Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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November 13, 2024 - Well, you win some and you lose some! Congratulations to new council members Raskin, Snell, Zernitskaya, and Hall for your victory. And to Santa Monica United and the Safer Santa Monica Slate-you put up a great campaign, gaining a lot of ground, and I see you as a strengthening movement that focuses on resident priorities. But the political campaign, which was bruising at times, is over. It's now time to clear the air, pull together as a city, draw the right conclusions, and...
Well, this exhausting season is almost over. No matter what the result, I trust that we will muddle on and things will settle down. But I want to comment on last week's City Council meeting, which reached new lows, disrupted by two members of our community: Jon Katz and Jason Mastbaum, who left right before being escorted out by the police. Both are out-of-touch SMRR dead-enders and Santa Monica Democratic Club stooges, and they, like all people defending the indefensible in terms of policy, res...
Wow, it's a bore to keep deconstructing the desperate confabulations of SMRR and their puppeteers. But somebody's got to do it! The latest is from Ted Winterer, who presided on the City Council from 2012-2020 (and as the Mayor 2016-2018), and has written a truly hilarious SMDP op-ed in which he wonders why the two incumbents running (Phil Brock and Oscar de la Torre), haven't yet created safer streets in their 3 years in office when they've been in control for 40. This is also a theme in SMRR...
There seems to be a laughable attempt by SMRR to intentionally muddy the waters this election. In a case of moral confusion and cynicism, SMMR is trying to position themselves as the "change slate," because after 40 years of their establishment politics, affecting everything from overdevelopment to the destruction of the downtown, they are saying the Change Slate elected 4 years ago needs to be... um... changed by them! You see, anti-police SMRR, which appointed our city manager and almost the...
September 16, 2024 - Since I was called out personally, I'm finally writing in response to the letter Jon Katz, President of the Santa Monica Democratic Club, wrote in the SMDP on August 20th about my "Anybody But SMRR" letter. Jon titled his response "Playing Politics," which was appropriate, because it was full of half truths, outright lies, straw man arguments, and misrepresentations of my views-in short, a case study of playing politics from the president of an organization completely out of...
Dear Council, et al: I live on 9th street, a block from three boulevards-Wilshire, Santa Monica, and Lincoln. This means I'm literally surrounded by 8-story "stack and packs," while being told the fiction that this grotesque sop to developers "won't affect the neighborhoods of Santa Monica" and will help "solve homelessness." Ha! This is, like so much that we hear from SMRR, a lie flown in on the wings of money-in this case Hedge Funds (Cypress Equity, I'm looking at you). While we were sleeping...
Dear Santa Monica Voters, We are heading into the election season here in Santa Monica and our choices are becoming clear. If you ask any resident what their main concern is, they will respond that it's the crime, safety, and disorder perpetuated by the transient addicts and mentally ill who are using our city as either a toilet, or a pool to hunt victims. In the course of the past month we've seen stabbings, attempted rapes, attempted murders, and the horrific kidnapping of a toddler by a...
June 25, 2024 Dear Council, Hate to hit you two days in a row, but this sociopath was arrested after attempting to rape a 17 year-old girl at the beach, strangling her until she lost consciousness and breaking her nose. He then attempted to rape and drown another woman, a homeless woman who is a hero that seems in real need of our services, who came to the girl's aid. Victim 3 was a 73 year-old tourist from Montreal who also intervened and was robbed of a necklace and dragged 40 feet in another...
Dear Council, The city is broke! We are told the council must choose between paving our alleys or hiring more police, as crime, addiction, disorder, and mental illness has become our new brand. (Just in the last couple weeks, tourists have been stabbed, robbed, or had their windshield shattered as they entered the city-welcome!). This immigrant, whose dream was to graduate from a pushcart to a store in SM, in six months has been robbed twice on the 3rd street promenade. Watch the heartbreaking...
May 31, 2024 - During the safety meeting last Thursday I asked the POA Chairman Cody Green, in front 5 sitting council-members, how many police we need in Santa Monica. Without caveats he said 300 (we now have around 225). I was reminded of the defense of Thermopylae, a narrow pass that was held by 300 Spartans for three days against a vast Persian army, because we too are a city under siege. I spent part of my Memorial Day weekend on a ride-along with one of our current Spartans desperately hol...
Dear Council, I knew it was just a matter of time before the virtue-signaling, radical left-wing of the Council, as embodied by the clueless Jesse Zwick, felt the need to "be heard" on Gaza. Typical hubris! As if anybody cares what Santa Monica thinks about it, as if it will change anything in the Middle East, as if Jesse Zwick has any understanding of the issue. Rabbi Gotlieb summed up the reasons why the city shouldn't wade into it well (https://www.smobserved.com/story/2024/05/14/news/span-cl...
Dear Council, After attending the Friday meeting with LA County Health officials, I was given this vague and unsubstantiated "joint statement" from LA County and Santa Monica regarding the needle distribution in our parks (attached). How disappointing to learn that Santa Monica has supported this deeply confused policy, against the wishes of its residents, all along. The following word salad paragraph in particular has NO connection to reality or science that I can see, (and to be clear I'm all...
Open letter to the Santa Monica City Council and the City Manager Much has been made about the needle exchange program conducted by the Los Angeles Department of Public Health in our city streets and parks. So I cleared my Friday morning to spend two hours listening to their abysmal defense of the program, which is really a needle distribution program, because, as even the mad doctor Gary Tsai acknowledged, only 60% of needles gets returned. (How he arrived at that figure nobody knows because...
Dear Council, Walking last night with my wife to a spontaneous dinner at Tocaya on Wilshire, we counted 14 addicts and/or mentally ill people in the 4 blocks from 9th street to 5th street. They were trudging to our alleys and carports, or already holed up in empty storefronts, or heading to Reed Park, or hanging out in the parking lot of the 7/11, or getting ready to bed down wherever. They were high, unstable, and neither of us felt safe. Some were doing drugs, one was buying drugs. My wife...
I want to thank our police department for their work in apprehending this felon (picture below). Great work in catching up to him within 24 hours of his attack-proactive policing at its best. He was on parole in San Bernardino and didn't check in, which is a violation. I don't know what he was originally in prison for, but these days you practically have to kill somebody to go to jail (the last person who attacked me was set free the same day). In Santa Monica, this transient was arrested in...
Editor's note: We received the following letter sent to Los Angeles County's top Department of Public Health officials from a Santa Monica resident: To Dr. Tsai and Dr. Ferrer, I've lived within two blocks of Reed Park for 25 years and lived firsthand the destruction of our commons under all sorts of "harm reduction," and decriminalization social experiments. I just caught Dr. Tsai's presentation to the Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commission and your answers to their excellent questions, i...
New state laws initiated January 1st are going to allow building up to 20 stories in Santa Monica and add 67,000 residents. Land use lawyers for developers have already begun pulling and resubmitting housing project plans to the City in order to take advantage of the huge increases in size allowed by the new law. What’s the vision for Santa Monica? Is it Miami Beach? Residents, read this excellent article that spells out what’s coming: (https://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/letter...
Arthur Jeon writes: This is the truth being obfuscated by anti-police activists (a tiny but vocal minority): 2438 people were arrested in Santa Monica last year. 180 of those 2400 had Santa Monica addresses (many repeat offenders using SAMOSHEL as an address). This means that approximately 92% of arrestees were NOT FROM SANTA MONICA. So comparing racial identities with Santa Monica residents is intellectually dishonest at best, or a lying manipulation by defund activists at worst. Regardless of...
Santa Monica DOES NOT have a police brutality or bias problem. After being attacked twice in a year within a block of my house, I don't care that the first attacker was white and the second one was black. It was their behavior that was the problem. But if we're clocking immutable and random differences in pigmentation, I did notice that the responding officers were female, Hispanic, and in the second attack, majority black. I didn't care what their skin color was either; I was just happy to see...
Thanks for sharing these videos, Santa Monica Coalition. This is my neighborhood. Council et al, Really watch these two videos and what these women are saying. Take whatever opinions you have about where the videos came from and simply absorb them. I did. Right behind my fury came a surprising and deep sadness. These women, with babies, just trying to live their lives at the local park. The addicts, allowed to disintegrate and die on the streets under the empty promises and failed policies of...
Letter to the editor: I am appalled by the City's "Police Reform Commission" that voted 6-4 against allowing our police to make pretextual stops because they think the Santa Monica police are making traffic stops based on race. You have gamed the statistics and revealed yourselves as out of touch with reality. This will soon come up as a vote by the city council. Residents will be watching. Because yet again Santa Monica, held hostage by a tiny group of people with an anti-police ideology, is...
Dear Council, This article reporting on the Rand conference on "homelessness" is revealing. Round-and-round we go, as criminals prey on us, threaten us when we step out to walk the dogs, trespass, and senselessly steal anything and everything (below, this addict, holding either a weapon or a butane lighter for his drugs, steals our dog's ball in broad daylight. Why, my dog Bonnie asks? Because he's here. Sorry, Bonnie!). Not as bad as breaking into our garage and stealing electric bikes (not...
I just read this piece about the needle exchange at that ongoing dumpster fire that is the 7-11 parking lot. So it goes like this for our unending stream of new unhoused "residents": 1. Drift into town via the end of the line train (or bus). 2. Wander to where the "action" is (my neighborhood). 3. Buy booze at the liquor store on 10th and stagger over to Reed Park. 4. Buy drugs at Reed Park and wash down with said alcohol. 5. Sleep it off all day in Reed Park, making it unusable for residents....
Dear City Council, Happy New Year and a hearty welcome to the new council members. After the acrimonious election I hope we can all come together and address the challenges our city faces by taking a cold, hard look at what is working and what isn't. It is time for new ideas and a fresh approach, which will take putting aside ideologies that prevent us from seeing reality. In December, a controversial sign was put up on the promenade and, when I saw it, my initial response was negative. How...
Open Letter to Sue Himmelrich and husband Michael Soloff: It was with dismay that I watched both your orchestrated attacks on councilman Phil Brock's alternate tax transfer measure at the July 12 City Council meeting (http://santamonica.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=2). It was the definition of bad faith. Michael Soloff, in your labored straw man argument, you called Councilman Brock's measure a "poison pill." You used every cliche in the canon to push for endless construction that...
