Out of sight, out of mind

Just in case you needed one more reason not to drink the wines of Gallo, here you go:

Farmworkers lived in squalor in raided Windsor house

To be fair, it seems that the dudes living in this joint 'used' to work at Gallo, so there you go. Some of the amemities of the casa:

"The walls and floors were ripped, scarred and dirty. Exposed wiring ran throughout. The septic system had failed, and sewage puddled on the ground...."

The workers, employed by Fresno labor contractor Israel Gonzales, who rented the house, cooked on propane camp stoves indoors, Pantazes said. They slept on mattresses in all five rooms of the three-bedroom, one-bath house at the northwest corner of Highway 101 and Shiloh Road. They bathed with a garden hose outside.

Sounds like a little piece of paradise to me. One question though: Was the garden hose included in the rent?

"On Monday, a construction crew hired by the owner of the property, Sonoma County hotelier Niten "Nick" Desai, sifted through piles of waste. They secured leaking batteries and open containers of engine oil. They loaded hundreds of pounds of debris into an industrial garbage container."

"Desai said he did not know how many people were living at the house and had no idea of the condition of the property, which he had rented to Gonzales for three years. He said he never visited the property because Gonzales never complained and always paid the rent on time. Desai declined to say how much the rent was."

Is it that hard to understand why the rent was paid on time without complaints?!?! I'll tell you why, because the bastard paying the rent wasn't living there. But it doesn't end there:

"Labor officials said Gonzales' license as a labor contractor had been revoked in the past and he was working under a permit held by his daughter Alondra Gonzales."

"That license was revoked Thursday after the raid on grounds Gonzales did not have Department of Labor permission to provide worker housing. The 29 men were left without an employer. Gallo officials said they would try to find housing and jobs for the men, Fryer said."

That's right. Twenty-nine people were living in this shithole. And Gallo (or anybody else for that matter) had no idea?!?! This is simply unbelievable. Doing a quick reference on Yahoo.com maps yielded the following:

From Gallo's tasting room: 8.3 miles - 11 minutes travel time

From DeLoach: 6.7 miles - 11 minutes travel time

From Kendall-Jackson's 'Wine Country Store' :8.2 miles - 10 minutes travel time

From Rodney Strong: 5.2 miles - 7 minutes travel time

The point is this. Does anyone honestly believe that out of the umpteen thousands of people that travel to this little neck of the woods, not to mention the ones that live and work there, no one noticed 29 people bathing themselves with a friggin' garden hose?

Maybe all that jive about cracking down on the 'illegals' is just that. Or maybe it's about the old saying 'Out of sight, out of mind'.