Start with one local item. You probably know the name Darkhorse. It’s a real estate development in progress adjacent to Lake of the Pines in the southwest part of the county. It’s also one the highest rated public golf courses in this part of the world. The developers apparently delivered the golf course they promised, but they’re having a little trouble coming through on the 300 expensive houses that were supposed to surround it. Only 13 homes have been finished and occupied, and the developer has run out of money, leaving well over $3 million in unpaid bills for things like roads and utility connections.

When Darkhorse first was proposed, another instant suburb anchored by a golf course seemed like an unlikely plan. After opponents won some early battles in the planning process, they started calling it Deadhorse, but the developers held onto the reins and eventually got approval to put the dark horse on the track. As usual, the developers put up bonds to ensure they lived up to their end of the deal. This week, the B of S decided it was time to call in those bonds. The financial institutions which issued the bonds will be expected to pay the county, and then they’ll try to squeeze the money out of the developers. As we’ve seen before, the likely outcome is that the bond issuers end up owning whatever real estate was offered as security. But if the past offers any lessons in these matters, one is that the bonds never cover all of the costs. The county’s taxpayers end up having to refill that empty bag of oats that’s left over when the dust settles.

* * *

I guess we’re going to have to talk a little more about immigration. The great compromise died a rather bloody death in the US Senate, but as we’ve noted before, the bill looked a lot like business as usual anyway. The primary impact of the bill’s failure is that a lot of Washington politicians won’t be able to tell the voters at home that they solved the great immigration crisis. The issue gets a little fuzzy along the edges of the political labels. Bush was ready to sign the bill, but it was opposed by some of his most ardent supporters, the ultra-conservatives whose flames are fanned by the call-in shows on AM radio. Those are the people who actually believe there’s a crisis, and they won’t be satisfied with anything but the hard core approach–round up all the illegals and ship ‘em home, then fortify the borders with military firepower. The popular line of talk, right now, among those people is that cracking down on the employers will cause an estimated 12 million illegals to pack up and go home.

I read a piece a few days ago excerpted from a book by Nayan Chanda which put a historical perspective on the idea that we can and should try to stop people from migrating around the planet. Throughout recorded history, and even before, people have followed the food. As weather and climate change, people move on to greener pastures. Hunters follow the herds and fishermen chase the fish. The Garden of Eden may not have been much of a garden, because homo erectus didn’t waste much time packing up and heading out of Ethiopia to populate the rest of the world. The original globalization movement. In Europe, it must be amusing to watch the US try to slow the flow of people from Mexico while people from starving countries in Africa are pouring into Europe at a much higher rate. It’s the same all over. The grass doesn’t just look greener; it really is greener across the fence. There’s more money going around in the US than in Mexico, even if it is just so much paper. Some people in Africa might not even see any currency until they earn their first Euros. A bunch of suits in Washington and a few demagogues on the radio can’t stop history.

* * *

A couple of cities in Northern California, Belmont and Oakland, are working on new anti-smoking ordinances which actually would make it illegal to smoke tobacco anywhere but inside single-family homes. In other words, if you have neighbors right across the wall, you can’t even light up in your own home. If you’ve ever repeated that old adage about what a person does in the privacy of his own home, you can forget it. Although that scares me to death, I have to appreciate the irony that we’ve come to a place where tobacco is less acceptable, legally and socially, than marijuana.

In other hemp slash medical news, some scientists have come up with a marijuana ointment. That’s right, just rub it on your skin to cure what ails you. They say it was a long time in development because they had to make sure you couldn’t get high on it. Coming soon: a bottle of red wine that keeps your arteries clear but won’t get you drunk.

Incidentally, do you know what the Food and Drug Administration calls the things it approves for adding to your food? It’s "generally regarded as safe." That’s right, they call it "GRAS."

* * *

Here’s another story of futile resistance to electronic gadgetry. A sportswriter in Kentucky was covering a college championship baseball game by blogging it in real time. He was doing it for the third consecutive game when an official of the NCAA caught on and threw him out of the ballpark. Baseball always has been a game devoted to doing everything according to tradition.

* * *

I’ll finish today by reading a couple of sentences from The Times of London. "Government is doing its best to make our lives about as miserable as any pox-ridden, Hogarthian whore’s. Utter the words ‘middle class’ in Whitehall and watch their greedy little pimps’ eyeballs light up with pound signs. Behold the British middle class–a docile, law-abiding army of tax slaves." In this country, such sentiments are heard only from the alternative media, but I’ve never heard it said so eloquently. The inspiration for that tirade was a proposal for strongly worded warnings on wine bottles which the writer, appropriately named Sarah Vine, calls "Pernicious Puritanism squeezing the life and soul out of Britain."

Name (isn’t always eloquent on behalf of KVMR, etc.) Email