Juan Estrada, Part II

Pleasant Hills Golf Course

So a while back I wrote about Juan Estrada someone I tagged using the term “Political Groupie” You can go back and read that link for a better description.

Long story short though, Cindy Chavez supporters were crying Reid Hillview was “Institutional Racism” and only “Rich white guys” fly planes. Juan was right in the middle of it, claiming a “centrist” viewpoint, while leaning more towards the “Close it” camp.

Now Cindy lost and for now it seems the airport is safe. However the Pleasant Hills golf course a mile away is being slated for development, and Juan is really in a tizzy over it.

Pleasant Hills is somewhat in my family history. We knew the owner well. One of our hayfields was really close by. Near the end of it’s time, my cousin got a job there and stole a golf cart (if you squint really hard, you can just make it out here) The owner of Pleasant Hills was a victim of Chavez/Council late 90’s early 2000’s era policies. I should give it a better name, but I think linking Cindy does give a good time frame for people. When cousin Dave was on council. When Ron Gonzalez was mayor. When RDA money was a slush fund that if strategically used right, could keep a politician elected indefinetly.

How it worked was simple. “That is blight!” some councilperson could claim. The state would throw millions to mitigate the blight, that money in turn was basically given away to top dollar donators to redevelop the property.

Today we have a similar scam with the homeless, but that’s something to cover another day. My best Frenemy Josh Koehn does a pretty good job of uncovering a case of it in SF. Back to RDA and slush funds.

Sometimes the government would use a variety of tactics short of eminent domain to get people to sell. In our families case, we could no longer use creek water or our private resevoir. We had to use city water. With Pleasant Hills, it was the same situation although I think the city did some zoning “Oh that’s a residential zone, you can’t have a golf course there!” kind of nonsense. Granted, the course was there well before the area was incorporated into the city. Next the city would harass him for “High grass and weeds”

Unable to keep running the golf course, what the owner did next was nothing short of local legend. He got some new pets.

I can’t find an article on it now, but boy do I remember those cows. The city tried to claim “BUT IT’S NOT ZONED FOR LIVESTOCK” to wit, when the owner came down to City hall claimed “These are my pets, they’re not gonna be sold for meat!” Eventually the owner got too old and tired to give a shit, sold out and moved on.

Now here’s where it gets interesting….

Juan keeps posting links to this site San Jose United – Serving San Jose Residents

At first appearance, it seems like this is a site truly run by a bunch of concerned San Jose citizens. It even has a page where it links to a bunch of facebook groups they started.

Some of these pages are wild. Like the “San Jose Business Deals” page seems to be littered with sus looking botox clinics.

But here’s what got to me… Actually a few things that got to me…

Oh but that’s not all…

Every single one of the “Community” pages on sanjoseunited.net is just a rip off of existing pages, using very similar names. Additionally, every single one of these pages also has this posted on it.

Saving the best for last.

This whole thing ends up like an episode of Scooby doo.

So after noticing all of this, I decided to go back for one last look at the sanjoseunited.net domain. An intial whois revealed a privacy blocked registrar,

but looking at a historical whois site we get..

So with my mostly factual part done (aside from the “tizzy” and “Political Groupie” part, now it’s time for some OpEd on this.

I absolutely hate these kinds of fake ass politics … generally speaking. What makes it worse with Juan though is he’s actively trying to typosquat other established communities to give a sense of “Oh such and such community supports me” when really, it’s just Juan supporting Juan.

I like to point these things out when I can. Not that anyone will read this, not that SanJoseSpotlight would post a link to this site (because they are fairly chicken shit) but people do stop by once in a while.

This will likely be the last thing I write for another year on here. I have another hand surgery coming up, and writing is just not enjoyable after. Still though, once mended I’ll be back at it better than ever.