Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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Sisters Leat and Kayla, 20 and 19 years old, were sent home from college as most other students were this semester because of COVID-19. These sisters, however, had as father Rabbi Sam Newman, chaplain of the West Bureau Los Angeles Police Department. "Rather than sit around and waste time they decided to do something constructive," Newman says. Enlisting friends, the two sisters created a WhatsApp group, Shopping Helpers L.A., that receives requests for groceries from seniors and others at most...
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported 421 new COVID-19 cases today at a press conference. Dr. Barbara Ferrer, director of the Department, attributed the large increase in known cases to a sudden surge in testing ability and the receipt of delayed test results. Of the 9,400 people tested for the virus so far in LA County, 4,000 of them were tested just yesterday. The county now has a total of 1,216 known cases of COVID-19. 9 deaths were reported today attributed to the...
The response of public officials to the increasing cases of COVID-19 accelerated greatly since twenty-three thousand athletes and even more spectators descended on the city to participate in the Los Angeles Marathon on March 8. At that time, officials considered adding hand sanitizer stations and advising people to stay six feet away from each other would be adequate precautions to take in a county that at that time only had 14 confirmed cases of coronavirus. (Newsflash: nobody was able to stay...
On Friday, March 20, local authorities urged the stay-at-home populace to go out hiking for exercise and mental refreshment. The hundreds of miles of trails in the mountain recreation areas surrounding the Los Angeles basin seemed like a safe place to send people, where there might be room to spread out and abide by the guideline to stay 6 feet away from others. It didn't work out. The trails and parks became so crowded that they were closed by Monday, March 23. The relatively small percent of t...
3/23- At a live-stream press conference today, LA Department of Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer reported 128 new cases of known Coronavirus patients in LA County. Since Tuesday, March 17, the number of new cases per day had been holding fairly steady at between 40-60. Today's number shows a marked increase. The total number of known Coronavirus cases in the county is 536. Two recent deaths have brought the total number of fatalities to 7. Dr. Ferrer added that 80 percent of the cases a...
At a streaming press conference today, LADPH Director Barbara Ferrer announced the second death to occur in the county from the COVID-19 virus. The individual reportedly lived in a small community near Pasadena. He was between 30-50 years of age and had an underlying health condition. Ferrer had other new information to relate regarding the testing and quarantine protocols recommended to slow the spread of the virus. Ferrer made clear repeatedly throughout the press briefing that she does not be...
An email sent out Tuesday by Dr. Ben Drati, School Superintendent for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, seeks to explain the response of the district to the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus outbreak and possibly to allay the fears of the community. UPDATE: SMMUSD sent an email out at 9:10 pm Wednesday night announcing the cancellation of the Stairway of the Stars rehearsals and concerts. They are also cancelling field trips, assemblies, performances, fundraising activities and...
The city's Chief Resilience Officer and its Communication Officer reported on the state of the city's response to the COVID-19 outbreak at the Santa Monica City Council meeting on Tuesday. Other than presenting the same outlines you have already seen of the disease's presentation, contagiousness, and personal measures to help prevent infection, neither public official had much to add. Certainly, there was no plan presented to prevent the spread of the disease to the city and not really any plan...
Last month I wrote that California should wait before laughing at the Iowa Caucus debacle. The state decided that the voting method that had worked seamlessly for over a century should be changed for something new and improved. Whenever a government entity uses those two words, perhaps adding “streamlined” and “transparent,” you can be sure they are only looking to cheap out. Or obtain some kickbacks from the “improver.” And one can only assume that’s exactly what happened in California on...
Voting started in California on February 22 but continues through to the official election day, March 3 - Super Tuesday. We were asked by our whip-cracking publisher to provide a guide to voting for Santa Monica voters. We will do so, ensuring we infuriate the bleeding hearts and validate those who want to see the Golden State return to prosperity, opportunity, and some semblance of law and order. Federal - Each party is conducting their primary election at this time. Those who've registered to...
On Monday, 261 parents, led by former Rent Control Chairperson Joel Koury and Joseph Pertel, both attorneys, filed an objection to a class action settlement between the Santa Monica-Malibu School District and the parents of students who attended SMMUSD schools between July 2016 and the present. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of students who were required to pay school expenses, including supplies, field trips, and athletic participation fees, in violation of California's constitutional...
PETA, the acronym for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, bills itself as an "animal rights" organization. Founded in 1980 by Ingrid Newkirk, a former animal shelter worker and deputy sheriff, PETA is now an international group of purportedly 6.5 million members that has appointed itself the voice of animals who can't speak for themselves. But with a voice like PETA speaking for you, you're better off mute. The fact is PETA kills animals. They have killed tens of thousands of them. They...
On Monday, the much-anticipated results of the Democratic Iowa caucus were not available once the event ended. An app that had been designed to report results automatically from the phones of the precinct chairs either did not download, did not work, or was too complex for the user to figure out. It took two days for the Democrat party's election officials to parse through the precincts' reports to come up with some numbers that they declared definitive. If Iowa's Democratic party had conducted...
Rachel Rossi, currently a criminal defense lawyer at Cohen Williams, a fancy downtown Los Angeles law firm, has announced her candidacy for Los Angeles County District Attorney. You read that right. A boutique defense lawyer wants to be chief law enforcement officer of the county. Her platform reads pretty much exactly as you'd expect from this information. She would like to transform the DA's office into one big powerful defense firm for criminals. Excuse me. Not criminals. Nobody's really a...
Ballot Measure R, also known as Reform LA Jails, will be on the ballot this March. Somewhat confusingly, the measure tackles two disparate issues. The first issue is assuring that the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission will have the power to subpoena documents from the county Sheriff's office without the Sheriff having the power to demur. The second issue the law tackles is to find "alternative options to arrest and incarceration for nonviolent crimes where mental health, substance abuse and...
In the November 2020 election, Californians will have a chance to give an up or down to vote on legislation that ends cash bail. Back in August of 2018, Jerry Brown signed SB 10, "The Money Bail Reform Act," a law that eliminated cash bail. SB 10 was set to take effect in October, 2019, but sufficient signatures were gathered to support putting a measure on the ballot that would overturn the new law, the Referendum to Overturn a 2018 Law That Replaced Money Bail System with a System Based on Pub...
The short list of winners under California's gig economy law and the long list of exceptions to it act like a neon sign announcing who controls the power in this state. The winners are the government treasury, organized labor unions, and such a tiny number of workers that they are barely worth mentioning. The losers are everybody else, including employers (mostly of small businesses), consumers, and, most notably, the lion's share of workers currently operating as independent contractors. Most...
The Trump administration made it clear this week how they were going to act on the president's executive order that included Jews as a protected group under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into UCLA for two separate complaints regarding anti-Semitism. When President Trump initially signed the executive order, there was outcry from some who deliberately misunderstood the president's updated interpretation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act....
The news stories happening in Santa Monica this year ranged from the highly unusual to the highly typical. Here's our take on the year that was. The Unusual The Ridgecrest Earthquake A magnitude 6.4 earthquake shook the Southland at 10:33 in the morning on Independence Day. This was followed by a larger, magnitude 7.1 quake the next day. Both quakes were centered in the small community of Ridgecrest, which was hard hit by the largest earthquakes to occur in the region in 20 years. No damag...
Radical changes are coming to the cityscape of Santa Monica within the next three months, according to comments made at the City Council meeting December 10. The council was struggling to react to an assessment made by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) that the city would have to zone to accommodate 9,118 units by 2029. Of those units, 69 percent would need to be affordable. The current population of Santa Monica is 93,556. 9,118 is the number of units SCAG believes will...
In November, news broke that the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) had declared Santa Monica must build 9,118 housing units before 2029, 69 percent of which have to be affordable. This raised the previous demand from SCAG, which had been 4,800 units. Santa Monica's current population is 93,556. Immediate hand-wringing ensued, with the Santa Monica City Council considering various drastic rezoning schemes to enable the shoe-horning of such a large number of housing units....
The U.S. Supreme Court on December 16 declined to take up a case regarding homeless outdoor sleeping. The Court's rejection of the case lets stand a Ninth Circuit ruling that governments cannot make sleeping in public a crime. The initial case involved six homeless individuals claiming the City of Boise had violated their Eighth Amendment right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Each of them had been cited and jailed under a pair of Boise statutes designed to curb vagrancy. One...
Following a unanimous resolution by the Santa Monica Airport Commission opposing construction of a 'temporary' facility for the city's Public Landscape Division (PLD) at the airport, and numerous articles in local newspapers about it, the City Council directed the construction be halted. For now. Construction of an $800,000 facility for the PLD, the division that takes care of the city's parks, began at the airport over the summer, surprising and alarming nearby residents, who'd been given no...
The City of Santa Monica is spending over $116 million to modernize (i.e., rebuild) their City Yards near Bergamot Station, but the project, on which construction began in July, is already exposing its inadequacy. The modernization project includes demolishing thirteen buildings on the site that date from the 1940s and replacing them with six new buildings. However, missing from the plan is any sort of recycling center or space for the Public Landscape Division's (PLD) Park maintenance staff....
We had a nice chat with Lieutenant Bill Heric of the Santa Monica Police Department at the "Coffee with a Cop" event Tuesday morning held at the holiday pop-up substation on the Third Street Promenade. The substation is a cheerfully appointed storefront right on the promenade in the block closest to Broadway. A spiffy, polished police bicycle sits in the window as if it's for sale. Inside, a number of uniformed individuals were quick to greet all comers and invite them to ask their questions....
