Enforcement is underway in the section of Little Chico Creek between Bruce Road and Hwy 99.

Is Windchime next?

This means that the 17-day notice period has elapsed, and the next round of enforcement/relocation can begin.

I hope the next place will be Windchime Park. The neighbors there have suffered too long with the mess there.

We know that there are still places left to go. The rest of Little Chico Creek, Teichert Ponds, Depot Park, the North side of the Triangle, and the rest of Lindo Channel are remaining after Windchime.

Stop and think for a moment about how many areas of Chico have been devastated by encampments. Think of how many places are still not cleared after all of this time, waiting, and overcoming the challenges from the law firm we financed as part of this settlement.

Yet while the citizens are patiently waiting for the city to jump through all of the loops our opponents have put before them, the campaign for control of the City Council is being led by those who want to reverse this progress, as slow and accommodating as it has been. It is never enough.

The leftists’ strategy for city council candidates I’ve described is to divide and confuse, claiming they have the solution to homelessness and poverty, as all socialists claim, but never in history have delivered. They pit the homeless against the housed, the poor against the struggling middle class they call "rich", and excuse environmental devastation because it is being done by the right people.

The Leftists are seeking control of our city, and by “leftist” I mean the radical left that promotes socialism and the fundamental transformation of our community based on a vague and rosy image of the future that can only exist in the imagination of the inexperienced mind of a 20-something idealist.

The question you have to ask yourself is, is the "ideal" your ideal?  Look at cities where the leftist agenda has had a full expression: San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Even there, the citizens have had enough. We cannot follow in their footsteps.

There is only one way that I know to test whether something, any policy, is better or worse for the community. You must ask, does it contribute to safety, cleanliness, beauty, and economic vitality? These are matters of common sense. Look at what the Leftists have created in our city through their advocacy, supported by the leftist policies of the Governor and California legislature. Have you forgotten Stone, Ory, Huber, and Brown? 

Just the other day, the state placed legislation before the Governor that would create safe injection sites. For once, the Governor's Presidential aspirations overcame his loyalty to the leftist agenda, and he vetoed it. Don't think that in the off-season, this won't come back. Dumping needles into our community isn't enough.  Now they want to assist drug use in state-sanctioned shooting galleries. Only an insane ideologue could believe that this is the proper means for "harm reduction."

It is high time we stop being so polite about speaking our minds, expressing what we know to be common sense, and calling things out for what they are, in our terms, not in the terms our opponents demand we use.

Socialism is antithetical to Americanism, and so to the values that most of us share, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike. Anyone who villainizes people based on these categories has hate and ill will in their hearts.  We are all people and fundamentally we want the same things. Leftists want something different, no matter what they say.  You cannot be a leftist, a socialist, and have the values that represent the community we all feel nostalgic for.   We all want a safe, clean, beautiful, and healthy local economy. We had that once here, and we didn’t get it from Socialists.

The leftists say we must meet their demands for social reengineering before we can claim the right to create the community we want. They say they want some vague utopian vision they cannot produce.

Once we stop pursuing the failed policies that have made our community more dangerous, dirty, ugly, and poor, all else becomes possible. Redistribution of your tax dollars to leftist visions of utopia will only make us all poorer, including those who are poor today, because they will not have a path to prosperity tomorrow. 

To paraphrase a famous woman leader in the free world, “The Socialists don’t mind if the poor get poorer, as long as the rich get less rich.”  “Rich” means anyone not in the poverty/victim class, which is most of us.  As is so evident in the rhetoric of the most vocal in the Homeless Industry, they don’t love the homeless nearly as much as they hate the housed, themselves excepted, of course.

This is the underlying theory of socialism: By taking from those who have earned more, they can raise the wealth of the poor. You cannot create wealth by taxing producers into poverty.  Economic vitality benefits everyone, and without it, everyone gets poorer.

Central to Americanism is self-reliance. The leftists are quick to say that means we want to ignore charity, compassion, or a hand up for those in need. No. Don't let them put those words in your mind or your mouth.

Self-reliance means we are all responsible for our own lives, for doing the very best we can with what we have, and not making it someone else's responsibility to fill the gap between what we have done with our life, and how we live. The best response to those receiving charity is first gratitude, and then using that help to make a lasting change for the better. That change must be in oneself first and foremost.  Charity without personal change is wasted.  We choose how we live by taking personal responsibility for working towards our goals, not by simply getting through the day.

Charity cannot save anyone who refuses to make the effort needed to improve themselves and be accountable for their own lives. Life is a bargain, and both sides of a transaction must offer something of value. Taking responsibility for oneself is at the foundation of all achievement. No one can achieve success for anyone else. It's about time we started acting like we understand that.

This is how we take our city back, by acting like we never lost it. If you are fooled by what people say and overlook what they do, there is no hope for representative government, and then the socialists win, and from there, there is no going back.