Hope this cheers you up.

I don't know how it happens but according to the analytics there are two pages that come up when you search for "mayor of a small town dancing with monkeys in the jungle." One is on this site and the other is this video:



Happy Mothers' Day!

Lathropart

Last night after the council meeting Mayor Sayles beamed with pride as she gave some of the press a "special tour" of the creativity of Lathrop citizens.

At right is a sneak preview of the mayor's prize winning art! I wasn't sure what she called it at first. Chaotic Sun? Psychotic Sun? Oh, the actual name is Complex Sun. I think I may have called it "Metal Cat Hacked This Up" but that's just me.

An additional image:
Mayor Sayles points out special features in some of the painting/photographs. I think. Hey, wait a sec... where's my monocle?

Lets do lunch -- in prison!

Does anyone believe, as the Manteca Bulletin asserts, that prisoners eat better food and have better medicine than the taxpayers? How bad would the taxpayers' food and medicine have to be?

What's odd is that the editor admits in the next paragraph that the prison guard union spews forth propaganda in their TV ads in an effort to get more money and acknowledges the guards are making extra money selling "cell phones" to prisoners.

How do you assert that the guards are manipulators and corrupt and at the same time tell us to believe the story about how the prisoners eat great food and get the best medical treatments?

That's what propaganda is. It isn't a statement that people don't believe -- effective propaganda tells us what we want to believe. We don't like to think that our society is evil or has corrupt institutions, so we are willing and long to believe that that we wouldn't treat prisoners in any but the most humane ways. We're Americans after all!

But open your eyes and look at the facts. Read about the slop prisoners are forced to eat and the deplorable medical negligence. The medical system in California prisons is so bad the federal government has been trying to put it under their control to bring it up to constitutional standards -- with little success.

Why is the press practically locked out of the prisons? Why do the courts and jails not permit inspections by third parties? Why do the prisons hold Potemkin tours of their jail facilities for the press showing the wonderful humane treatment everyone gets. It's like when the Red Cross would inspect a Nazi prison, they would always have new blankets and clean clothes and good food. Yet we find corpses being dragged out the San Joaquin jail with boot marks on their backs.

At least Sheriff Arpaio has the decency to actually say he feeds the prisoners for 40 cents a day and justifies it.

Lathrop politics out of control (again)

Last Friday during a meeting of the Mayor's Art Show Committee, a verbal and physical altercation broke out between Planning Commissioner Dan MacNeilage (a frequent commenter on this website), the mayor's husband Thomas Sayles (a member of the committee) and Ron Rhodes, husband of former mayor Gloryanna Rhodes. The Manteca Bulletin did an article about the fracas yesterday after talking to MacNeilage and Rhodes but, as usual, was "unable" to reach the Sayles for any comment.

What could prompt a planning commissioner and a former mayor's husband to show up at a committee meeting (a committee on which neither sits) for the sole purpose of starting a fight with the current mayor's husband? I don't have the answer to that, but there's some small hint that there's a lot of resentment and anger over the annual Mayor's Art Show in the video from the last Lathrop city council meeting where J. "Chaka" Santos accuses the mayor of disrespecting Bennie Gatto (former mayor) and tells her it's not her committee.

Santos and MacNeilage are bullies and I guess we can add Ron Rhodes to that list now too. Santos smacks his fists during his "citizen's forum" rants at Mayor Kristy Sayles, like he wants to punch her. MacNeilage makes frequent threatening statements on this website, saying things like someone's going to "get hurt real bad" if we don't stop what we're doing. I would suggest to MacNeilage and others who have made threats to us over publishing their pictures and statements here, that if you don't want to be talked about, then stop showing up at public meetings and stop speaking at those meetings.

Commissioner MacNeilage seems to have appointed himself spokesman and enforcer for Lathrop politics and he says that he went to the Arts Committee meeting to "talk to Sayles" because he reportedly had "upset" some of the committee members and "made Joyce Gatto cry." (Joyce Gatto declined to comment to the Bulletin.) He admitted telling Sayles "you're not wanted here, you're not needed here" even though Sayles is a member of the committee and MacNeilage is not. Apparently, the bullies in Lathrop think they can get their way through brute force, and the ugly threats that have been flying around the past year have now escalated to physical violence.

Four years ago Kristy Sayles was the darling of Lathrop politics, backed by then mayor Gloryanna Rhodes and other prominent Lathropians. I think they thought that Sayles, being young and a newcomer to politics, would continue the "good old boys club" way of doing things that has been standard in the town for many years. When Sayles showed that she had a mind of her own and bucked the old establishment in Lathrop politics, the fangs and daggers came out. First came the vicious website that tried to destroy her and her family through ugly rumors and lies, false complaints to government agencies and the grand jury. Now we can add assault and battery to the frightening list of disgraceful actions taken in the name of politics.

The government will "cease to exist?"

The editor of the Manteca Bulletin has a good idea recommending "no" on all the May 19 special election ballot measures. But I don't know what to make of his statement that if they don't pass "California government as we now know it will cease to exist." There's nothing in the measures that would cause the government to "cease to exist." At most, if you vote "no" it would cause the legislators to have to rethink things and start paying reasonable prices for government "services."

The real clue in in the first measure which couples a promise to spend less with extending the new tax increases beyond two years. Think about it, they are saying "we promise to spend less, so please give us more money; trust us, just give us more money and this time we'll spend less." Nonsense! If they are going to spend less, then they don't need more tax money!

The only measure I'm still thinking about is it might be an idea to re-purpose the special "mental health tax." I'll get back to you on that....

School bus meeting

The subject of this weeks Sun-Post editorial. The MUSD plans to extend the walking distance no bus zone to save money. Video of the first informative meeting with "the public" held on 30 Mar 2009.

Earth Day

For "Earth Day" I decided to stand next to a tree and look "concerned about the Earth." I hope Gaia is pleased.