Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 36
Hi everyone, A month ago, I took a long walk through the city with our new Manager Oliver Chi, who, to his credit, who heard me out regarding the revulsion I had about the loss of chief Batista, as well as the challenges the city faces. We spoke candidly off the record and believe me, I didn't hold back. While it was off-the-record, I can report we saw two naked people on our walk, including one in Tongva whose pants were off as a group of middle-school girls jogged by. It...
Dear Council, This is a long one, sorry. But like many people in the city, I'm trying to understand the sudden firing of Chief Batista. It's obvious he was fired despite all the niceties mouthed (except "he wants to spend time with his family"). No reason has been given, and as far as I can see there isn't one. So I ask the council this question: Do you really think you can find somebody who is moderate and temperate enough for your delicate natures? Somebody who will put up...
Dear Council, Once in a while I tune into your meetings to see if anything's changed in the priorities, ideology, and general tone of our fair city. NOPE! The clearest example is the exchange in the last city council meeting between the just-arrived-in-Santa-Monica-a-few-minutes-ago-carpetbagger-councilman Dan Hall and the born-in-Santa Monica-small-business-owner-and-living-in-a-rent-control apartment Mayor Lana Negrete. It was a small moment, but like many small exchanges,...
Dear Council, I'm appalled by the recent decision to not fund the five police officers our chief says is necessary to keep our city safe. This is a clueless and out-of-touch choice that belies either a deep distrust and lack of support for law enforcement, or willful ignorance of the one issue that plagues us, namely crime and disorder. You are failing our city, as this news report sums up perfectly, ending with one woman saying she doesn't feel safe on our streets. Who does...
Dear Council, I don't often share John Alle's videos. I find him directionally right, but I think he is tactically wrong-I've argued with him about his signs on the promenade which are often unnecessarily personal and seem counterproductive. His scope is too narrow, (we are more than our disorder), and occasionally he drifts into hyperbole. But I absolutely understand his frustration in the face of a seemingly indifferent bureaucracy that seems more intent on gaslighting our...
Dear Council, I don't often share John Alle's videos. I find him directionally right, but I think he is tactically wrong-I've argued with him about his signs on the promenade which are often unnecessarily personal and seem counterproductive. His scope is too narrow, (we are more than our disorder), and occasionally he drifts into hyperbole. But I absolutely understand his frustration in the face of a seemingly indifferent bureaucracy that seems more intent on gaslighting our...
Dear Council, Lots has been written about the plans to open the promenade to become an "entertainment zone," referencing Beale Street in Memphis, and 6th Street in Austin. While I was initially for this, a couple of recent encounters have given me pause. In the endless (and sometimes literal) shit show that is our current downtown, last week I saw a man peeing on the window of Victoria's Secret at 5pm. You read that right-broad daylight, people turning the corner and stepping...
Dear Council, The sad part about this letter is I've written some version of it every year for the last 8 years. It is a lesson in failure at every level. Or maybe a lesson in my own insanity expecting something might change. I'm going to tie several things together here, so excuse the length. First, last weekend: FRIDAY NIGHT: After dinner out my wife and I went to the CVS on Wilshire where we encountered a deranged shirtless man threatening CVS staff with a skateboard,...
Dear Council, You have inherited a city on the brink, with a lot of problems (we're broke!). And, of course, with a lot of potential, if we keep our priorities straight. But as you consider levying a staggering bond tax ($460 million) on residents, you are also inexplicably deciding to launch a task force to "explore both monetary and non-monetary reparations options." To be paid with what money? Not to mention each member of this 'task force' will be paid $2500 for their...
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...
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 t...
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...
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...
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 organizatio...
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). Whi...
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...
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...
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...
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 Spart...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 exc...
