Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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California Governor Newsom announced the opening of a new group of workers who will be eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine. As part of Phase 1B Tier 1, education and childcare workers, food and agriculture workers, and emergency services workers will be able to sign up to get vaccinated. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said they plan to start these vaccinations in two to three weeks. Decisions regarding who gets prioritized to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, regarded as...
February 10 - On Monday, the Los Angeles County Public Health Department released statistics regarding the demographics of those who have received the Covid-19 vaccine. Of all the doses given so far in Phase IA and for seniors over 65 years old, 25% were given to White residents, 25% to Latino residents, 18% to Asian, 17% to multi-racial and 3.5% to African Americans. According to the LAC DPH, these statistics "highlight a glaring inadequacy" in the vaccine roll-out process. The last census...
The Recall George Gascon Campaign is prepared to file a Notice of Intention and serve Los Angeles County's new district attorney with the papers on March 8. This is the earliest possible date, 90 days after Gascon was sworn into office. Gascon ran on a justice reform platform, promising to straddle, somehow, the rights of victims with a rehabilitative approach to criminals. As soon as he entered office, he made good on his campaign promises to eliminate cash bail and drop all sentencing...
February 1 - Today Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon gave the oath of office to Robert Arcos, who will serve as head of the Bureau of Investigation. The Bureau of Investigation comprises 300 peace officers who provide investigative work for the 1,000 deputy district attorneys working on prosecuting criminals. Or are they? Gascon's statement on Arcos's appointment stressed the former assistant chief of the LAPD's commitment to "reform." According to Gascon, reform means pleading...
LA County District Attorney George Gascon announced today that he is charging two "young adults" with one count of murder each in the fatal beating of David McKnight-Hillman, a counselor at the Wayfinder Family Services facility. McKnight-Hillman was responsible for the care of the residents at the youth hall and was reportedly trying to break up a fight at the home when seven teenagers turned on him and beat him. McKnight-Hillman succumbed to his injuries later at the hospital to which he was t...
At an intimate Zoom gathering I attended recently, a medical doctor, an educated woman who considered herself well-informed, told the group that nothing short of a war could have killed as many Americans as Covid-19. Nobody dared contradict the doctor. I don't think anyone considered the statement inaccurate. Of course, it was completely false. As we end one year of pandemic and begin the next one that will undoubtedly also be marred by the effects, direct and indirect of the SARS-CoV-2 virus,...
Starting in late November, state and county officials have been locking down increasing sectors of economic and daily life in California, and particularly in large and populous Los Angeles County. A curfew was placed, banning leaving one's home between the hours of 10 pm and 5 am except for essential activities. Outdoor dining was banned, followed quickly by the closure of personal care services and even playgrounds. Perhaps most significantly, residents were told they could not gather with...
George Gascon, brand-new District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles, issued a press release today defending his actions to eliminate bail requests for most crimes committed in his jurisdiction. His rationale is flimsy but emotionally appealing. Sometimes people charged with minor offenses will plead guilty even if they believe themselves innocent in order to avoid a night (or more) in jail. However, when the no-money bail experiment was run during the early days of the pandemic, the...
UPDATE: The Association of Deputy District Attorneys dispute Gascon's interpretation of today's court ruling as a victory. In fact, says the ADDA, the court ordered Gascon to show cause why an injunction against his behavior should not be issued. Gascon has until January 15 to file papers supporting his position, and a hearing will be held on February 2, 2021. December 30, 2020 After a month of suffering under the radical leadership of new Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, the...
A group of law professors from prominent, left-leaning California law schools sent out a press release preemptively striking against a yet-to-be-filed lawsuit by the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys against newly installed District Attorney George Gascon. The press release claims the ADDA will not prevail in their coming restraining order against Gascon to prevent him from forcing his deputies to drop sentencing enhancements in charging criminal defendants. Furthermore, the...
On the surface, the bill Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) plans to propose that will raise the requirements to enter a police force in California sounds like a good idea. Requiring recruits to either have a four-year college degree or be 25 years old seems like it would create a more mature, level-headed police force. In defending the proposed law, Jones-Sawyer cites a 2010 study that showed college-educated police officers in two different cities were less likely to use force in...
Sheila Kuehl is actually an alien. Not an alien from Mexico or any other country, but an alien from outer space. This was the news LA County Supervisor Kuehl delivered at a special press conference held today in order to explain her actions in dining outside at Il Forno Trattoria in Santa Monica hours after voting to ban outdoor dining for public health safety reasons. Although Kuehl realized and acknowledged that her admission may jeopardize the true identities of other public officials who...
State and local officials began instituting new lockdown orders with the declared purpose of slowing down the surge of cases beginning in mid-November. But is the shutdown of outdoor dining, the closing of playgrounds, and the heavy restrictions on retail store capacity really about saving lives? The scramble by government officials to impose more restrictions on a populace already exhausted by imposed isolation and unemployment seems more a tack to save face than to save lives. Given the...
The couple is always shocked and horrified when cat whisperer Jackson Galaxy shines a blacklight on their bedroom walls to reveal where their problem feline has been leaving its urine. Without the blacklight, the wall looks clean, even pristine. But the ultraviolet radiation reveals the walls are splashed with dirty cat pee. President Donald Trump has served as the nation's blacklight from the moment he entered office. Only because of Donald Trump has the American public discovered the dirty...
Election Day is past and so is the excuse for social media platforms to censor content based on the fear of "election interference." But Twitter censors on. Today, Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire tweeted out a concern regarding a bizarre vote update by the State of Michigan. The tally showed Biden securing 100 percent of a packet of 128,000 votes. Walsh tweeted, "This is reason enough to go to court. No honest person can look at this and say it's normal and unconcerning." After Trump quote tweeted...
Protests sponsored by Black Lives Matter had wound down during October, prior to the national election on November 3. Even activity by Antifa had abated in Portland, where the group has besieged various public buildings since May 29. It had looked as though the two groups were working to help Joe Biden get elected. The violent chaos that had erupted in various cities around the country is not popular and was featured prominently at the Republican National Convention. Democrats have soft-pedaled...
All summer long, the country has been rocked by street protests and outright riots, most organized by either Black Lives Matter or Antifa. But abruptly, after October 10 - roughly three weeks before the national election - all protests by BLM ceased. The protest on October 10, dubbed a "BLM-Antifa Soup Drive," was arranged to counter a "Patriot Rally" in Denver. During the demonstrations, a security officer for a TV news company allegedly fatally shot one of the Patriot Rally members. It is...
The federal and California state governments sent subtly, but distinctly, different messages to the media regarding steps they are taking to provide election security. Both state and federal officials pledged to use their authority to ensure a free and fair election. But the state government, represented by Mark Ghilarducci, California's Homeland Security Advisor, stressed its concern over the spread of "misinformation" by foreign actors. The U.S. government, represented by District Election...
As the election season progresses this fall, the calls for censorship of free speech - and actual censorship - progress right along with it. Proponents of censorship claim such action is necessary in order to protect the democratic process of the election. Inaccurate and damaging misinformation will sweep through and sway the gullible and poorly educated masses, you see. In fact, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 proves this already happened! Therefore strong measures must be taken to...
On October 15, former Mexican defense secretary and army leader General Salvador Cienfuegos was arrested as he arrived at Los Angeles International Airport. According to KTLA's anonymous sources, the former Mexican cabinet minister was arrested on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. Cienfuegos is the second high-ranking Mexican official to be arrested on such charges in one year. Mexican security official Genaro Garcia Luna was arrested in Texas on drug trafficking charges in Texas...
Governor Newsom released a new "equity metric" last week that adds to the requirements necessary before a county can move to a less restrictive tier. The census tracts in the lowest quartile of the Healthy Place Index (HPI) must now meet a threshold close to that of the county as a whole. The HPI is defined by the California Department of Public Health as "a composite measure of socioeconomic opportunity applied to census tracts that includes 25 individual indicators across economic, social,...
Governor Newsom sent AB331, a bill requiring an Ethnic Studies course for California high school graduation, back to the legislature without a signature on September 30, the last possible day for his action on the legislation. Writing that "I value the role ethnic studies plays in helping students think critically about our history and understand the experience of marginalized communities in our state," Newsom believed the bill was not ready to be made into law. "Last year I expressed concern...
The Black Lives Matter organization (not to be confused with the idea that black lives matter) recently removed a page from their website that outlined the beliefs of the group. The page, titled "What We Believe," set forth a number of Marxist and radical LGBTQ tenets that could hardly be deemed relevant to their generally perceived goal of combating racism and uplifting the black community. "We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans f...
The California State Legislature passed AB 331 in September, a bill requiring a semester of ethnic studies for high school graduation. A model curriculum, hundreds of pages long, is available for public comment and will be approved in March of next year if the governor signs the bill into law. 80 groups, spearheaded by the Amcha Initiative, an organization opposing anti-Semitism on campuses, signed a letter urging the governor to veto the bill. While the authors of AB 331, which includes Santa...
The Santa Monica City Council on Tuesday will be presented with suggestions from The Black Agenda for ways to spend the $200,000 already earmarked in June for efforts to support racial justice. The Black Agenda is comprised of a group of the city's Black community leaders (capital letters are theirs) whose steering committee includes Barry Snell, a former SMMUSD Board member and current Santa Monica College Board Trustee. Also on the steering committee are Dr. Karen Gunn, a retired SMC...
