I spent some time on the phone Thursday afternoon with a longtime Ceres acquaintance and he didn’t have anything good to say about the city of Ceres or its leadership.
His blood was boiling when he described Ceres as “becoming another Crows Landing Road” with how things look. If you haven’t been down Crows Landing Road, take a drive to see how anything goes.
Police officers are lazy and unwilling to cite code violators, he believes, and Code Enforcement isn’t keeping up. He claims that city leaders have called off citations for the pop-up vendors and roaming strawberry vendors.
Gang graffiti is now a campaign issue.
Others routinely complain about folks willy-nilly dumping piles of tree branches and palm fronds in the street, expecting the city to pick it up when there is no such service offered until leaf & limb pickup season runs Oct. 1 to Jan. 9.
Meanwhile, the Ceres Youth Baseball and Ceres Youth Soccer people are steamed over the fact that the city wants to dramatically increase fees that would price kids out of playing. In the same breath they ask why the promised lights at George Costa Fields haven’t been replaced while it’s full steam ahead on a pricy gazebo to replace the nice one already in Whitmore Park.
A citizen confronts Mayor Lopez about the inappropriateness of trying to block an interested chicken restaurant from opening up on Hatch Road by wielding power over the Planning Commission even though the zoning designation allows it. He goes on to explain he is the mayor like that gives himself carte blanche authority to disregarding zoning law at the risk of a lawsuit against the city.
Don’t be surprised if the next mayor is Ceres’ second with the last name of Condit.
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In wake of the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Johnson v. Grants Pass, Ore., in which it was decided that people experiencing homelessness can be arrested and fined for sleeping outside when there are no shelter alternatives, cities are jumping at the chance to clamp down on the problem. In Ceres homeless persons have been living in parks designed to be places for the families and children to enjoy. They also camp out and urinate in front of businesses on Hatch Road.
Ceres last week added language to the Municipal Code to allow Code Enforcement personnel to get rid of belongings left by the homeless in the parks and in public places.
My comments to follow are not talking about the unfortunate moms and dads who are forced to live in their cars because they were priced out of the housing market. What I have to say is about the mostly single men who, through drug and alcohol addiction, have lost their grip on life and enjoy free-wheeling with no job responsibilities.
We used to use to call them “bums” and “vagrants” because it fit. Most are homeless because they won’t work to support themselves. The term was softened to “homeless.” Now the cities are calling them the “unhoused” as an even gentler term. It doesn’t change the truth that the vast majority are drug addicts who choose to do nothing about their condition until forced.
City parks and sidewalks were not designed as a Motel 6 for the drug addict. Children should not have to run around derelicts. While there are plenty of bleeding hearts who feel it’s not compassionate to kick them out of public places, I argue that it is very compassionate to force them into shelters where their needs are better met, and force them into recovery programs. God didn’t intend for men – created in His image – to waste their days in a drunken stupor and unproductive fashion. Man was designed to toil for his food. Work also has the side benefit of giving men and women a sense of purpose. How many times have we heard about men dying within months of retirement because they feel they’ve outlived their useful purpose?
The city of Turlock has probably taken things too far in their attempt to crack down on the homeless in parks. The city council there voted 4-1 to amend the Turlock Muni Code to ban sitting and lying down in public spaces. Councilwoman Cassandra Abram dissented, saying “I think it’s a bridge too far to say that sitting and even lying down in public is a nuisance.”
I’m pretty sure that police won’t be chasing out the dad who is lying on a blanket while his children run around and throw a ball. The ordinance is designed to go after those idle souls who are essentially using the park as a campground and usually packing around carts stacked with an inordinate amount of belongings and adding a ghetto look.
Gov. Newsom, who will be out of office in 2017 and whose approach to the homeless has been an abject failure and colossal waste of billions, has shoved the problem off on cities and counties. Not fair since his policies have exacerbated the problem. State policymakers have enacted so many onerous restrictions and fees on development and business that it’s rarely possible to make affordable housing pencil out. And if you don’t have enough homes that people can afford, they will be on the streets. Progressive policies – and I fault voters who passed Prop. 47 – enable a lot of people who should be locked up to be free on the streets.
Lastly, drug policy and open borders have flooded our streets with the drugs that are causing dysfunctional human beings, the mind-numbed zombies on the streets, if you will.
If you want more of this, Kamala Harris is your choice for president.
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On Wednesday afternoon I dropped by the downtown Fourth Street Wells Fargo Bank ATM and sitting in the flower bed was a young Latino woman. Whenever someone is sitting in a flower bed conveniently steps away from an ATM my radar goes off. She was obviously there to get money by either begging or selling. It was hot and she had a sweating sleeping child in a stroller. I noticed that she was peddling boxes of strawberries and couldn’t help but wonder why she wasn’t looking for steady work instead. Maybe she didn’t speak English. I couldn’t tell because she spoke not.
She didn’t look anyone in the eye, probably because aggressive marketing would trigger a complaint to the PD.
I confess to being a bit miffed that she would put her child in that situation. Perhaps she couldn’t find a babysitter or the baby is a ploy for a sympathy donation.
Apparently this is going on all over the country. Last year the New York Post had this story: “NYC turns blind eye as migrants with babies sell fruit along deadly highways.”
But why is this Administration allowing millions of unskilled and impoverished migrants into our country while we are spending ourselves into the poorhouse?
Illegal aliens are finding life isn’t so easy in the good old USA.
In the Post story, they report that a mango selling woman in NYC who illegally snuck into the U.S. from Ecuador couldn’t get a job because she can’t afford a babysitter so she’s a mango vendor on a fume-choked street with a child strapped to her back. In her case, she spends $100 at a market buying up three days’ worth of fruit to flip for profits.
And President Biden, this is humane to let them in and let this happen while America becomes its own Third World nation?
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It took 200 years for our country to get close to a trillion dollars in debt and all of a sudden this thing started to spike like crazy. On Oct. 23, 1981 the national debt crossed the $1 trillion mark.
When Trump left office it was $27 trillion. The U.S. national debt is now at $35 trillion. California is also being mismanaged and overspending and is billions in budget red ink. Politicians will be raiding our retirement accounts and finding creative ways to screw us with more taxes. That’s why I tell people to absolutely not vote for anyone from the Democratic Party for starters. I also encourage the NPA (Not Paying Attention) voter just stay home because voting on the basis of gender or skin color or looks is harming the country.
The U.S. needs merit based immigration, meaning we let in those folks who have something to add to our nation, not folks who want to drain the cash cow provided by Newsom & company.
Lax border policy and Newsom freebies likely magnetized that woman to Ceres so she can suffer economic hardship while she violates city ordinances against street peddling.
No immigrant can sell enough strawberries on the streets to pay for the roof over their head – not in California anyways.
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You can’t mask how the Democrats in Sacramento are trying to promote election fraud.
The Democrat controlled state Legislature just passed a bill that bans local governments from requiring voter ID to vote. California officials, of course, don’t want you proving that you are a U.S. citizen to vote.
Let’s say a Juan Gomez jumped the border and made his way to Keyes. The state allows him, even as an illegal alien, to obtain a California driver’s license. That DL is one of two documents required to register to vote because per the Secretary of State’s voter registration form: “New voters MAY have to show a form of identification or proof of residency the first time they vote, IF a driver license OR SSN was not provided when registering.” So the DL is the ticket for illegals to vote even though the U.S. Constitution does not allow him to vote as an illegal alien.
The city of Huntington Beach approved a voter ID requirement beginning in 2026 but Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta (Newsom 2.0) sued the city to stop it. Bonta apparently thinks people of color don’t have the brains to obtain an ID for he called a simple ID an “unnecessary obstacle” which “disproportionately burdens low-income voters, voters of color, young or elderly voters, and people with disabilities.”
I have a question for Bonta: Can a person in a traffic stop refuse to show an ID to an officer because it is an “unnecessary obstacle”? If a person doesn’t have an ID in their possession, they just might be hiding something.
Meanwhile progressives – read that as Kamala Harris and AOC types – on the Santa Ana City Council voted to put a ballot measure on the November ballot to ask residents to approve allowing noncitizens the right to vote in defiance of the Constitution. You can bet Bonta will let that one fly.
Between 70,000 and 80,000 Santa Ana residents are believed to be illegal aliens!
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If you read between the lines in last week’s column that I’m thinking more and more about retirement, you’re right. I turned 63 and recently began to look into Social Security options. I attended a workshop offered at Modesto Junior College to get a cursory look.
Everybody should understand how Social Security works because all will get there some day – if we live long enough.
Medicare is available at age 65.
Social Security is built so you can start collecting benefits at age 62. The longer you wait, the more you collect. You max out at 70 but who wants to wait until 70 to retire?
Looking at the graphs, 66 looks like a good age for me to retire.
Social Security was created 89 years ago as a means to deal with elderly poverty and retirement security. From the 1960s to the present, we’ve seen the elderly poverty level fall from about 30% to about 10% today. Clearly, Social Security has made a major contribution in reducing absolute poverty. Benefits are indexed to wages so they are much higher today than they were back in the 1960s.
But there’s a problem looming on the horizon. Social Security trust funds will be exhausted by 2034. Will the politicians let that happen? Not if they want to be re-elected. Will they cut or change the way benefits are paid out? Absolutely.
The problem is one of numbers. The 76 million baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are leaving the workforce and becoming beneficiaries. Going back 30 to 40 years, we had three workers for every beneficiary but now the United States is now approaching two workers for every beneficiary. Do the math. Going from 3:1 to 2:1, given the ratio of wages and benefits, and you have a financial crisis coming.
Some speculate that instead of going out at the first of the month, benefits would be delayed until the system collected additional revenue. In any given year, instead of paying 12 benefits and receiving 12 checks, beneficiaries would only get nine or 10 checks, because the cash flow is not sufficient to cover each monthly check.
Others speculate payroll taxes will be raised, retirement ages raised or benefits lowered. Some think Congress will start taking some of our 401Ks.
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It just keeps getting harder and harder to live in California. All State Insurance Company was given permission by the state Insurance Commissioner to raise rates by 34 percent beginning in November. Do any of you 350,000 policyholders get a 34 percent pay hike to offset this?
Michael Soller, the Deputy Insurance Commissioner, said the increase was needed for the company to remain in business because of fires and weather related disasters. He, of course, blames climate change, when the real culprit is the fires occurring as a failure of the state to clean the forests of fuel buildup.
Some insurance companies have dropped their California customers, like the 72,000 policies that won’t be renewed by State Farm. And if you have a shake roof, your days of getting insurance coverage are either over or will be over. It’s just too risky insuring houses in a state managed by Gavin Newsom.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
