The Delaware-registered firm, Flannery Associates LLC, has spent nearly $1 billion purchasing more than 50,000 acres of land surrounding Travis Air Force Base since 2018, public records show. California Forever is the parent company of Flannery Associates, according to its new website.

It was founded in 2017 by CEO Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader, and is backed by billionaires including Marc Andreessen and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

“Over the last few years, Flannery has purchased over 50,000 acres in Solano County. To date, our company has been quiet about our activities. This has, understandably, created interest, concern, and speculation,” the website states. “Now that we’re no longer limited by confidentiality, we are eager to begin a conversation about the future of Solano County a conversation with all of you.”

The website goes on to state that Solano County, like much of California, “faces many challenges, but also possesses countless opportunities.”

Over the past few years, California Forever has completed surveys and interviews with about 2,000 residents of Solano County—located between Sacramento, San Francisco, and Napa Valley, with a population of about 450,000—and their voices, according to the company, “were clear.”

“Residents want more opportunities to buy homes in safe, walkable communities. Good paying local jobs, so they can both live and work in the county,” the website states. “Better funding to improve schools, promote public safety, and reduce homelessness, as well as resources to invest in infrastructure for transportation, water, and wildfire protection.”

That is why, according to California Forever, it has raised capital from a string of investors including Mr. Andreessen and California investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, and Ms. Jobs, as well as Patrick and John Collison, Chris Dixon, John Doerr, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Reid Hoffman, and Michael Moritz, to build the new community.

‘Walkable Neighborhoods,’ Solar Farms

Those investors share the firm’s “long-term vision and belief that California’s best days are still ahead,” and are “committed to Solano and this project for the long term.”
The community will include homes, shopping, dining and schools, all within “walkable neighborhoods,” as well as solar farms and “open space,” including both “agriculture and habitat conservation,” according to the website.

It will also attract new employers, create well-paying local jobs, lead in “environment stewardship,” and fuel a “growing tax base to serve the county at large.”

Finally, the project would “protect and support” Travis Air Force Base, including by respecting Solano County’s official Travis Reserve Area, according to the company. The website comes as lawmakers have raised concerns over Flannery Associates LLC.

U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), whose district includes Solano County, said he met with two representatives from the company in late August to ask questions about their plans but that it was clear following the meeting that they “don’t have a plan; they have a vision.”

“The secrecy under which they operated caused consternation and concern from residents, local elected officials, and federal agencies, and while they explained their rationale, I do not believe the secrecy was necessary,” the lawmaker said in a statement.

“Solano County is a tight-knit community, and it is going to be a long road for Flannery to restore trust and move forward with their proposed vision. As one of the representatives of Solano County, I want to make sure that a group of Silicon Valley billionaires do not steal family farmers’ ability to farm their land.”

The lawsuit accuses the farmers, including Barnes Family Ranch Associates LLC and Kirby Hill Associates LLC, of conspiring to inflate the price of real estate by hundreds of millions of dollars and overcharging the company, allegedly in violation of U.S. antitrust law.

Litigation in the case remains ongoing.

Mr. Thompson, following his Aug. 29 meeting, cited additional concerns such as national security and food security, noting that a “development of the magnitude they are proposed could harm Travis Air Force Base in the long term.”

“They need to make sure that nothing they do harms Travis, puts our national security at risk, or disadvantages family farmers,” he said.

Other lawmakers including Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) have raised concerns over the plans, claiming some of the families who sold the land to the company did not want to sell to Flannery, but were persuaded with large sums of money.

Many of the families, according to Mr. Garamendi, cannot afford legal representation in the ongoing lawsuit.

Despite those concerns, California Forever insists the new project is the start of a “decades-long collaboration with Solano’s residents, elected officials and agencies, as well as the many Solano stakeholders, including Travis Air Force Base, labor, business, agriculture, educators, police, fire, conservation, and many others.”

“This is a project that must be not just designed with, but also approved by, all Solano residents,” the website states.

Masooma Haq contributed to this report. Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

Surely anything that would lessen the crime rate was a good thing.

“Can you believe this bullshit!” I blurted out, as my defiant shrew ire flared up. “I think it’s a good idea,” piped in my wife.

Picture the familiar cartoon of a man clenching his teeth with the black cloud over his head—maybe with some thunderbolts cracking out of it.

So why would this bother me so much? That seemed obvious, the old “what if this gets in the wrong hands” mantra went through my head—really? “It just isn’t right!” I silently exclaimed.

First of all, it was rather fishy that these things would just come with a new car and you wouldn’t have a choice. Then of course it is quite obvious it is an infringement on privacy—there are many ways that such a thing could be “used against you.”

Oddly, that wasn’t what bothered me the most. I actually thought more about the poor criminal whose privacy would be violated rather than mine. I thought about how a world without crime would be a bore, and that it just wasn’t fair to wipe all crime out of the culture making it squeaky clean—what would we do without crime novels to read?

Am I crazy?

Dostoevsky had a word to say about utopian cultures back in 1864 (like a crimeless one). He thought a perfect world would be a disaster. In his novel Notes from Underground he says:

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man as a being endowed with such strange qualities? Shower him with all earthly blessings, drown him in happiness completely, over his head, so that only bubbles pop up on the surface of happiness, as on water; give him such economic satisfaction that he no longer has anything left to do at all except sleep, eat gingerbread, and worry about the non cessation of world history––and it is here, just here, that he, this man, out of sheer ingratitude, out of sheer lampoonery, will do something nasty.”

Here is a bit of commentary from a website discussing Dostoevsky’s work:

Notes From Underground (1864) is a blistering assault on utopianism, socialism, and Marxism based on Dostoevsky’s view of human nature. Even if a utopian society was attainable, says Dostoevsky, we would not be satisfied by endless food, comfort and pleasure. If you satisfied every human desire, we would throw it all away just for something interesting to happen, just to give ourselves a challenge to overcome and prove that we are human beings and not lap dogs. According to Dostoevsky, we would rather wallow in misery and self-pity than be handed everything on a silver-platter! It is our unique proclivity for destructive decisions that make us human, and we wouldn’t give that up for anything—even heaven on earth.”

This resonates with me. And I wonder now if I was channeling ol’ Fyodor that day in the kitchen talking to my wife.

It does make sense. I remember a while back I was watching an old Twilight Zone episode about a bad-guy criminal who gets killed, and he thinks he has more than likely gone to hell. But rather than devils dancing around and fire lapping at his feet, some nice dude in a white Panama suit greets him.

“What would you like, my friend,” the guy says…and the episode continues with this poor schmuck getting every single desire he could imagine met. He wins every poker hand, and drinks bottle after bottle of booze without getting sick, has beautiful women climbing all over him.

“I’m in heaven!” he exclaims—until he gets bored. He then begs the white-suit guy to tell him where he actually is, “This ain’t heaven is it! Tell me!” he screams. My 67-year-old memory doesn’t serve me all that well, and I can’t remember details about the show, but I think the Panama guy says, “What do you think?”—Imagine, if you will.

I remember this episode had quite an impact on me, and I decided right then and there never to pursue a life of crime.

Now, let me be clear, I am not a fan of crime.

Of course there is crime, and then there is crime. What I am thinking here is a bit more metaphoric. And I do actually believe we could live in a relatively crime-less society and do pretty well (as I write that sentence, I hear my wise voice in my head saying, “Who are you kidding?”—think of the movie Demolition Man. If you don’t know it, watch it).

But I have to admit, that sort of society doesn’t seem natural. Life, to be natural and fulfilling and meaningful has to have the dark side somewhere integrated in the experience. There must be shadow, crime, disease, discomfort, losing, disappointment, sorrow, stupidity, depression—need I go on?

Yin/Yang stuff, “you can’t know happiness unless you’ve experienced sadness”—you get the picture. As cliché as this sounds, it is sadly true.

Utopias are always actually dystopias in disguise. If you read a novel that claims to be a utopian novel, you quickly see that the society described is not all that benign. Many novels are described as dystopian literature but are presented as utopias, consider Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451.

You just can’t create a perfect society. Not only is it creepy to think about, but it simply would not work.

From an article on the Internet:

In order to find or create a utopia, you must also discover or create a dystopia. When there is a perfect place, an equally opposite place hides from within it. From the outside, utopia and dystopia can be clearly defined; a dystopia is a terrible place ruled by unrelenting dictators forcing slavery and their ideas upon the population while a utopia is a perfect, ideal place to live in for any man or woman.”

Interestingly enough we currently live in a “Utopia wanna be.” We have people believing that if we follow the agenda, which has put us through unwarranted draconian demands, we might be able to avoid disease and death.

These people generally feel at war with nature, and at peace with a distant (at this point in time) belief they could live forever if the proper science creates devices, artificial organs and tissue, brain implants and the like to transcend our sloppy and inferior flesh and blood bodies.

These people also believe we can erase crime from the culture with more militaristic police, more devices for surveillance, digital IDs, digital currency, and more control over all people so the ones who have “nothing to hide” can be separated from the ones who have committed crimes against the system (which, of course, could be anything the system deems criminal—case in point, Canada’s Trucker Convoy in the summer of ’22).

Again, not everyone on that side of the fence (sheep) think this way—some are not even sheep. Some are just frightened out of their wits, some are just blind, some are just totally unwilling to look anywhere beyond their noses, and yes, some are just stupid. But I do have to say I believe most people over there (sheep) believe that they can get through life easier if they do what the authorities say to avoid disease, death, suffering, (nature, dirt, germs, insects (unless they eat them)), hot summers and just plain, uncomfortable, living.

The “agenda” psychologically manipulates people to believe that their lives can indeed be perfect, that they can indeed avoid disease, even death, that “Zero Covid” is indeed possible, and that the state will indeed create a perfect world for them by never putting them in a position where they have to think for themselves and take responsibility for their own lives.

Needless to say, this simply will not work and will ultimately end in disaster. If we survive this ordeal we will look back and see that this was the utopia that never was—and God willing, never will be.

Article cross-posted from Off-Guardian.