• Ventura County’s strawberries will again be celebrated with the return of the California Strawberry Festival. After a three-year hiatus, the 37th annual event will be held on May 20 and 21 at their new location – the Ventura County Fairgrounds.
Speaking of the fairgrounds, the Oxnard-based Pacific Sports Group presented a massive proposal in October to completely rebuild the fairgrounds. The Fairgrounds Board of Directors rejected the idea unanimously.
Fairgrounds officials will provide an opportunity for the developers to present their project again, on Feb. 22 in a two-hour hearing at the fairgrounds, which is open to the public.
In a right of first refusal agreement signed last year, the developers paid $25,000 to obtain exclusive rights to make a detailed proposal to the fair board. Pacific Sports Group leaders stated their proposal wasn’t given a fair consideration by the board in October.
The massive project would include the building of a stadium for the home of a minor league baseball team and would also be used for concerts, outdoor conventions and other uses.
The fairgrounds would be completely renovated, with virtually everything on the site replaced or rebuilt. The finished project could also include restaurants, a theater and a farmer’s market.
The site (and old Quonset hut buildings) is certainly in need of major remodeling. This would be a major change to the area of the fairgrounds including access to Amtrak. A huge number of cars would occur as well, so the streets would need major revisions .A project of this scope would take many years for plans, approvals and construction. It should be noted that the fairgrounds is owned by the state, not the city of Ventura.
• Forty mass shootings have been recorded in the US so far in 2023, more than any at this point in any year on record. If “only” 3 people are killed it is not a mass shooting. How sad is that?
In a few of the attacks, the suspects were over 60-years old, much older than the typical shooter. It now seems the only common thing in mass shootings are guns. I doubt if any of these people bought guns for the purpose of a mass shooting.
“Only in America do we see this kind of carnage, this kind of chaos, this kind of disruption of communities and lives and confidence and sense of safety and belonging,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said after California suffered three mass shootings in about 44 hours.
• An Iranian couple, both social media influencers, have been given lengthy prison sentences (over 10-years) after a video emerged of them dancing in a main square in the capital Tehran. Each was charged with “spreading corruption and vice,” and “assembly and collusion with the intention of disrupting national security.” Nothing is more harmful to society then seeing people dancing in public except perhaps if they were also holding hands.
• Former President Donald Trump has lashed out following the release of the House January 6 committee’s final report. The report says that Trump was the “central cause” of the attack, with the former president having launched “a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
Trump denounced the 845-page document as a “highly partisan” (even though several Republicans were on the panel) and of being a political “witch hunt.” He repeated his false claims of massive fraud in the 2020 election, which he argued was the cause of “the protest.”
If I understand him correctly the storming of the capital was justifiable because he really won the election and it was just a peaceful demonstration.
