Politics? Where do I start?
Distracted drivers driving too fast, litter, pot farms, water, over-priced rent and housing, no more fire-pit at the former Taco Bell on Santa Rosa (that’s been awhile), and the demolition of the Alex’s BBQ sign in Shell Beach! What are we doing to SLO County?
The problem I choose to pick for this day is the ongoing sham of recycling in this county. I live in North County and I have to drive down to SLO to recycle cans and bottles. The last time I went to the one behind Vons on Broad Street, it took me more than two hours. Recently, I went to the one behind Target, and I left. It was just like the one behind Vons: It looked like a mini skid row scene. Homeless individuals with shopping carts and nearly broken-down cars turned into makeshift living quarters were all lined up.
SLO County supervisors! Get off yer butts! Do something. Streamline this process. If you do, the homeowners in those same areas would be very happy, and the homeless and people like me who need the extra cash can get on and go on! I’m always and only one paycheck from being homeless in the “happiest” place in the good ol’ U.S. of A .
Kevin Alf Lee
Santa Margarita
This article appears in Awareness Issue 2018.
There are more and more people living in their cars in San Luis Obispo lately too. Nobody should have to live in a car or on the street.
Kevin,
Too true!
What happened to the green waste to energy project? I did find a use for the little green bucket. It holds the apples that fall off my tree til I take them to my friend with chickens.
Denmark burn so much trash to produce energy they are now buying trash from Germany and England. Better idea than the green waste since it uses all waste.
What about recycling paper? Paper is a huge problem and can be reused as wall board and other products thereby saving our trees. Hemp is also a good source of paper and wood for building.
Have our leaders a clue at all? Seems not or we would be growing and using Hemp and recycling paper as well as turning trash into power.
gail lightfoot
Agree 100%. Both Paso Robles and Atascadero used to have really great recycling centers where you could take ALL of your recycling — bottles, cans, plastic, office paper, newsprint and cardboard. Those are now gone and the only places to take your recycling are these “centers” (by Food 4 Less and behind Albertson’s in Paso). They take only cans and bottles, plastic or glass and it takes forever to put each item in the machine. We need the recycling centers like we had before!!
As long as wealth hoarding is our nations primary ethos, and as long as we keep electing fake self centered progressives like Harmon, none of this will change. The housing crisis will not be solved by some shady non-profit staffed by bored box wine ex-Wall Street executives. It will take a large systemic shift in politics and economics. It will take a mass uprising. I think the honest politicians sort of understand this and the most they can hope for is putting band aids on the problem here and there. They know the immediate goal is to make the wealthy people who make up most of the citizenry comfortable and not have to see the issue directly. I mean thats why people move to the Central Coast, to get away from the poor. No one here actually wants to help the poor, Heidi Harmon even stated on her website that it’s basically the fault of the homeless themselves. She’s victim blaming, she thinks the system is just fine but for a few adjustments here and there. A very typically liberal position, certainly not a leftist position even though she likes to come across as a leftist or progressive with all her Frida Kahlo aesthetic. The irony on that one is tremendous and also quite cynical. Copying the aesthetic of a 20th century communist when you are a total neo-liberal capitalist. Kahlos friends would have sent Harmon to the gulag. Not sure who’s fooled by Harmons act, if it were 1980 she would basically be considered a Republican, but that’s back when the Democrat party used to stand for the native working class not global financiers.