Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 114
November 4, 2021 The West Hollywood City Council voted on Wednesday to pass an ordinance to raise the minimum wage in their municipality to $17.64 per hour. The wage increase would go first to hotel workers, who would start earning the extra money on January 1, 2022. Everyone else would get their increase beginning July 1, 2022. The odd-sounding wage rate matches the minimum wage for hotel workers in the City of Los Angeles for hotels with 150 or more rooms - a rate that Santa Monica also ordain...
Covid-19 was a trailing third in causes of death in the United States in 2020 according to "The Leading Causes of Death in the US for 2020" by Farida Ahmad and Robert Anderson in the medical journal, JAMA Network. With 345,323 deaths attributed to Covid-19, the disease caused only a little over half as many deaths as the two top killers: cancer with 598,932 deaths and the winner, heart disease, with 690,882 deaths. Yet the public response to Covid, led by public health and government officials...
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health released a tip sheet today on how to celebrate Halloween "Covid-safe." Suggestions include practical ideas like making your Covid-mask part of your costume and avoiding crowded places with poor air flow. (Interestingly, health officials warn against wearing a costume mask over a face mask, admitting this would make breathing difficult. Why didn't they think of that when they were tellng people to double-mask?) But some of the "guidance" dips int...
October 11, 2021 If Californians expected their governor to act like the adult in the room when presented with the insane laws approved by the clown show that is the state legislature, they were sadly disappointed over the weekend. Newsom enacted the following new laws that range from the ridiculous to the catastrophic. Buy, hey, remember that they didn't want to recall him. In ascending order of insanity: 1. Banning gas-powered leaf blowers and other small engines (AB 1346) Newsom signed...
September 24, 2021 - Garth Brooks just canceled all of his big concerts, citing public health concerns regarding Covid-19. Synagogues required proof of vaccination or negative Covid tests for attendance at High Holiday services this month. All over the region, events are getting canceled or moving online. When the Covid vaccines became available late in 2020, many hoped they could return to their normal lives. The vaccine was supposed to be safe and incredibly effective. Those who were...
September 20, 2021 - In an email to constituents, Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin suggested the city buy up motels and even office buildings to turn them into "housing with services." Bonin went on to claim it would be a good idea for the city to become a major land and property owner, creating what he calls "social housing." Bonin believes government landlordship is merely an "expansion," a logical next step from the initiative taken over the summer to give motel vouchers to vagrants...
The discovery of 300 stolen mail-in ballots in the car of a man passed out in a 7-Eleven parking lot in Torrance on August 16 illustrates the potential for fraud in the coming gubernatorial recall election - or any election held via universally mailed ballots. The security of the mailed-out ballot system relies on the diligence, care, and concern of numerous individuals, the massive majority of whom did not ask for the task and have no foreseeable interest in performing it. In other words, the...
A resolution that would have requested Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon to follow state law regarding sentencing and bail was pulled by its author, Santa Monica Councilmember Phil Brock, who says he was unable to get support from other council members. The resolution took issue with three policy directives of Gascon's since he took office: forbidding requests for cash bail, dismissing misdemeanors without conditions, and elimination of nearly all sentencing enhancements. Now Br...
UPDATE: According to the Amcha Initiative, a Jewish campus watchdog group, the Senate Appropriations Committee will vote on whether to pass AB 101 to the full senate on August 26. Four of the seven senators on the committee must vote to approve the bill before it may proceed to a possible bote. August 17, 2021 - The Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday placed AB 101 in the Suspense File, meaning it is considered to have fiscal impact and will be set aside for further consideration. This...
On Tuesday, August 10, the County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to end citizenship requirements for county department heads. They are also giving each department head the authority to waive such requirements for the employees within their departments. The County's public statement on the vote did not specify that employees had to have legal status to work in the country. It is a federal crime, subject to civil penalties, to knowingly hire a person who does not have a legal right to...
The Los Angeles County Health Department sent out a newsletter justifying their return to mandating masks three weeks ago. "We are now seeing a slowing down in the increase of cases," the LADPH wrote. They compared data from Los Angeles, where the number of new cases only increased 6.5% over the last week, to the rest of California, some of which does not have a mask mandate, where the number of new cases increased 20.2% over the same week. The reason for the difference in increase in case rates...
July 16, 2021 It was only a matter of time, and not very much time, before the uptick in Covid-19 cases caused health officials to begin reimposing the restrictions they have used for 16 months now in order to deflect blame for public illnesses and deaths. On Thursday, county health officials issued a new order that will require the public to wear masks again when in indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status. On June 15, the "reopening" of the state, there were 210 new coronavirus cases...
A law that would grant nearly all (if not all) criminal defendants the right to walk out of jail without bail is now sitting in the Public Safety Committee of the California State Assembly after passing the State Senate with a 30-9 vote. Should the bill, SB 262, get passed by the Assembly, it will be nearly (if not completely) impossible to hold any offender in jail, no matter what crime they are accused of committing. The proposed law would require bail to be set at $0 for all offenses except...
June 30, 2021 - Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon held a press conference on Wednesday to explain to the public how he is going to address the surge in violent crime in Los Angeles, a surge that coincidentally began around the time he assumed the position of chief law enforcement officer in the county. "Public safety strategies have traditionally been reactive and reactionary, instead of proactive and preventative," Gascon said at the presser. "Traditional" methods, such as policing,...
A resident survey sent out with a Santa Monica Community Recreation email blast seems designed to elicit certain results regarding the city's stance on politically and socially progressive issues. The first page of the survey admits "This is not a scientific survey." One must give them credit where it is due. From there on, the survey goes on to attempt eliciting praise of the city, its diversity (a word that is never defined), sustainability (also not defined), and uniqueness (whatever that...
The City of Santa Monica's Planning Department has made available for public consumption its most current draft of the Housing Element of the General Plan. While this combination of words may cause your eyes to glaze over in boredom, the city staff's recommendations in this bulky document, over 1500 pages long, will significantly impact the quality of life in Santa Monica, including its density, environment, strain on infrastructure, cost of living, and finances. Since no one has the time to...
A law that would require a semester of "Ethnic Studies" to graduate high school in California is headed for its third reading in the California State Assembly. An earlier version of today's AB101, then titled AB 331, was vetoed by Governor Newsom in the fall of 2020. In a statement regarding the veto, Newsom said, "the initial draft of the model curriculum was insufficiently balanced and inclusive." The Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) underlying the present version of the ethnic studies...
May 21, 2021 Yesterday, the Los Angeles County Registrar approved the petitions for the recall of LA County District Attorney George Gascon. The Recall George Gascon Campaign may now legally begin the process of collecting the 579,062 signatures necessary for a recall election against the controversial head of the prime law enforcement agency for the county. The number is derived from 10% of the county's registered voters. The deadline for arriving at that number is October 27, 2021, 160 days aw...
The current Los Angeles District Attorney sends press releases that are markedly different from his predecessor. While Jackie Lacey would announced the arrests of people in positions of trust, such as police officers and politicians, she would intersperse such victories of justice with stories of the detainment of the sorts of criminals that most people are going to encounter and from whom they will suffer. Serial murderers, rapists, and the like. Not DA George Gascon. He seems indifferent to...
May 17, 2021 The Los Angeles Fire Department responds to an average of 24 homeless-related fires a day, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Times. That's two dozen emergencies every day. LAFD classifies one third of those fires as arson. The rest of the fires are caused by outdoor cookstoves or other unsafe and unpermitted use of flames. These fires cause death and a great deal of damage. 41 homeless people have been killed by them since 2015 and they have caused an estimated $185 million...
The California Assembly's Public Safety Committee recently passed for additional consideration a bill that would gut the state's sentencing enhancements for the use of a gun during the commission of a felony. Current state law provides sentencing enhancements of either 10, 20, or 25-years-to-life, depending on the nature of the gun use. 10 years are added for simply brandishing a gun during the commission of a felony, 20 years are added if the gun is discharged, and 25-to-life if great bodily...
May 3, 2021 In what is probably not the smartest move by a state official facing a recall election during a year when violent crime is spiking across the region, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order giving extra time off of violent prisoners' sentences for "good behavior." Newsom's order changes a rule that has been in effect since 2017 that shortens sentences by one-fifth for good behavior. Now sentences can by shortened by one-third. There are currently 76,000 incarcerate...
May 5, 2021 After public outcry regarding illegal food vendors on the Santa Monica Pier, apparently run by a criminal family gang, authorities cracked down on the activity. Police would now accompany Code Enforcement Officers onto the pier, according to a statement from Deputy City Manager Anuj Gupta on April 21. The city also pledged to enforce parking restrictions so that the large trucks hauling the vendor carts would not be able to park in the adjacent lots. Residents were urged to notify...
Mike Bonin and the City of Los Angeles is sending out an online survey for residents and others who work in the city soliciting opinions on what types of calls armed police should answer and what should instead by answered by "trained, unarmed responders." The survey may be found at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSev-Ic5prXR8wr8eZef-d0JZGJb_1pa_ZhW9zoveSRGZ-u7HQ/viewform The proposal to create an unarmed response team was first floated in June, 2020, following the sensational death...
May 5, 2021 After public outcry regarding illegal food vendors on the Santa Monica Pier, apparently run by the Murcia criminal family gang, authorities cracked down on the activity. The vendors had been involved in at least two violent incidents regarding territory and allegiance to the gang, including a brawl involving six arrests in early April. Police would now accompany Code Enforcement Officers onto the pier, according to a statement from Deputy City Manager Anuj Gupta on April 21. The...
