Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced in September that Amazon would construct a second headquarters in North America, the smart money was on Atlanta. The South's biggest City has land, a large and largely underemployed workforce, transportation infrastructure and an accommodating local government. Since Amazon's HQ is in Seattle, it made sense that the company would pick the East coast, or even Toronto Canada for HQ2. But in January, Amazon moved into the Sony Pictures studio...
A capacity crowd filed into Catholic Church Easter Sunday morning on April 1, 2018. People dressed in their Sunday best (mostly), had to be re-directed to the gymnasium and community center which held satellite services. Six or so people greeted the faithful in front of the 100 year old cathedral with free coffee. Monsignor Torgerson himself shook hands at the Church entrance for the most important holy day in Christendom. Around the block, a smaller crowd filed into St....
The SMMUSD organized a walkout at 10 am Wednesday morning, to protest the recent shooting of 17 high school students in Parkland Florida. They called for more gun laws, and laws to address gun violence in the United States. 2500 Santa Monica High School students gathered on the athletic field, and listened to speakers, mostly in favor of gun control. One of the young women who organized the protest, Jasmine, told us: "Today we had a walkout at Santa Monica High School we...
Trying to please potential Democratic voters, the State of California declared itself a Sanctuary State last year . The Justice Depart has now sued the Golden State, saying that it is interfering with Federal Agents in the performance of their duties The Federal constitution says that border control and immigration are the purview of the Federal government, not the states In modern times, the country's largest state has been dominated by Democrats politically speaking, but it...
In the wake of a Florida shooting, a high school protest movement appears to be snowballing. A 19 year old boy carrying an automatic weapon to the Parkland, Florida public high school, shot and killed 17 fellow students on February 14th. The 10 am walkout planned for March 14th is set to last 17 minutes, to honor the 17 Florida students killed. 14 more were wounded, some seriously. Another walkout is planned on April 20, which will mark the 19th year since the Columbine High S...
Los Angeles City Council today unanimously approved an ordinance to reign in out-of-control party houses in Los Angeles. The ordinance, which began as a motion introduced by Councilmember Ryu on June 10, 2016, creates a series of escalating fines against party hosts and homeowners who either host or rent out their homes for massive gatherings that disturb neighbors, block the public right of way, and threaten public safety. "Today, we are putting public safety first and party...
Kimberly Lynne Watzman, 45, of Santa Monica died in a Newport Beach helicopter crash on Tuesday, said the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Sheriff's said the other 2 who died were 56-year-old Brian R. Reichelt of Hollywood, Florida, and Joseph Anthony Tena, 60, of Newport Beach. Watzman, the manager of the Standard Hotel in Hollywood, was remembered as a world traveler, a dog rescuer, and a person with a zest for life. "She was working very hard at Resort management," said...
The death of an 88 year old John Hautz at his home on 34th Street, is being investigated as a homicide. While the death of an 88 year old is not generally considered suspicious, this one is. "There are specific details that I can not disclose at this time," said Lt. Saul Rodriguez, SMPD's Public Information Officer. "The investigation is on-going. I can confirm there were several indicators and trauma to the decedent's body that led the investigation in that direction. The...
The Santa Monica Pier is the symbol of the City. However, the bridge we have all walked down to get to the 100 year old wooden structure from Ocean Avenue has been ruled seismically unsafe and is slated to be replaced by two modern bridges. The 1939 era bridge is also regarded as unsafe because it is crowded, and mixes pedestrians with over 3600 automobiles on a summer day. The 1980's era divide between men and machines (it's called a "K Rail") just doesn't accommodate modern...
3/29: The Observer has learned the names of both the perpetrator and victims in what Long Beach Police called an act of workplace violence Friday. "Major Langer came to the office to fire a named partner named John Mendoza. Mendoza pulled out a gun and shot Major dead and shot Ron (Beck) in the stomach. Ron's in the hospital with serious injuries," says our source. "Then Mendoza shot himself to death, too." In the 1990's, Los Angeles personal injury attorney Larry H Parker...
The Postman only rings twice. But sometimes, not at all. Some local residents complain of poor service and frankly odd behavior by the Postman lately. On social media, some residents note that delivery often occurs after 9pm and delivered by people not in uniform. At local post offices, some days the boxes are not delivered until the end of the day. At residences, letter carriers knock at doors after dark, but do not place mail in mailboxes as they would during the day....
It has been called the Christmas gift for California businesses that keeps on giving. California has a little-known device for avoiding certain taxes when filing an LLC or corporation, that is only available the last 2 weeks of December. Businesses started during the last 2 weeks of the year pay no taxes for 2017, but enjoy the corporate shield for the entire year. As the end of every year, some entrepreneurs suddenly decide to start a new business or incorporate and existing...
Correction, 12/4/17: Laila from Untitled Number One School, says that the number of children proposed for the preschool is 20, not 50. "Most importantly, our Planning Commission approval is based on that maximum number of 20. The Statement of Official Action is linked to the Agenda for this Tuesday's City Council mtg. here:" http://santamonicacityca.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_Meeting.aspx?ID=1107 Sharing is caring, but not in my back yard when it comes to one neighborhood and a...
Santa Monica College announced that it will officially open its newest campus-housing The Center for Media and Design (CMD) and the KCRW Media Center-on December 2, 2017. We have repeatedly pointed out that only 4% (yes that's right, FOUR PERCENT) of SMC students are Santa Monica High School graduates, and that about half the student body are foreigners, who pay top dollar to study abroad. So it's unclear to us exactly how this will benefit local residents. But saying that is...
In Showtime's Ray Donovan, seedy characters regularly bribe LA officials to get contracts and hide the truth. But that's just television. Or is it. Chances are good you've parked your car in those large parking lots in lower Westwood. You might have wondered who owns them. The answer is, you do, through the Federal government. A story of who manages VA parking lots in Westwood begs the question of how he landed such lucrative contracts in the first place. The answer from the...
Singer Joni Mitchell is 74 years old today. The song writer of hits such as "Both Sides Now," "Big Yellow Taxi (They Paved Paradise)," and "Woodstock" (where she actually performed); famously gave up a daughter at 20 to pursue a career. She said that prior to her, singing was male dominated and that "all songs were about men seducing women. I ended that." olling Stone called her "one of the greatest songwriters ever" and AllMusic has stated, "When the dust settles, Joni...
2/11/17: As of today, Police still have release no information about a suspect in the shooting of a young woman from a party bus on Ocean Avenue, near the Santa Monica Pier. This almost certainly means authorities still don't know his identity, or even how many shooters were involved. De'Ommie De La Cruz was shot dead at 1 am Saturday as a result of a verbal dispute between passengers of two buses parked in the busy area across from the Pier. Witnesses said that or three men...
There is an apocryphal story going around social media, that a man has figured out how to game the system so every day is his birthday, at Starbucks' corporation's expense. "My neighbor bought 365 Starbucks Gift Cards & registered each card so now it's his "birthday" every day & gets free Starbucks," tweeted Hamza, in one version of the story. "TIL a man bought 365 Starbucks Cards and registered each one for a different birthday, so he got a free birthday drink every day of...
Dove Soap, a division of Unilever, posted an ad on Twitter that many saw as racist. It shows a black woman removing a brown shirt to reveal a white woman. "I cannot conceive of how anyone at Dove thought this ad was acceptable. This is literally how Victorian soap was advertised by Unilever..." tweeted Hannah Rose . "Let's be clear, Dove knew exactly what they were doing with their racist ad. Soap companies used to do this racist theme all the time," tweeted Tariq Nasheed W...
By American standards, it is a big problem in a small country. Greenland has the world's highest suicide rate, 50 per year in a population of around 56,000. This yields a suicide rate of nearly 1 per 1000, or 24 times the suicide rate in the US. Greenland sources tell us the country experienced 28 suicides in the first 9 months of 2017. Why do so many young Greenlanders kill themselves? No one knows for sure. Theories include geographical isolation and the cold. We state the p...
Las Vegas Shooter Benjamin Paddock's father was also a "sociopath" and a killer, it turns out. He was at one time on the FBI's most wanted list, and was sentenced to a long prison term at the time of his death. In 1960, Benjamin Braddock tried to run over an FBI agent in Las Vegas, while fleeing from a bank robbery. He was also described as suicidal. His son, Stephen Paddock, committed suicide in Las Vegas after shooting more than 500 people at a country music festival in Las...
St. John in the US Virgin Islands was hit Friday by the most powerful Category 5 hurricane to ever come out of the Atlantic. Florida has taken all the press, attention from FEMA and the Coast Guard. Meanwhile, on St. John, power is out. There are reports of heavy damage and looting. Federal authorities are nowhere to be found, by some reports. Amier Salem, whose family owns the Bayside Mini-Market in Cruz Bay, has been living in the store as he tries to get home to St. Thomas....
Boston.com offers readers 6 free webcams they can watch from Key West Florida. Don't read too much into this, but the Live Webcam broadcasts from Key West Florida suddenly went offline. Liveweb cams on Google's Youtube service are also offline. This apparently means the feed, or perhaps the power, has been cut. As I write this, Hurricane Irma is 78 miles from Key West and appears to be heading directly for the island city, home of La Conchas. The lost WebCams are titled "Live...
Merchant Processing company went.com reports that Amazon Web services has contracted a virus or bug, which caused them to be off line for 24 hours. The email from Flint reads as follows: "Dear Flint Team, Over the past 24 hours our engineering team has been working around the clock on an issue regarding our servers. It turns out the issue was related to an AWS (Amazon Web Services) bug. We would like to inform you that the issue has been resolved and you should be able to acce...
In yet another example of how polarized our country has become, an online petition calls on musicians to boycott a concert of the Santa Monica Symphony to be guest conducted next month by Dennis Prager. He is a radio host whom some consider to be right wing, and the left cannot tolerate the right lately. Some cannot conscience someone with his views conducting an orchestra, even though he won't say anything. Now that's tolerance for you! Prager has been 'enthusiastically'...
