Cowboy Confessional

Larry Ellison – billionaire CEO of Oracle Corporation and avid yachtsman – would like to thank the 418 residents of Tehama, California for building him a new dock.

This may come as a surprise to Tehama tenants whose only experience with large watercraft is watching upstream housing travel down the Sacramento River during periodic floods. No other largish vessel has been spotted near Tehama since Noah drifted past. Ellison’s dingy, the ORACLE Racing Spithill, enters the realm of science fiction in Tehama, looking like no other boat and more like Death’s runabout. Whereas the typical Tehama fisherman blows a few hundred for a bass boat, Ellison’s team dumped over $100,000,000 to win a yacht race in 2007.

Let’s just say Larry likely doesn’t need the property taxes paid by the Fig Lane Stor-All in Tehama.

Yet this is what is happening, albeit in small drabs. In California, some portion of property taxes enter state coffers and are spent in places that allegedly need money for public improvements. Originally envisioned as aid to blighted districts in destitute conditions, it has devolved into little more than organized theft. Recent cases abound, caused when threats were made to eliminate Redevelopment Districts. Various localities started spending their pre-allocated Redevelopment ducats on football stadiums and bribing apartment complex developers to build more of the same.

Theft with flowery language.

Yet even California – a state known for no restraint – had a few rules about spending such funds. These rules are treated as advisory at best.  At worst they are ignored and never enforced. Such loosely guarded lucre attracts the attention of people who know how to leverage what isn’t theirs.  Billionaires rarely get to be billionaires by spending their own cash. Hence, when Larry Ellison managed to bring the 2013 America’s cup to San Francisco, he encountered a problem he cared not to pay for himself.

The City is ringed with piers in various states of disrepair. Some host cruise liners and others are rickety to the point that homeless people know better than to sleep on them for fear of becoming seal food after poor planking plops them into the bay. Ellison certainly didn’t want his billionaire buddies berthing multi-million dollar race toys to docks that might drag them under.

This is where the 418 good folks in Tehama come in.

Local politician and all-around wack-a-doodle Tom Ammiano now wastes physical space in the state California Assembly. Animated by typical political afflictions – the desire to wield power, do seemingly grand things with your money, and get ever closer to wealth – Ammiano floated a bill to change the rules of government spending that normally tried to make life livable for the disenfranchised. Ammiano’s change allows money collected for infrastructure improvements (like fixing the pothole-littered road you take to work each morning) and spend it on revamping San Francisco piers to cleat billionaire boats. Since these funds come from the common trust, some Tehama treasure is heading to San Francisco and saving Larry Ellison and the America’s Cup committee from finding their own solution.

Billionaires don’t get to be billionaires by spending their own money.

If we conclude that this is an elegant form of theft (which it is), then we must ask how this should be handled. In the old west around the time of San Francisco’s whelping, horse thieves were hanged. In modern day Florida, state law allows fining local legislators for passing gun control measures against state preemption. Proper control lies somewhere between these points. Fining billionaires like Ellison is useless, though tarring and feathering the boy just before he boards his boat would make for more interesting race photos (it would bring a new visual to the term “crow’s nest”). Imprisoning Tom Ammiano isn’t viable because there is a better-than-even chance he would enjoy it. A good compromise might be to attach Ellison and Ammiano to chum lines of the Spithill’s stern … after local sightings of Great Whites are confirmed.

A personal note to my friends in Tehama County. It is time to join Jefferson State.

Tags:

This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Saturday, October 1st, 2011 at 7:35 am and is filed under California, Politics, San Francisco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.