to freely use any creative work they can lay their hands on to do so. Experience with Flickr and other locations where Creative Commons copyright approaches are employed shows that few bother with the detailed CC language covering that which they want to nab for themselves. No one on the CC side seems to give a damn for what typical creative people need to do to make a living and for the role of copyright…
February 26, 2008
It is a fundamental premise of copyright that the one who pays for the creation of something owns the copyright. For private dealings, it is sometimes necessary to spell this out in a "work made for hire" agreement. In the case of government money, it has long been an assumption that any creation wholly paid for with government money is essentially being paid for by the taxpaying citizen and is in the public domain (copyright-free). Thus, permission to reproduce creations that are entirely government-backed…
February 26, 2008
Lessig's Creative Commons, what might be considered a part of his Free Culture movement, has turned his name into a dirty word among thousands of writers, artists, photographers, and other creative individuals. There is nothing wrong with the current status of copyright, in which anyone who wants to give their creations away may easily do so. But in spite of that, Lessig comes along and muddies the waters with a confusing, multilayered system that only encourages the naive notion among those who…
February 17, 2008
Few will generate for public consumption a list of negatives at the time of a popular person's death. That is considered insensitive to those who are mourning on a personal level and unseemly. Just as unseemly is to use the emotion and sympathy immediately surrounding a death to further a political agenda supposedly connected to the deceased.
Rational appraisals and debates require clear air.
Carl May
February 11, 2008
"Equal time for McCain!
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gwqEneBKUs"
Not much impressed with candidate videos, but ya gotta admire that long-term perspective. Errr, don't you?
Carl May
February 06, 2008
Vince Williams deflects the direct question of why firefighter/paramedics are leaving the district. I doubt that he even knows the source of the discontent, as he always has taken a stand-offish "us vs. them" stance in his messages on the firefighting staff. So he thinks outside grand juries and outside people brought into the department for short periods have greater credibility on internal problems than some who worked in the two districts for many years. The recent consolidation of the two districts…
February 02, 2008
In what fantasy world was there a "run-up to the votes to consolidate the Coastside districts." We had no vote. Or do you mean the votes by the district boards--boards of the time that were shown to be unrepresentative of the voters in the last election? This denial of local control was one of the biggest losses of self-determination our Montara and Moss Beach communities have suffered in a long time. Carl May Vince williams wrote: "The compensation of the Coastside’s firefighters has been…
January 29, 2008
Sabrina, Ultimately, the best education you can get is to follow the issues, comments, and behavior of the governmental and quasi-governmental bodies dealing with the midcoast. Take nothing at face value--a water pipe supposedly designed to serve a recreational facility can be grossly oversized so that it has the capacity to also serve urban development in the future. (And that same pipe may not be needed at all for the facility, such as a trail, at which it is supposedly aimed, so the entire impetus…
January 28, 2008
Yeah, it'll sure do wonders for an already mismanaged and largely ignored set of communities to cede any significant rights and demands they might have to their absentee "rulers." Really amazing how some think the goal of the MCC and our citizenry in general should be to serve the political whims of the special-interest-dominated Supes. Have they missed the part of setup for government in the U.S. that indicates power resides in the populace and is only designated in a limited way by the people to…
January 26, 2008
There was another little slide on Hwy 1 on the east side of the road cut just south of 10th St. that almost hit a few vehicles. Sure hope we don't lose the old road above that cut, which is now a trail used by the community, just because Caltrans won't stabilize the sides of the cut. The outage that closed the road yesterday wasn't anywhere near the demonized Devil's Slide. It was about 150 meters north of the entrance to McNee Ranch. Want to know why we have little slides there more regularly than…
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