Don't speak for the majority

By The Malibu Times · Thu Sep 26 2002

Seeing as how Steve Uhring of the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy saw fit to attack me personally in last week's paper, I feel obliged to rebut.

First off, Steve, you don't speak for the "majority" of Malibu. You've never been elected to city council which, in our form of government, is the only entity empowered to speak for a community (as opposed to unelected Coastal Commissioners). If your pathological compulsion to anoint yourself the voice of Malibu continues, I urge you to seek therapy. Bring along a certain pair of Sierra Club representatives suffering from the same malady and you might even get a group rate.

Further to your contention that my comments before the Coastal Commission were an "embarrassment" to "everyone" in Malibu-would that "everyone" include the "majority" that you presumably represent? Considering that only a handful of the nearly two hundred people present at the time seemed to share your view, my guess is yes.

As you failed to indicate why you felt my remarks were so embarrassing, I'm left with no other conclusion than that you consider statements of truth to be an embarrassment, namely these documented and indisputable facts:

• The most powerful local resident in the LCP controversy was not one of our democratically elected leaders but a state-appointed bureaucrat, Coastal Commission Chair Sara Wan. Wan's failure to recuse herself from presiding over matters directly affecting her own city is a violation of ethics, if not worse.

• Sara Wan owns property that has been exempted from ESHA designation by her own staff, violating the ESHA criteria of that same staff. Because she stands to materially gain from the LCP's designation of ESHAs, this represents a conflict of interest, if not worse.

• As the wife of Malibu's first mayor, Sara Wan has a personal political history involving people on the other side of the LCP issue, a longstanding and well-documented feud which, in combination with the issue of her property's ESHA designation, represents a double conflict of interest, if not worse.

• Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas is on record as believing that the 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution is too vague and that latitude for government "takings" of private property needs to be broadened by new amendments that A) give Constitutional rights and protections to plant and animal life and B) guarantee all Americans a "high quality of life." Peter Douglas' model for the latter is the Constitution of India.

• The Coastal Commission is largely at the mercy of staff recommendations, that staff being almost entirely selected personally by Peter Douglas-the same man who wrote the Coastal Act and who has, in various capacities, dominated the Coastal Commission's staff recommendations for more than a quarter of a century. This means that virtually all recommendations regarding coastal environmental policy have, for 26 years, been filtered through one man's personal social agenda.

• Peter Douglas' speeches are filled with doting references to "our collective well-being," countered by derisory references to "individual rights and desires," none of which has anything to do with the environment or the protection of coastal resources.

• Many citizens of Malibu who would liked to have spoken out on Sept. 12th did not for fear of reprisals in the form of trumped up fines, which the Coastal Commission has already unfairly levied against some residents of the Santa Monica Mountains.

So, Steve, was it my statement of these facts that embarrassed Malibu? Maybe it was my insistence that the LCP process should be "democratic, not beholden to ideologues, lobbyists or politicians grounded in science, with respect for the constitutional rights of property owners and the democratic rights of individuals and communities."

I can see how objectionable that might be.

The distinguishing trait of all anti-democratic collectivist ideologies- including that of Peter Douglas and the radical environmental fringe that has propped up his regime longer than most foreign dictatorships-is that they preach incompatibility between "self-interest" and "the common good." The full-page ads recently taken out by Taxpayers for Livable Communities in an effort to mollify community anger over the LCP's certification used that very phrase: "Self Interest vs. the Common Good," never bothering to explain how something that does no good for anyone in particular will mysteriously serve everyone in general. The answer, of course, is that only those who have taken it upon themselves to decide what constitutes "the common good" wind up benefiting, and usually at everyone else's expense.

The founding fathers of the United States, on the other hand, had a different idea-that "inalienable rights" belong exclusively to individuals and that what's best for each and every individual is, by extension, good for the community, which derives its strength from the inestimable worth of every individual. Hence, the notion of property rights, democracy and the idea that "every vote counts."

Where, then, was the democratic process in all of this? Where was the respect for our elected leaders?

As bad as the LCP is, the underlying issue has nothing to do with the merits of the LCP. It has to do with the process, the manner in which Peter Douglas and certain ethically suspect Coastal Commissioners have flouted the principles of American democracy and abused their power by forcing a minority group's extremist social agenda upon an unwilling majority.

Environmental protection or social engineering? Malibu's citizens will judge.

Wade Major