A DRIVE BY IN PARADISE The Super Rich Don't Need No Stinking KELO

Long Before the infamous KELO Supreme Court Decision we had something called Gentrification, which enabled the rich to grab private property without the courts. Gentrification the elimination of a life style, as viewed from a small town. It starts with friendly foreplay but the end is the end. It's is a well known fact that it is impossible to create great art without cheap bars and cheap whores, and they are the first to go.

The gentrification of rural Carmel California started in 1947 but none of us noticed it as such. Just the fingers on the inside of the knee that felt kind of good, but things never stop there. John Steinbeck, the Nobel Prize winning writer and long time resident, never bitched about they way we kids raced cars at the bridge. The poet Robinson Jeffers didn't raise a stink about kids dancing. Frank Lloyd Wright didn't stop building the house on Carmel Point because teen agers were necking on the beach and hoisting a few. But a new bunch showed up around 1948. They were old, rich, no talent dilettantes from east of somewhere else who decided that only they knew what an art colony should look like and fuck the artists; they looked like such bums anyway. They hassled us kids about the loud mufflers on our cars like Carmel was supposed to be quiet all day so a bunch of dying old farts could sleep. Dancing was banned within the city limits (the high school is outside the city). An egg fight on Halloween was a War Crime. We had no idea these people would end up running the place. "Old Carmel" gave up without a fight.

When Art Galleries replace garages, it's all over.

They ain't laying down for it in the cities these days. When they fight it in Harlem it is reported as black separatists threatening violence. Downtown Los Angeles is made to sound like Mexican illegals going to war. In Charleston SC the media portrays resistance as a resurgence of the KKK. No matter, in most cities across the country resistance is taking place.

Resistance has to be rough because they are fighting Gentrification. Gentrification is Ivy League lingo for rich people from "outside" the community suddenly deciding to buy up the local property and "improving"it. The improvements result in a sudden surge in local property taxes, the new taxes displace the original residents who cannot pay them who then sell out and move. The local garages, sheet metal shops, lumber yards, and trucking companies, the places that employ sweat guys at good wages, are forced to move along with the jobs. These are always replaced by non-polluting and quiet Art Galleries, high end bars, and some specialty boutiques. What remains is a rich and happy class of people who put their kids into private schools and abandon the public schools to the poor. In the big cities they hire private police forces to keep the pissed off slob element (you) at bay while they live in isolated splendor. Of course the isolated rich contribute to all the Politically Correct causes, are environmentally pure, go to the opera, the theater, and art galleries; buy the season tickets to the Knicks and Cowboys games ($500 for a Knicks game and almost that much for a Cowboys game), and keep the yacht marinas filled up; they do all this while occasionally attacking the Chinese Communists on human rights, and "really going after" polluting oil companies (one assumes only after buying put options). The newspapers love them because they vote "liberal" along with the poor, which means they have to be OK.

In the rural West these days, it's more subtle. The Greens, composed largely of big city votingblocks living in large metro centers on either coast, pressure the Federal, State and local governments to seize privately held rural land in order to "save it". New kinds of endangered species are mysteriously discovered on a farm to assist in the Land Grab. (Think they will ever find the endangered Bar Fly in Beverly Hills and seize a movie star's mansion to protect it?). In Idaho, Montana, and the rural parts of the western states it's called "saving the environment", stopping corporate greed, and becoming "stewards" of the country we love. Land that isn't grabbed is "regulated" (called a Regulatory Taking), zoned, or restricted, so that sweat jobs paying good money can't pass the environmental test. The sweat guys, together with their wives and jobs, vanish. The decreasing available land that is not in government hands is bought up by the rich from the around the world; Americans who purchase the land live on the east and left coasts and claim to be Green, Green, Green. Note Aspen in Colorado (40 art galleries, ski area, median home price $2.3 million), Santa Fe in New Mexico (140 plus art galleries, median single family home prices over $400,000, a ski area, plus one of the only gentrified places to set aside some affordable housing), or Jackson Hole in Wyoming (97% owned by the government, 40 art galleries, median price for a 4 bedroom 3 bath home is $1.3 million).

The Grabs out West usually target individuals rather than groups of minorities or lower income people. A ranch is grabbed. A farm. A few acres. Mobs of Blacks or Hispanics don't rally on the plains; white anarchists can't be bothered. A feed dealer loses a customer. So does a local farm implement dealer. Somebody is laid off each time a ranch or farm is grabbed. The result for the original residents of the area is the same as in the big cities. Local property taxes on the shrinking supply of land go through the roof, the rich have a new place to play, they stash their kids in private schools in another state so the local public schools deteriorate, they build play pens for themselves called country clubs and theaters, grab off huge sections of land which they zone for high end recreation, and most of the original residents "vanish" to the few places that remain not owned by the government; places with names like Castroville, Salinas, or Moss Landing. Their original good paying jobs aren't "green" enough so they lose whatever economic clout they once enjoyed. The Westerners don't call it gentrification. They are more to the point. Robbery is the term used out west. Nobody in the PC crowd realizes that the evicted "slob" element has the right to bear arms. In other cases a "Rural Cleansing" takes place as happened in the recent Kalamath water dispute. Events like these elimninate entire communities. Property values are destroyed along with the property tax base. Without tax dollars entire towns cease to exist. The angry residents are forced to move to the slums of the cities.

The current "crisis" in education can be directly attributed to the absentee rich and other privileged classes putting their kids into private schools, and the selfish retired rich who abandon any stake in communities. They don't vote for bond issues for the remaining less well off residents who they outnumber. They don't participate in the local PTA. There is no way the education crisis could exist in America were it not for private schools as hideouts for those who can pay. The rich would never lay down for what is going on in education if it affected them.

The big cities have their race riots in part because large groups of compartmentalized (the ghetto) and well armed poor act out. The result of the rioting by large voting blocks in big cities is that government is forced to throw some money at the people who have been moved aside by the rich. In the rural West it has been different. We have Ruby Ridge, the McGuckin fiasco, Waco, and other less publicized events. These events have two things in common: the government acts aggressively against individuals who dare to resist and they forcibly remove them from the land (it's called stealing); the press favorably views the wrongs done by the Government until somebody steps to the plate and "talks". Environmental groups actually have a "plan" in all this. They want to move people off the land and into the cities. One hundred people per acre is what Greens say the slob element (you rural dopes) should live on. A greater density than New York City.

In all cases the privileged use some of their land to live on, and a lot of it for golf courses or ski areas for their play pens. Many of these "play pens" are tax exempt because the well connected know how to put the land into "public land banks" or land use zoning. Every once in a while they throw up a "Nature Preserve" (after getting tax breaks for the larcenous stunt) so the Land Grab has the cloak of doing good deeds. No matter the cloak, the long time residents are forced to move. But where can they go? In the West the government owns most of the land and grabs more each year, 67% of Idaho, 86% of Nevada, they even own 44% of California. Before the collapse of Communism John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, "The public lands of the United States exceed the combined area of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Hungary, Denmark, and Albania. Where socialized ownership of land is concerned, only the USSR and China can claim company with the United States." The land grab has continueds while our population increases. The remaining land values soar, as do the property taxes. This synergy benefits only the rich. The people they displace move to slums. Rents and tempers there rise. Sound like your home town yet?

NOW LET'S LOOK AT PARADISE

The Monterey Peninsula in Central California is a legendary place. The Lone Cypress, astonishing Pebble Beach scenes, the towns of Carmel and Monterey, the Del Monte Forest, all have an almost holy aura. Dreamscapes of foam loaded waves explode upon the rocky coast and link seamlessly with plains of flat blue ocean. Shifting banks of fog create a montage of changing scenery; each moment seems more beautiful than the last. Golf courses to die for. Car races to die in. Beautiful people from beautiful places shop in Carmel and Monterey. It may not be Heaven but you can see it from there and God lives just around the next corner. Well, that's the ink about the place anyway.

The First Time "IT" Happened

Only Monterey's very old remember 1948; that awful year the sardines vanished. The Sardine. That crummy little fish. The industrial lifeblood of almost every working person on the Peninsula for two generations, just disappeared. Evaporated. Leaving a depression that lasted almost forever. At the same time an era was ending right next door in Carmel as well; Carmel, a hangout and working spot for artists of all types since the turn of the last century was about to get "the treatment". Real estate prices began to rise as America's expanding upper middle class, movie stars, and millionaires "discovered" the place. By 1968 the "starving" artists had left and so had most "sweat jobs".

So what's it really like these days, this "legendary spot", fifty four years after the first bunch of outsiders moved in to Carmel? I grew up there. Sunset Grammar School, Carmel High School Class of 1951. Learned to drive, love, drink, and cheat on chemistry tests while ignoring the beautiful views. I hadn't been back there since 1955. In May of this year I returned for my 50th high school reunion. I heard stuff. I saw stuff. I heard that the "Tourist Business" is way off. No artists live there anymore. Everybody is old. Carmel is....well not CARMEL anymore. And Old Monterey has just disappeared.

On the Peninsula "The Tourist Business" has replaced the sardine. Looking at scenery has replaced work. Art Galleries have replaced the artists. Property taxes have made it certain that undesirables (you) can't buy there.

And then there is golf. In this particular Western Land Grab, almost 5,000 acres of Peninsula land has been turned into golf courses (more than five times the area of Central Park in New York), acreage enough for 250,00 people to live in reasonably nice apartments; of course if the Greens prevail in the continuing Rural Cleansing there is room for 1,250,000. The Land Grab assures the displacement of the "Sweat Class" to the nether regions. Before 1950 there were only three major golf courses (two were private) and perhaps four smaller ones. Now there are twenty three. That's twenty three. Like in the number 23. For a population of 320,000 people including Salinas. Los Angeles with three million people has thirteen. New York City has none.

I inhaled the cold air. The kelp smell jogged my memory and I had thoughts. It seemed like a "Drive By" had occurred. A casual hit by a "suite gang". Well dressed, caring, loves animals to death, but a gang that will never be denied. I think the Carmel-Monterey Drive By is a lot like the carnage taking place where you may be living. And if you live anywhere in the West it is happening right in front of your nose. Take heed. Your life is over.

It has been said that "You Can't Go Home Again" (the first Thomas Wolfe). Well if you grew up on the Monterey Peninsula fifty years ago, you can't even see home from there. Except for Carmel High School. It hasn't changed in 50 years, an absolute disgrace in a high net worth community like Carmel (median asking price for a home in Carmel is $1.29 million). Carmel's wealthy absentee and retirement class has refused to pass school bond issues. The student body is composed of kids who come from the surrounding rural area, which until recently had no vote in the district. High school blackboards got so old the teachers had to memorize the blips on the boards when writing, the old wiring screamed, and a scandalously out of date interior structure would remind one of South Central Los Angeles. The deterioration of the school speaks volumes. The "word" (in small towns there is always "the word") is that they are finally fixing it up. In typical fashion the "outside" of the school, meaning the lawns and fields, looks good. Carmel is "Gentrification" to the max.

I'm not some old fart who says the past was better. In the "Good Old Daze" one or two kids per year were killed within a two-mile stretch on the scenic twisty curvy Carmel-Monterey two lane road while racing blind through the fog. That stretch was the local "Dead Man's Curve"; every town in every part of the country has one and the old Monterey Peninsula had at least four. Carnage is a mild word to describe the results of "drag" racing on old Hi'way 1 past Carmel at "the bridge". The Salinas-Monterey cutoff, an 18-mile two lane serpentine with blind curves every 500 yards, was an early morning raceway where kids (including me) raced two abreast regardless of traffic: the local "Blood Alley". This race driving was only sometimes done by kids who were not drunk. The roads needed fixing. They have been fixed. Looks good.

The town of Seaside, which is attached to Monterey on the north, was a poverty area rivaling any in the United States; it needed to be cleaned up. It has been cleaned OUT, the people tossed to God Knows Where and certainly not to better jobs. Aided by one of the few Federal Land give backs, $400,000 plus housing and more stores and shops that is sure to go up has replaced the poverty. A major statement about the Peninsula.

And there were the good old days of racism in "Liberal" Carmel. What a neat bunch. We lost our championship football game in 1950 due in part because our coaches wouldn't let our fastest ball carrier, a kid named Jim Moran who was African American, carry the ball even one time; they were heard to say that the boy belonged in a cotton patch. The "word" is that the family was hounded out of Liberal Carmel a couple of years later. Nobody knows why Jim Moran killed himself a few years after that. So you can shove the "good old days" stuff as far as I'm concerned. The Phoney Liberalism we see nation wide, started in Carmel.

As for Monterey since ‘48? The sardine fishery, the industrial base which supplied jobs for at least half of the community, was wiped off the face of the earth, the canneries eventually replaced by some of the most expensive shops in the United States. All the good cannery and fishing boat jobs have been replaced by low paying dead end retail jobs or parking lot jobs. The sardines are back but too late. A politically correct and environmentally pure aquarium built for tourists is the big thing in Monterey these days.

"Want a future, kid? Get off your butt and inherit your old man's money."

The sweat guys, the people who bust their asses doing hard physical work, have been chased out by some of the highest real estate prices on the planet. America may be the land of miracles but a carpenter and a waitress can't buy a $500,000 house anywhere that I know of. And if any sweat class couple did manage to buy?,well the locals will fix them with the sky-high property taxes; one must keep out the wrong elements. Half a million dollar homes are near the low end on the Peninsula (Monterey, Carmel, Pacific Grove and Pebble Beach) these days. Now the sweat guys and their wives, the women who get varicose veins before they are 30 from standing and smiling at tourists for $9.50 an hour while pregnant, "those people", come to the Peninsula on "green cards" from far away towns like Salinas, Castroville, and other garden spots. Places from where they have been deported by the local "improvements". They are all out of town by sunset so as not disrupt the environmental purity for the politically correct well to do. I bet there isn't one kid in twenty who wants to stay on the Peninsula, unless their old man owns a store. Somehow or other they know they won't see the big bucks from guiding tours through an aquarium.

IS THE DREADED "IT" HAPPENING AGAIN?

The "word" is that the "Tourist Business" is down. The latest sardine disaster. What's wrong I wonder? They may be running out of $100 per night rooms in Carmel, but there's plenty of room if you pay the $150 to $300 a night rate. Could it be that the world famous 17 mile drive is now a hoax? "For Your Convenience and in order to preserve the environment" (naturally), the latest corporation headed by big names who don't live there (Clint Eastwood, Dick Ferris, Arnold Palmer and Peter Ueberroth who replaced a Japanese Corporation, that replaced 20th Century Fox, etc) is keeping many of the roads with famous vistas closed. Most missed is the old road, now blocked, that ran between the second and third fairways of the Pebble Beach Golf Course, a half mile stretch that slowly reveals to the beholder one of the most breathtaking views of land and water in the world. The splendor shown on TV when the golf tournaments are televised is inaccessible to the slob element. This is so that the wealthy won't have their views disrupted. The only way you will see the profligate magnificence on display at Pebble Beach is if you pony up the $250 to play a round on the course or the millions to buy a house adjoining the fairway. In the old days, before Gentrification and Land Grabs, one of the more spectacular views was the surprise appearance of exquisite blue and white erupting violence that is the Pacific Ocean as seen when emerging from dense forest and rounding the bluff north of the famous Cypress Point Golf Course. The Almighty Corporation has erected a hundred feet of chain link fence covered with black canvass, assuring one and all that this particular revelation remains only in the memory of old fools and the rhymes of dead poets. What is left of the Pebble Beach link of the old 17 Mile Drive is three-miles of glimpses.

Q: What does a Pebble Beach woman wear to a funeral?
A: A black tennis dress.

In Pebble Beach (median asking price for a home: $2.4 million) there is "scenic shock". Like the lion who sprays his scent to keep all but the brave from his territory, the mega millionaires from places like Europe, "The East", and "Outside" have sprayed two story housing tract palaces virtually wall to wall on the ocean side of a large section of the old 17-mile drive in Pebble Beach. This high end Leavitt Town lineup of gargantuan peacock displays blocks many famous views from everyone but them.

"You wanna see some scenery buddy? We still got that Loan Cypress tree you can look at. And that Bird Rock deal is a real winner if you've never seen pelicans and seagulls standing around on a century or two of their droppings before. And hey!! Lookit the golf courses. Wow! Pebble at $250 a round? Sure I can handle it. What do I look like, some kind of loser? Don't want some cashier or day laborer playing golf on the same courses with the Gods, do we now? I mean if you can't handle $250 there's a few good ones at $150."

Life's losers can play a few flat city courses for $25 more or less; breath taking views of traffic jams and glorious panoramas of the freeway with the fog rolling in is what $25 gets you. You can play in Salinas for $6 and thrill to the site of Mexican farm laborers busting their asses in the sun. Very American.

So Scenic Carmel and Historic Monterey (one hundred fifty art galleries counting Pacific Grove) are just one big shopping mall, mostly for useless high end bric-a-brac posing as art. Remembering a John Steinbeck Cannery Row "Past", as if anyone would tolerate canneries and a fishing fleet that employ normal people in union jobs at good wages anymore.

"Oh My GOD, that aaawwwful smell. Think of the environment. Go to the slums like a bunch of Mexicans if you want those kinds of jobs."

The local propaganda mills grind out the fiction that the fishing industry exploited workers and poor people; that somehow the "gentrification" is for their benefit. Yeah, right! "Bend over, sucker. Take it like a man"

A car hits a Carmel man. The paramedic says, "Are you comfortable?"
The Carmel man says, "I make a good living."

The Tourist going to Carmel expecting to see a real town where artists live and work, is always in for a surprise. What started in 1947 is now finished. There is not even a real grocery store in "artsy fartsy" Carmel. The town lacks everything for normal human beings. You can't buy groceries for a family there. No gas stations. Or garages. You need to "know somebody" to buy a can of paint because Carmel lacks even a real hardware store. No soda fountain "hang outs" for the kids. Need a pair of work pants? Armani worsted at $200 a pair, $5 a cup coffee shops where too rich arty looking women dressed in the latest slob wear (about $300 for the ill fitting top, $150 for the baggy pants, and at least $300 for the colored hair twice per week), talk relentlessly about Buddhism, pre-Columbian art, and the environment. The expensive restaurants, very expensive clothing stores, and arty farty crap as far as the eye can see passes for atmosphere.

"You want things to live a normal life? Try the Walmart in Cancun. A hamburger? Yuk!! Not when you can have a $30 filet migon. A hot dog for a buck? What are you, a mechanic? Try the sushi at $7.50, it's devine. Great for the kids and families. Want to see real people doing real work? Drop by Merrill Lynch."

The parents of my classmates had real jobs. They worked in construction, perhaps a contractor or two, ran a horse stable, farmed, owned small stores, collected garbage, were artists, local cops, stone masons, and army officers. None of those families could afford to live in Carmel right now. None.

"Carmel is the only place in the world where you stop off to pick up a six-pack of art."

As in all gentrification in the rural West, there just aren't that many people actually "living" in Carmel. "Living" there, like in actually staying there year round, working and raising a family. Million dollar home prices and property taxes keep normal people at bay. There is almost no such thing as a young millionaire. You've got to be at least 45 to 50, and when you are that old your kids are grown. So the older millionaires who can afford the insane housing prices don't have young kids, visit for vacations periodically, and just love to buy the leather toilet seats locally at $400 a pop, or the bureau for $15,000. Or they are old and retired. Pass a bond issue for Carmel Schools? Not them. Don't wake them. They don't live there, don't have kids there, and don't care. Bottom Line Liberals, I call them. They do vote for environmental zoning laws to keep out the undesirable elements

Otters are lots nicer than black people anyway.

Carmel side streets which used to contain places like sporting goods stores that had sales from time to time, record stores where you could actually buy recorded music, a flower shop or two, actual gas stations (yes there were at least four AND you could get your car fixed by guys who actually lived there), a big lumber yard, barber shops, beauty salons, an actual real life blacksmith shop, only THREE art galleries, and two places where you could get dirt-cheap hamburgers; they cost eleven cents, all the local "trash" went there to eat the burgers and drink cheap wine; "Dago Red" was the winos choice and NOBODY can tell you what "Dago Red" was. Us kids used to risk Certain Death from our parents and go there for an eleven cent lunch. Carmel side streets now contain what seems like a thousand "Art Galleries" (actual count is 90, one for every 54 residents), "Places to Stay", and "boutiques" (French for eight time markups). Art Galleries that are used car lots for "art"; places where your friendly hard nosed sales closer from LA, Frisco, or The Big Apple will "qualify" you for the money the second you set foot in the door.

"Lemme unnerstan' dis. You wanna actchlley stan' in one spot like a moron and jus' look at a pichur? Dat's fuh sale? Dis look like a museum to you?"

Don't be surprised if you see Tony Soprano selling "previously owned" Rembrandts from behind a pine tree on Dolores Street.

As I visited the old homestead for what is probably my last time I became aware of something else. It was a feeling. A spirit, an odor about something. At least half of the "scenery" of any area is the "feel" of the place. This "feel" is created in large part by a broad spectrum of people in all economic classes who have both a willingness and a desire to associate with one another. To "rub elbows". To really respect each other. Where everyone's kids go to the same school. When this happens you have unpredictable results. The "starving artists" of Carmel are long gone, driven out by the prices, taxes, and the "environmental zoning". The people who sweat while they work and who are customers of car lots, ordinary stores, cheap and good restaurants, movies, gas stations, low life bars (including the whores), and so on create most of the "character".

It is a well known fact that it is impossible to create great art without cheap bars and cheap whores. It can't be done. The low lifes who used to hang out in the "Smoke Shop" in Carmel where we kids used to get the eleven cent hamburgers included bull dyke lesbians, screaming queens, Mexicans, Dagos (the "Liberals" in Carmel always looked down their noses at the Italian fishermen from Monterey), mechanics, and winos. And those were the High End low lifes. The "word" was that there was a card game in the back behind the green curtain where the true degenerates of Carmel gathered. Rumor had it that Henry Miller (this old guy who was writing real filthy shit) played stud and draw; and that commie writer (fill in the blank) played there every night; and that painter who had three wives lost as much as fifty bucks a night; and so on. This motley collection of undesirables were the people who created the atmosphere: the bad art that later became good art and great art, some of the great books, fixed the cars, rebuilt the old Duesenbergs, Bugatti's, and other relics from the 20's in their back yards. People like the Whitmans (like in Cole Whitman the now famous and dead photographer) were all bums back then; Cole ate eleven cent burgers and looked like shit. Lots of soon to be famous artists moonlighted as carpenters, plasterers, and masons. They could live there on their wages AND create.

There is no desire by the rich in Carmel to create the place where people who sweat while they work, can live, be employed, AND be respected by the monied aristocracy. Right now that possibility is a joke in almost every part of America; and this segregation unchecked can only result in a class war. It's no accident that the elite favor gun control; the poor own plenty of them and you can only push people just so far. The tourists don't come to the Monterey Peninsula to look at millionaires screwing the place up. They are trying to get away from that. "Character" creates the art, the underlying beauty of any area. The Peninsula has completely run out of "character", or what we now call "soul". It's boring. If I want to see rich white guys playing golf badly I can do better in Palm Springs or Cancun. If I want to hear too rich phoney white women chatting about finding a three day baby sitter so they can go see the Dali Lama, I can hear it in Beverly Hills. At lower prices. And from too rich phoney white women who are far better looking. It is local lore that the last good looking woman in Carmel was paved over back in 1983 to make room for another art gallery.

A tourist needs to see vitality, not venality. The Peninsula, and other "gentrified rural areas, is decaying from within and nobody who lives there seems to notice. At last, on my final minutes there I was reminded of that old Russian play called the Cherry Orchard; a play in which the elite chat about trivialities oblivious to the fact that the orchard that supported their old life style is being chopped down within earshot; the sound of axes chopping the trees is heard throughout the play. As I peered between two glorious new two story mansions on the 17 mile drive, stupidly looking for that flat place among the rocks and crashing surf where we used to gather at night to drink beer, kiss girls, dance to the music from blaring car radios, sing songs, and hurl empty beer cans into the 20 foot waves before they exploded on the rocks, I was jolted by a sound. It wasn't waves detonating on the cliffs or fog horns bleating like baratone goats to warn distant ships. It was a high pitched screech, like the terrified scream of a kidnaped old lady being dragged down a big city street. It wasn't that of course. Not in Paradise. What jolted me was the high zzziiiinnnngg zzziiinnngging of chain saws . I turned to see imported workmen from Castroville and Salinas taking down the old Del Monte Forest to make room for yet another mega mansion.

While gas prices hit $2.30 and another anonymous family lost their farm somewhere, the state faced bankruptcy and power shortages caused rolling blackouts, the land vanishes, the poor look at their guns and too rich white women chat stupidly about seeing the Dali Lama over $5 coffee in Carmel.

Sound like any place you live? Count the art galleries, it's the first sign.

AN ENDNOTE: a victory for the less than really rich in the Carmel area has occurred because the Carmel School District was permitted to expand thirty six miles to the south as far as Big Sur and thirty miles north into the Carmel Valley, making it one of the largest school district in terms of area in the state. The result is that parents of the students, even the rich ones who actually live and work there, got to vote. They voted to pass a school bond issue. The retired and absentee rich got out voted. It was a modest bond issue but the "word" is that improvements will at long last be made at the Carmel High School. The rich say they like it. The system works. That's the foreplay. We all know what's next. They don't need no stinking KELO.