Los Banos Forum

“You need to focus on the important issues!” Bob Bonehead yelled at me the other day. “You get caught up in wrong-headed thinking too often. I saw you looking at candidate websites trying to read position papers. What are you going to learn from that?”

Bob was trying to re-educate me to help me become a better voter. As one of the few awake through my civics classes in high school (I admit to being that guy who actually participated without urging/pleading by the teacher), I had always thought it important to know how a candidate stood on economic and public health and safety issues. Bob, he was going to open my eyes.

According to the Los Banos Enterprise, despite all that was revealed about his relationship with Ranchwood Realty, the Mayor is going to vote on the annexation of nearly 1000 acres of farmland requested by Ranchwood. The paper quoted the Mayor as saying he does not know which way he is going to vote. I find this surprising because I know which way he is going to vote. The Mayor will vote for the annexation. This is just another example of the Mayor not being honest. The Mayor has also claimed that we have the highest building fees in the Valley. We do not. The City of Ripon has double our fees.

I believe we have an opportunity for humanitarian out reach in locating a rescue mission here in Los Banos. It is unfortunate we lost or allowed Alpha Pregnancy (http://www.alphapregnancy.org/ ) and the Woman’s Place (http://womansplace.org/ ) to abandon our city leaving us deficient in these needful areas.
I understand getting it right is important, and believe an accounting/business plan, as well potential funding sources are warranted. We need to establish a formal dialogue on this regardless of the chaotic way it was presented to city council on May 7th, 2008.
I believe when the program is understood it will grow by incorporating additional services to those in need...

I don't think Gene Forte got his full five minutes. I wanted to hear the letter that the Mayor wrote. If you missed what happened, Gene was presenting his reasons for recalling the Mayor and was reading the Mayor's letter to the FPPC and was about three minutes into his five minutes of public forum when the Mayor cut off his microphone. Bill Vaughn looked shocked and made a comment to the Mayor as the Chief of Police walked towards Gene and the camera was pointed to the Los Banos Logo and all audio was cut off. The event was pre-planned as evidenced by how organized the reaction was. The viewer was left to wonder what happened to Gene and why was he not allowed to speak in public forum?

Once upon a time in a land not-so-far away and not-so-long ago, there stood a ranch house in which lived a community of mice. The mice had enjoyed moderate success and grew a bit each year. Larger and larger numbers of mice came to live in the community. Soon, the mice were bursting at the seams.

This overpopulation led to more mice caught by the cats, infighting among the mice and more and more dumb, brutal mice that started fights with other mice. Soon the mouse community said, “Enough! We need new leaders. We cannot continue to have all these new mice added to our community so quickly”

Hundreds of spider monkeys of the green banana leaf tribe gathered to celebrate their green banana leafness. What good fortune to be part of the green banana leaf community, all others being losers, particularly the yellow orchid spider monkeys. One did not wish to be of the yellow orchid tribe, losers that they were.

It was widely known that yellow orchid monkeys were given to eat bananas. Of course, green banana leaf spider monkeys also ate bananas, but chose better bananas than yellow orchid spider monkeys. Green leaf spider monkeys used sticks to gather tasty termites to munch as a snack. Yellow orchid spider monkeys also used sticks to eat termites, but were not as clever as green banana leaf spider monkeys, so got less tasty termites.

The Wild Weasel kissed his yellowing portrait of William Randolph Hearst and emerged from his den wildly waving a parchment. “Last night I had a vision of a burning bush that spoke to me. Now I have this paper for all to sign. We will remove the Idiot King by fiat!”

“By Fiat? We buy American!” cried the people. “Besides, look at the coffers! We cannot afford to remove him by leased pickup truck! His reign ends but a few months from now. Can we not rid ourselves of him then on the cheap? Then we can afford to throw out the Eco Queen and the Unelected Prince also,” said the confused State.

Walking alongside an empty lot that had recently felt the disc in the name of fire control, I thought how I had despised the cotton farm it had once been and now longed for. Since my arrival in the early 1990’s, I had been no fan of cotton farming.

A government study in the 1930’s showed that Westside land should not be irrigated and plowed, as it would release selenium in toxic amounts, an observation since proven correct. Witness the Kesterson drain. But, now with more and more housing encroaching, this last piece of empty land between two recently built neighborhoods is all that is left of the ruralness that was my neighbor.

Does anyone know why C.C.I.D. has ruined what I would argue was one of our towns most beautiful areas to look at (the canal next to their office across from shell gas) by cutting down trees and removing the landscape. This was the only spot along the highway with any beauty, and was appreciated by residents as well as those who pass through our town.

Does anybody know what happened to Los Banos Motors? Are they closed for good? What happened to them? Was it the economy? Poor Management? Will there be a comeback?