Posted on 04/17/2005 6:41:07 PM PDT by FairOpinion
I'll be sure and tune in this coming week to see if he mentions Mr. Stalin! I'll keep you posted.
I loved the song he played as an ode to Joe... Stalin, LOL.
With the money Joe gets, it's more like Owed to Joe. :-)
$65,000 per acre is a lot of money for nature trails, particularly when they are so abundant in the area. If you charged everyone who walked on the trails $5 a visit, you'd need 6.8 million customers to pay that off.
>>I'll keep you posted.
Thanks! Please do!
>>Owed to Joe. :-)
ROFL! Good one.
CA: Conservancy Spending Assailed - Audit says that mountains agency misused $7 million
Los Angeles Times ^ | June 6, 2004 | Sue Fox and Andrew Blankstein
Audit accuses Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy of mismanagement
Associated Press, Jun. 06, 2004
Landed gentry - Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy accountable to no one
Los Angeles Daily News, June 7, 2004
At least the state has used legal methods, even if they look to be a little heavy-handed, with this property.
When the National Park Service tried to enlarge their acreage in the Santa Monica Mountains in the early '90s, they ran into fierce resistance from one Donald Scott, who didn't want to sell.
Someone informed the LA Sheriff's Department that "thousands" of marijuana plants were being cultivated on Scott's Trails End Ranch. They picked up on it and, sure enough, after a time they believed they might possibly have seen, in aerial reconnaissance of the place, some nasty cannibis plants a-growing.
That was all they needed to get a search warrant and dispatch a team of 30 law enforcement officers to . . uh . . conduct a raid on Mr. Scott's ranch which those greedy bureaucrats coveted.
Simple matter it would have been, too: Just find 14 marijuana plants anywhere on the 200-acre spread and they could seize the entire property, sell it to the NPS and turn it into a hiker's and nature-lover's paradise, sans the Scotts and their stinky weeds.
Only they screwed up and killed Scott after breaking into his darkened home (in self-defense, naturally) when the entry team wasn't invited in as expected.
And, of course, no evidence could be found that marijuana was growing anywhere on the ranch.
Which led the Ventura County District Attorney (Scott's ranch was in Ventura County, even though the address and access road was in Los Angeles County) to investigate.
And -- surprise, surprise -- what the DA uncovered!
REPORT ON THE DEATH OF DONALD SCOTT
Check your premises, ravinson.
First, nature nuts don't believe in charging for stuff that relates to their religion. First Amendment and such, get it?
And why do you think anyone involved is even slightly interested in "paying it off?"
We the taxpayers owe it to them, doncha know?
Environmentalists beat Soka University—again
By John Loesing
March 13, 2003
MICHAEL COONS/The Acorn COURTROOM LOSS--Any hope to expand the Soka University of America campus in Calabasas has been shot down in a courtroom. Now opponents want to acquire the site of the campus.
Opponents of Soka University are celebrating in the wake of a recent court ruling that finally closes the book on any plans for campus expansion, but despite their victory, Soka opponents are still pressing the attack.
On Feb. 27, the Second Court of Appeal overturned a California Coastal Commission permit that would have allowed the Mulholland Highway school near Calabasas to more than double in size to 440,000 square feet and accommodate increased enrollment from 100 students to 650.
The ruling reinforces a 2001 appeals court decision that struck down a development agreement between Soka University and Los Angeles County in which the new construction was first approved.
The end of the decade-long legal struggle to increase the size of the rural Santa Monica Mountains campus is prompting some groups to call for a closing of the school altogether.
The request by the Sierra Club, Save Open Space and the Monte Nido Valley Community Association represents a first-time attempt by local environmental groups not only to prevent new construction, but also force an existing enterprise to vacate.
"Now is the time for public officials and Soka Gakkai to seize the opportunity and agree on a mutually beneficial transaction that once-and-forever leaves this exceptional property as a legacy for the people of the state of California," said Save Open Space boardmember Mary Wiesbrock in a statement.
In its ruling against the coastal permit, the appeals court said the commission failed to perform an independent evaluation of other, environmentally superior alternatives. The court also faulted the commission for relying on the county’s 1997 environmental impact report, which a later judge found to be inadequate.
"The problem with the [Los Angeles] County and Soka’s position is that, in fact, [Coastal] Commission, regardless of its independent documentation, never considered any alternatives other than those set out in the county’s FEIR [Final Environmental Impact Report]," said the court. "Those alternatives were legally inadequate."
Opponents argued that the Calabasas expansion wasn’t needed because of the 2001 opening of a second campus on 103 acres in Aliso Viejo, near Laguna Beach. The court suggested the Coastal Commission should have studied the possibility of placing the expansion at the school’s new campus in Orange County instead of in the environmentally sensitive Santa Monica Mountains.
The fledgling Orange County campus reportedly has encountered student morale and budgetary problems. Primary funding for both campuses comes from the Soka Gakkai Buddhist sect of Japan.
"What makes environmental sense for the public makes education and economic sense for Soka," said Frank Angel, an attorney for Sierra Club.
Angel expressed hope that "something good for all parties, including Soka, may come out of Soka’s difficulties, if Soka seizes the opportunity of securing for itself a one-time, multimillion dollar cash infusion—and tremendous public good will—by selling its Santa Monica Mountains land holdings to the state and consolidating all its California-based educational operations in Aliso Viejo, which has added benefits in terms of economies of scale and cutting the costs of running two under-used campuses."
A Soka spokesman said the current economy has created some concerns, but that the school has no plans to consolidate campuses.
"We haven’t come to that point yet," said Arnold Kawasaki, a Soka spokesman. "We’re focusing on perfecting our educational program … We always think about what’s best for the student and the best educational environment we can create."
Soka, which opened locally in 1987, owns 588 acres near the intersection of Mulholland Highway and Las Virgenes Road. The 119,500 square-foot campus occupies 12 of those acres and the rest is mostly open space.
The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy tried to acquire the property in the early 1990s through eminent domain, but agreed to stop its condemnation effort in return for Soka’s promise not to continue with countersuits.
In 1998, Los Angeles Superior Court ruled favorably on the environmental impact report for Soka’s expansion, but a subsequent ruling overturned the decision.
As I type this, Doug is on a rant about Edmiston, private property rights, the abuses of eminent domain, government/bureauocracies running roughshod over citizens etc.
I'm bookmarking this thread because you posted this reply because the story just keeps fading away and it shouldn't! Dan Lundgren, who couldn't beat Gray Davis, just got elected to CONgress from the Sacramento area and I wasn't the least bit excited about it, remembering how he was absolutely no help as Attorney General of CA on this case!!!
This Scott case epitomized the crazed State of mind of GovernMental EnvironMentalists that I keep calling GANG-GREEN that have infected CA's government officials, from top, to bottom!!!
I wonder if they will tear down the campus in order to return the land to a pre-columbian state? My suspicion is that they will turn the campus into housing for park rangers....but then again, I'm a little jaded when it comes to this sort of thing........
The CA "Wildlife Conservation Board," a division of CA Fish & Game, is the out-of-control agency that funds this and will fund hundreds and maybe thousands of such purchases in the Sierre-Nevada CONservancy!!!
Thanks for posting this as it is exactly why I have been "freaking out" over Arnold's adoption of the SNC from the beginning!!! Nobody else, probably including you, had any idea there was an amply funded State Real Estate buying agency just waiting for this Robert F. Kennedy wet(lands) dream to be brought to life by Senor Schwarzenegger!!!
Yes, after having spent the last decade uncovering this plot and fighting it with everything I had(literally), maybe you can see now why it makes me so crazy that people see nothing really wrong with the SNC... (to be continued)
Now we shall see how many more times this type of story plays out in the huge new Schwarzenegger Sierra-Nevada CONservancy that sets the same stage as the Santa Monica CONservancy, but covering 1/5th of eastern CA... The Conservative (red voting counties) part of CA!!!
Reading the summary, it appears that the Sherriff's Dep't didn't plan on killing Scott, they only wanted to steal his ranch. Wonder if the enviros will name the Santa Monica Park vistors center after Scott? Knowing them, they will name it after deputy Spencer.
Thanks for keeping this alive so that the blinded may still see!!! (if only they would)
Can I now sue the state if a Mt Lion attacks me there?
What's the surprise? You were warned.
You supported takings like this when you chose to back Arnold.
Purchase of 'crown jewel' parkland celebrated
By Jason Kandel Staff Writer
Sunday, April 17, 2005 - With picturesque mountain ridges as a backdrop on Saturday, more than 100 preservationists celebrated the purchase of nearly 600 acres of Soka University in the Santa Monica Mountains as public parkland.
The $35 million parkland, part of the former King Gillette Ranch and considered the "crown jewel" of the Santa Monica Mountains, will boast miles of hiking trails near streams and sites of ancient Chumash Indian settlements.
"This is the day the Lord made. Be glad and rejoice in it," Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky quoted from the Bible. "He isn't making too many more days like this with these kinds of surroundings the last time I checked."
On Friday, Los Angeles County accepted deeds for the land on behalf of the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, the state Parks and Recreation Department and the National Park Service.
"I have been dreaming of this day for more than 15 years," said Elizabeth Cheadle, the chairwoman of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. "We all are enormously grateful."
Since the 1970s, park agencies have pursued acquisition of the site that sits at the southeastern corner of Mulholland Highway and Las Virgenes Road. The site is home to an ancient village known as Talepop, once inhabited by Chumash Indians.
In the 1920s, razor magnate King C. Gillette bought the property and commissioned Wallace Neff, the "architect of California's golden age," to build his estate on it.
Since then, it had been owned by MGM director Clarence Brown and Bob and Dolores Hope. It was used as a filming location for scenes in "Gone With the Wind." It has been a seminary for the Claretian Order of the Catholic Church and the headquarters for The Church Universal and Triumphant. In 1986, it was purchased by Soka Gakkai/Nichren Shoshu of America, an Aliso Viejo-based liberal arts school.
Officials called this latest acquisition of parkland part of a "stitching together of open space" across the state, as officials have been working feverishly to preserve parkland for future generations.
The property was at the top of the wish list conservationists. So preservation agencies, public and private donors, and federal, state and local officials cobbled together the money to make it happen.
"This is just an extraordinary moment in history," said Ruth Coleman, the state parks director, which owns part of the site. "People in a hundred years from now are going to be able to come here and use this extraordinary natural resource and cultural resource."
Jason Kandel, (818) 713-3664 jason.kandel@dailynews.com
Thanks! I wish I could have heard him. And I wish SW could also hear one of McIntyre's rants. With his huge listening audience, more people may start to see the light.
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