Is the “quality of life” for Gilroy small businesses such that small business owners should invest more money here? Or do the confiscatory taxes/fees/fines/assessments/mandates combined with crucifying, strangling and suffocating regulations and ordinances, blight us out of business,
into insolvency, and bankruptcy?
In 36 years representing small business owners in Gilroy and surrounding areas, I’ve gone from a young to an old man, and seen so many persecutions by government end up in the bankruptcy court, not only fraud artists and con men, but many other small and very small business owners, who withered and died in the toxic environment local government creates.
On Gavilan Employers Advisory Council we saw government target legitimate, honest business owners with unannounced inspections by joint inspectors, aka code enforcers, while they turned a blind eye toward unlicensed, unscrupulous businesses, including one on Monterey Street
where under age girls were performing “lap dances.”
Then we are persecuted by government competition with private sector business, like the VTA bus boondoggle, and the TAMC bus boondoggle, and the COG bus boondoggle, running at 99 percent taxpayer subsidies, while private-sector carriers are persecuted like other businesses into paying to subsidize the politicians’ competition. But you never hear or see this fact on the VTA agenda, TAMC agenda, COG agenda, because they pretend that they are doing us a benefit, all the while they are bleeding us dry for subsidies to run insolvent boondoggles.
And next comes the mother of all boondoggles: the bullet train. The local government attitude to this persecution can be seen in the VTA government relations manager’s remark when first meeting with bullet train brass in San Jose, where we heard her clearly say to bullet train’s managers: “Go get your own money, and don’t take ours.” That policy is the true blight on Gilroy’s small business owners, but our local government leaders deny it while back-slapping themselves silly about their “success.”
There are none so blind as those who will not see—and local government leaders top the list. Caveat viator.
Joseph P. Thompson, Esq.
Gilroy
Yesterday our tribe delivered our second letter to Gov. Brown requesting that he oppose the canonization of Junipero Serra and we restated our request for a meeting with him to discuss issues of justice, dignity and truth for California Indians. We also asked Gov. Brown to recognize the that the mission system of California was oppressive and brutal to our ancestors and should not be recognized as places of California pride or honor.
We hope that Gov. Brown will realize that for many California Indians the missions represent enslavement, whippings, torture and the rape of our ancestors. During the mission period it is estimated that 150,000 Indians died. Most of these deaths were caused by the wretched living conditions established by Father Serra. Neither California’s missions nor Serra’s methods are worthy of secular state pride or honor.
We noted in our letter that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley recently called on her state’s Legislature to remove the Confederate flag from the State Capitol grounds. She cited that the Confederate flag represented a brutally oppressive state. This is exactly what the California mission system represents and therefore we’re asking Gov. Brown to take steps to tell the truth about mission history and to recognize that the California missions represent the worst in mankind.
Our tribe has an online petition and we ask for your support by signing the petition. It can be found at:
Please share the petition and email members of your family and all others in your social network.
Tumsan-ak kannis (Thank you),
Valentin Lopez, Chairman
Amah Mutsun Tribal Band
