A reader has pointed out to me that 3Degrees, whose chairman helped fund the Point Reyes settlement, is a recipient of federal funding. Highly interesting to think about what causes we pay for with taxes.
DoD tends to refer to such as self-licking ice cream cones.
If Trump does one thing - end of the funding of all NGOs - that will be enough to declare success. My fear is that Rubio won't cut off the money to USAID, but will just line up a new set of hogs at the trough.
I think that little issue was resolved by Trump or Rubio would not be in the position he’s in. Remember, he didn’t need Rubio for this position. He chose him. Trump doesn’t appear to do things of consequence on a whim. Like who is going to be his Secy of State.
Apparently JD Vance has been given the task of looking through the USAID portfolio, and sorting the 'keep' from the 'toss'.
The 'keep' pile are to be ported over to within State Dept's purview, and the rest wound up.
So then it definitely does matter that the cesspit we call 'the State Department' gets cleaned up, otherwise the graft-tree will regrow with time, albeit in a new part of the garden.
One needs to remember the money that the Biden admin shoveled out after the election, the EPA POS caught on video by Project Veritas crowing about the billions they dispersed
Surely there has to be some way to pull that back and to jail people like that who clearly must have broken protocols to get it out the door.
Clearly these people were operating based on public polls and weren’t given the word that Harris was facing slaughter else they would have shoveled more before the election.
I remember when Putin kicked them all out of Russia like 15 years ago, saying they were actually Western government funded operations pushing subversive agendas. Putin was ahead of the curve on that one. Unfortunately, they continued to get funding and now are subverting the very taxpayers paying for them.
"...opens a set of questions that are remarkably hard to answer."
Oh no, this is much easier than you realize. Have you never chatted with a city planner? They have a vision - be it urban core, urban periphery, suburban, whatever their specialty happens to be, and it is the enunciation of a particular aesthetic. That aesthetic encompasses everything, including people, as long as those people conform to the aesthetic vision of the planner. None of this messy, real human beings doing things not in accordance with the vision.
This is the Professional Managerial Class, and it surprises me not at all that parasitic management consultants (particularly one with "climate strategies") have the hubris to shape every thing they might touch, again in accordance with their vision/aesthetics.
This is my class, and I despise them with more passion than they deserve. As I note on my own 'stack - I am a proud class traitor.
Great explanation, so true in any other nation too.
And the vision becomes their reality, and when real reality doesn't conform, they throw tantrums and hurt people until the vision becomes true.
Which never happens, because real reality trumps any vision.
Here, they envision an end to the daily shootings and bombings. By trying the same methods that haven't worked, ever. But according to their visions, they ought to work. And around we go.
We can hope the June 2024 Loper Bright case at the US Supreme Court which overturned the 1984 Chevron case which gave those PMC bureaucrats so much "expert" discretionary powers and court deference will soon start paying off. The days of them being able to say 1+1 = whatever they like such as remove grazing cattle for "nature" and replace with different cattle is over.
''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,'' (Henry VI, Part 2). Follow up with the urban and city planners, and major development architects. Then we can get to the NGOs, such as the Nature Conservancy.
This story becomes increasingly sad, and at the same time, a little absurd. It’s as though the government and the Nature Conservancy are tearing down the real little house on the prairie and all is surroundings to build a Disneyland version of it.
Why do so many governmental, experts & advocacy types think no one ever had a handle on how to responsibly do things before they came along (uninvited by the actual doers of things), and deigned to take over and do it the right way?
It would be a major side benefit if the unearthing of all the corrupt government spending makes these official moral busybodies a thing of the past.
My older brother is into lighthouses, so when I visited him once we went to Point Reyes. There was a sign in the parking lot warning us to beware of sharks. It was a couple of hundred feet above the shoreline, so we were surprised that sharks could get up there, but we remained cautious and survived.
Thank-you for that chuckle. Although, I am surprised to hear that you didn't know that sharks like to take long walks along the beach. Mostly looking for people visiting lighthouses. 😉😊😋
You joke, but I tagged along with a friend who was discussing her renovation plans (adding 10 percent to floorplan and reworking first floor to accommodate her elderly mother) to our Planning and Zoning Department. She is not in a flood zone but near one and the planner informed us that due to "climate change" she must fill in her basement as part of the renovation.
Interesting that no evidence is required by P and Z that sea levels are actually rising. I guess they just assume that surely sea levels are rising “somewhere” in the world therefore it just makes sense that everyone prepare.
I would have said filling the basement was definitely a good idea, but by allowing the water to enter the basement it would, over time, create habitat for the endangered Pelagic Sea Squirrel and therefore it would be wrong.
As a side note, I once put over $50K in rock on a beach lot so that the very woke owners would be up above the Ice Cap melt deluge.
The sea levels are rising somewhere, and they are falling elsewhere. What happened is that during the glacial period large parts of the northern continents were covered by a thick ice sheet. The ice sheet pressed down on the continents, causing the northern parts to sink and the southern parts to rise. Since the ice sheet melted 10,000 years ago, the continents have been returning to their normal levels, meaning the northern parts slowly rise while the southern parts sink. In the areas that are sinking the sea level appears to rise. It isn't much - a few millimeters per decade - but it is happening. We might see the onset of another glacial period - aka "global cooling" - before anyone is inconvenienced by rising water. We're due. But then again, anyone who claims that we understand the complex system we call "climate" is mistaken.
Southeast Alaska had an earthquake about ten years ago and now in my area the tides, suddenly, were 3 feet lower. Up until then the stretch of beach that I’ve been watching had been slowly rebounding. Grass is growing where grass couldn’t grow. Trees growing where there was previously only grass.
Archaeologists claim the ancient beaches were 60 meters above present levels, based on where artifacts are found.
Nice. But seriously, that coastline is deadly, primarily due to people caught unawares by 'sleeper waves'. And yes, the dread ( cue the double basses ) Great White Shark does frequent the area ( I believe mostly under the water ).
I'm so glad you're writing about the conflicts between ranchers and wealthy environmentalists. It's a huge issue that is under the radar for most people.
my working theory: first nations people and black people have been the most brutalized and disenfranchised in our country. their (mine) histories obliterated to ash,baked into film and tv archetypes to be forever preserved as noble,savage,gangsters,wise etc. both groups have been left stewing for centuries, in a giant black pot of social and cultural resentments. the flame on this back burner turned down low on the american psychic stove. every once in a while the monied classes turn the heat up on that back burner,shake the pot, take the lid off, allowing them (especially poc) to hijack freeways,burn neighborhoods and businesses. these destructive rituals stir white middle class guilt,as the monied class (who hate the poor and care not a wit for the middle class) use both groups as human shields to pillage more and more of whatever they deem to be rightfully theirs. i.e. all the real shit: ocean views,mountains,pastoral land,mineral mines,etc.
Author C. J. Box writes fictional stories that contain these observations and conflicts. He's very popular. I'm not sure the people who read him get the not so subtle subtext.
In the commentary, you raise the point that the central issue here is "can public lands be used for private profit?" And the nature conservancy, supported by hedge fund and finance bros say "absolutely not!". Yet, the architecture of modern finance, with investment banking and hedge funds at the fore, is built on a model of "private gains, socialized losses" where every time the market hiccups, banks get to cleanse their balance sheets by dumping non-performing assets on the taxpayers. As always, self-awareness is vanishingly rare and hypocrisy is the coin of the realm.
Ranch land is beautiful. Cattle grazing on land that stretches for miles and miles is iconic. It's how God intended it to be. Ironically, the damn elites who want to eject humans from such places (especially the wrong kind of humans, the ones with leather skin and dirty collars) are iconoclasts.
I hate what has been done to Mr. Luddy and his family by these non-productive, arrogant, cynical, hateful elitists. Please tell him that we in Placer County love family farms!! We have rolling, grassy hills in Lincoln, Penryn, New Castle and Auburn, with cattle, sheep, goats, and chickens; we are fortunate to have a group of sustainable/regenerative farmers known as the "Integrazers," for whom we are infinitely grateful due to their sheep and goats' grazing on our underbrush in our greenbelts around our neighborhoods; and we also have a thriving mandarin, grape and other fruit growers, to compliment the offerings at farmers' markets. Also (in east Sac County, off Hwy 16/Jackson Rd) is the Van Vleck cattle ranch, beautiful land that's obviously well-cared-for. I hope for Mr. Luddy and his family, that if his eviction is not somehow stopped, that he takes his herd somewhere like Placer County, where he'd be appreciated.
It’s such a shame and travesty but it epitomizes California and the mindset of those who fully believe they are better than everyone else and are most decidedly, smarter too. Logic, science, and reality have been bastardized into such ludicrous levels that one would think when they heard the words come out of their mouths, the stupidity would smack them up side the head!
As I read this article and took in your photos and videos, the list of land ‘managers’ you posted went through my mind. I could already envision what the before and after photos would reveal, and had to wonder how much these managers are paid to manage by not managing anything. I’m sure they sit back and smugly revel in the ‘beauty’ of the nature they oversee. At least until the inevitable wild fire erases it all.
Reading about the inspiration of managing land by not managing it, with the ultimate objective being weeds, and considering LA’s recent horror, I have to ask “Is Point Reyes prone to chaparral?”
Wonderful piece. In the the short video, the grazed side of the road looks like Alaskan tundra, home to breeding birds that fly in for the summer from Hawaii and even further to nest; also reminds me of cattle ranches in South Texas, where birds that breed in the northern U.S. and southern Canada come to spend the winter, both on the ranches and nearby national wildlife refuges. The ungrazed side, on the other hand, reminds me of the invasive plants that have to be controlled at Midway Atoll because albatrosses can't nest in the stuff--though the ungrazed Point Reyes brush looks much nastier.
Bottom line: Ranchers and their cows must leave the park so the park can be “natural,” but the park is going to rent their own cows after the ranchers’ cows leave so the park can still “look natural.”
It’s the same old sad story. The private equity folks want their nature just right for their third homes. Mexicans are fine working in the diner, just not across the view from the great room. They destroy what they claim to preserve because they like to say “authentic”, not be authentic. Nature as reality TV. Really pretty nauseating and cliched.
NIMBY.
When a homeless fellow ventured into a ravine and set up camp in an easement behind our wealthy SF friends’ home, they did what any self respecting yuppie fake Marxist does- they had the cops take him away. It’s just not done, Hadley.
Nature Conservancy might not be funding the fight against the ranchers for too much longer if their money comes from USAID…
A reader has pointed out to me that 3Degrees, whose chairman helped fund the Point Reyes settlement, is a recipient of federal funding. Highly interesting to think about what causes we pay for with taxes.
DoD tends to refer to such as self-licking ice cream cones.
If Trump does one thing - end of the funding of all NGOs - that will be enough to declare success. My fear is that Rubio won't cut off the money to USAID, but will just line up a new set of hogs at the trough.
If Rubio doesn’t do what Trump says, he will find himself out of a job.
I think that little issue was resolved by Trump or Rubio would not be in the position he’s in. Remember, he didn’t need Rubio for this position. He chose him. Trump doesn’t appear to do things of consequence on a whim. Like who is going to be his Secy of State.
I don't trust Rubio to not just keep us (taxpayers) funding USAID for equally stupid things.
I don’t believe the USAID will be eliminated. Trump vaguely alludes to this in a video of him today in the Oval Office.
Apparently JD Vance has been given the task of looking through the USAID portfolio, and sorting the 'keep' from the 'toss'.
The 'keep' pile are to be ported over to within State Dept's purview, and the rest wound up.
So then it definitely does matter that the cesspit we call 'the State Department' gets cleaned up, otherwise the graft-tree will regrow with time, albeit in a new part of the garden.
I almost added "self-licking ice cream cone" to a separate post. :)
If that happens, Rubio needs to be fired
Rubio won't be fired. The hogs he feeds will all tell Trump how great a job Rubio is doing.
is rubio a son of fidel, too?
or a daughter
Eh?
Hes too much of a pussy to cross his boss.
One needs to remember the money that the Biden admin shoveled out after the election, the EPA POS caught on video by Project Veritas crowing about the billions they dispersed
Surely there has to be some way to pull that back and to jail people like that who clearly must have broken protocols to get it out the door.
Clearly these people were operating based on public polls and weren’t given the word that Harris was facing slaughter else they would have shoveled more before the election.
Highly interesting is putting it mildly.
PS Mill Valley ppl have been a-holes for decades. For a decent skewering of them, read The Serial by Cyra Mcfadden (circa 1980).
I thought that same thing when I read the names of the groups “fundraising” to get rid of the farmers.
The most important project for the next four years is to defund the NGO/"non profit" shadow state.
I remember when Putin kicked them all out of Russia like 15 years ago, saying they were actually Western government funded operations pushing subversive agendas. Putin was ahead of the curve on that one. Unfortunately, they continued to get funding and now are subverting the very taxpayers paying for them.
the fundamental concept of an NGO is putrid
"...opens a set of questions that are remarkably hard to answer."
Oh no, this is much easier than you realize. Have you never chatted with a city planner? They have a vision - be it urban core, urban periphery, suburban, whatever their specialty happens to be, and it is the enunciation of a particular aesthetic. That aesthetic encompasses everything, including people, as long as those people conform to the aesthetic vision of the planner. None of this messy, real human beings doing things not in accordance with the vision.
This is the Professional Managerial Class, and it surprises me not at all that parasitic management consultants (particularly one with "climate strategies") have the hubris to shape every thing they might touch, again in accordance with their vision/aesthetics.
This is my class, and I despise them with more passion than they deserve. As I note on my own 'stack - I am a proud class traitor.
Can confirm being a developer. You nailed it.
Great explanation, so true in any other nation too.
And the vision becomes their reality, and when real reality doesn't conform, they throw tantrums and hurt people until the vision becomes true.
Which never happens, because real reality trumps any vision.
Here, they envision an end to the daily shootings and bombings. By trying the same methods that haven't worked, ever. But according to their visions, they ought to work. And around we go.
We can hope the June 2024 Loper Bright case at the US Supreme Court which overturned the 1984 Chevron case which gave those PMC bureaucrats so much "expert" discretionary powers and court deference will soon start paying off. The days of them being able to say 1+1 = whatever they like such as remove grazing cattle for "nature" and replace with different cattle is over.
''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,'' (Henry VI, Part 2). Follow up with the urban and city planners, and major development architects. Then we can get to the NGOs, such as the Nature Conservancy.
This story becomes increasingly sad, and at the same time, a little absurd. It’s as though the government and the Nature Conservancy are tearing down the real little house on the prairie and all is surroundings to build a Disneyland version of it.
Exactly!
Why do so many governmental, experts & advocacy types think no one ever had a handle on how to responsibly do things before they came along (uninvited by the actual doers of things), and deigned to take over and do it the right way?
It would be a major side benefit if the unearthing of all the corrupt government spending makes these official moral busybodies a thing of the past.
It's the privatized grifter version of "I'm from the government and I'm here to help"
My take too,
I've seen it in CO, complete with Art Institute gunfight reenactments and player pianos
My older brother is into lighthouses, so when I visited him once we went to Point Reyes. There was a sign in the parking lot warning us to beware of sharks. It was a couple of hundred feet above the shoreline, so we were surprised that sharks could get up there, but we remained cautious and survived.
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LUCKY YOU WERE TO LIVE THROUGH THAT
Thank-you for that chuckle. Although, I am surprised to hear that you didn't know that sharks like to take long walks along the beach. Mostly looking for people visiting lighthouses. 😉😊😋
The existential danger posed by landsharks has not been thoroughly investigated since the second season of SNL.
Good one back at you.
They were just being proactive. Sea levels are rising every day I’ve heard.
You joke, but I tagged along with a friend who was discussing her renovation plans (adding 10 percent to floorplan and reworking first floor to accommodate her elderly mother) to our Planning and Zoning Department. She is not in a flood zone but near one and the planner informed us that due to "climate change" she must fill in her basement as part of the renovation.
Interesting that no evidence is required by P and Z that sea levels are actually rising. I guess they just assume that surely sea levels are rising “somewhere” in the world therefore it just makes sense that everyone prepare.
I would have said filling the basement was definitely a good idea, but by allowing the water to enter the basement it would, over time, create habitat for the endangered Pelagic Sea Squirrel and therefore it would be wrong.
As a side note, I once put over $50K in rock on a beach lot so that the very woke owners would be up above the Ice Cap melt deluge.
The sea levels are rising somewhere, and they are falling elsewhere. What happened is that during the glacial period large parts of the northern continents were covered by a thick ice sheet. The ice sheet pressed down on the continents, causing the northern parts to sink and the southern parts to rise. Since the ice sheet melted 10,000 years ago, the continents have been returning to their normal levels, meaning the northern parts slowly rise while the southern parts sink. In the areas that are sinking the sea level appears to rise. It isn't much - a few millimeters per decade - but it is happening. We might see the onset of another glacial period - aka "global cooling" - before anyone is inconvenienced by rising water. We're due. But then again, anyone who claims that we understand the complex system we call "climate" is mistaken.
Southeast Alaska had an earthquake about ten years ago and now in my area the tides, suddenly, were 3 feet lower. Up until then the stretch of beach that I’ve been watching had been slowly rebounding. Grass is growing where grass couldn’t grow. Trees growing where there was previously only grass.
Archaeologists claim the ancient beaches were 60 meters above present levels, based on where artifacts are found.
Oh, climate change. That explains it.
Twice a day, I hear.
Twice a day. Has something to do with the moon.
Uh oh. Cue the SNL Land Shark routine.
Lol. There’s lots of land sharks around there, a couple big schools of them in the area.
That signage was picture worthy okboomer
Nice. But seriously, that coastline is deadly, primarily due to people caught unawares by 'sleeper waves'. And yes, the dread ( cue the double basses ) Great White Shark does frequent the area ( I believe mostly under the water ).
I'm so glad you're writing about the conflicts between ranchers and wealthy environmentalists. It's a huge issue that is under the radar for most people.
Bizarrely under the radar. It's going to reshape a lot of the landscape.
Look east a bit. Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho. Same conflicts, only under coastal radar.
my working theory: first nations people and black people have been the most brutalized and disenfranchised in our country. their (mine) histories obliterated to ash,baked into film and tv archetypes to be forever preserved as noble,savage,gangsters,wise etc. both groups have been left stewing for centuries, in a giant black pot of social and cultural resentments. the flame on this back burner turned down low on the american psychic stove. every once in a while the monied classes turn the heat up on that back burner,shake the pot, take the lid off, allowing them (especially poc) to hijack freeways,burn neighborhoods and businesses. these destructive rituals stir white middle class guilt,as the monied class (who hate the poor and care not a wit for the middle class) use both groups as human shields to pillage more and more of whatever they deem to be rightfully theirs. i.e. all the real shit: ocean views,mountains,pastoral land,mineral mines,etc.
Along the same lines as eco-terrorist methods, long researched & written about by Elizabeth Nickson.
It seems uncannily like Maui.
Well, its pretty tough taking care of your own citizens when you're funding tranny education in Peru
Author C. J. Box writes fictional stories that contain these observations and conflicts. He's very popular. I'm not sure the people who read him get the not so subtle subtext.
In the commentary, you raise the point that the central issue here is "can public lands be used for private profit?" And the nature conservancy, supported by hedge fund and finance bros say "absolutely not!". Yet, the architecture of modern finance, with investment banking and hedge funds at the fore, is built on a model of "private gains, socialized losses" where every time the market hiccups, banks get to cleanse their balance sheets by dumping non-performing assets on the taxpayers. As always, self-awareness is vanishingly rare and hypocrisy is the coin of the realm.
Oh yes. Yep.
Don't kid yourself. They know they're stealing and ****ing us.
Hey Chris,
Is that a good location for us to host our inaugural meeting of the party of Leave Us The Fuck Alone?
Plenty of space for a keg
You know you'll need a permit for that.
I need a chapter of that club in my neck of the woods. 😊
When would that be?…I’d like to come! 😉
Ranch land is beautiful. Cattle grazing on land that stretches for miles and miles is iconic. It's how God intended it to be. Ironically, the damn elites who want to eject humans from such places (especially the wrong kind of humans, the ones with leather skin and dirty collars) are iconoclasts.
I drove home to Los Angeles by driving out toward Novato first -- through rolling green hills with cows on them. Beautiful.
I hate what has been done to Mr. Luddy and his family by these non-productive, arrogant, cynical, hateful elitists. Please tell him that we in Placer County love family farms!! We have rolling, grassy hills in Lincoln, Penryn, New Castle and Auburn, with cattle, sheep, goats, and chickens; we are fortunate to have a group of sustainable/regenerative farmers known as the "Integrazers," for whom we are infinitely grateful due to their sheep and goats' grazing on our underbrush in our greenbelts around our neighborhoods; and we also have a thriving mandarin, grape and other fruit growers, to compliment the offerings at farmers' markets. Also (in east Sac County, off Hwy 16/Jackson Rd) is the Van Vleck cattle ranch, beautiful land that's obviously well-cared-for. I hope for Mr. Luddy and his family, that if his eviction is not somehow stopped, that he takes his herd somewhere like Placer County, where he'd be appreciated.
It’s such a shame and travesty but it epitomizes California and the mindset of those who fully believe they are better than everyone else and are most decidedly, smarter too. Logic, science, and reality have been bastardized into such ludicrous levels that one would think when they heard the words come out of their mouths, the stupidity would smack them up side the head!
PS: Great pic BTW! What bold publicity.
As I read this article and took in your photos and videos, the list of land ‘managers’ you posted went through my mind. I could already envision what the before and after photos would reveal, and had to wonder how much these managers are paid to manage by not managing anything. I’m sure they sit back and smugly revel in the ‘beauty’ of the nature they oversee. At least until the inevitable wild fire erases it all.
The Park Service is part of the Executive Branch. Just sayin'.
But there's a signed settlement. The ranchers essentially contracted to leave, in exchange for payments. Could that be gotten around?
Arguably, it could be set aside if the parties agreed.
Maybe it needs an EO. 😋
Reading about the inspiration of managing land by not managing it, with the ultimate objective being weeds, and considering LA’s recent horror, I have to ask “Is Point Reyes prone to chaparral?”
Wonderful piece. In the the short video, the grazed side of the road looks like Alaskan tundra, home to breeding birds that fly in for the summer from Hawaii and even further to nest; also reminds me of cattle ranches in South Texas, where birds that breed in the northern U.S. and southern Canada come to spend the winter, both on the ranches and nearby national wildlife refuges. The ungrazed side, on the other hand, reminds me of the invasive plants that have to be controlled at Midway Atoll because albatrosses can't nest in the stuff--though the ungrazed Point Reyes brush looks much nastier.
Bottom line: Ranchers and their cows must leave the park so the park can be “natural,” but the park is going to rent their own cows after the ranchers’ cows leave so the park can still “look natural.”
Bet you a donut that those cows will be rented from someone from or close to the people suing to get rid of the farmers.
Exactly what I was going to write!
"They want us gone."
Precisely.
It’s the same old sad story. The private equity folks want their nature just right for their third homes. Mexicans are fine working in the diner, just not across the view from the great room. They destroy what they claim to preserve because they like to say “authentic”, not be authentic. Nature as reality TV. Really pretty nauseating and cliched.
NIMBY.
When a homeless fellow ventured into a ravine and set up camp in an easement behind our wealthy SF friends’ home, they did what any self respecting yuppie fake Marxist does- they had the cops take him away. It’s just not done, Hadley.
"I didn't call the police on a homeless person -- I called the police on our unhoused neighbor."