Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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California just received its last shipment of Middle Eastern oil. Nothing else is on the way. This should be a national wake-up call. Instead, San Francisco seems poised to reward an author of such anti-automobile policies with a seat in Congress. California sits on over one billion barrels of proven oil reserves and produces roughly 250,000 barrels per day. Our refineries have the capacity to process 1.4 million barrels daily. And yet, we now import roughly 60% of our crude...
While a student at Stanford in the early 1980s, I served as a U.S. Coast Guard reservist at Station Fort Point in San Francisco. As a Second Class Boatswain's Mate doing search and rescue on the Bay, I learned that public service is supposed to be about duty and putting the public first - not about securing sky-high salaries and ironclad pensions. That lesson feels increasingly forgotten in California today. In San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi and her husband got rich off inside...
After nearly 40 years of Nancy Pelosi representing San Francisco in Congress, the seat is finally open. This is a rare generational opportunity - and San Francisco voters deserve more than just another Democrat promising more of the same. I am running as the Republican candidate for California's 11th Congressional District because one-party rule has failed too many people. Despite incredible wealth from the technology sector, San Francisco struggles with sky-high housing...
For nearly four decades, Nancy Pelosi has represented California's 11th Congressional District. She earned admiration in the 1980s for her strong advocacy during the HIV/AIDS crisis, when San Francisco was at the epicenter of the epidemic. Yet today, many residents see a different legacy: a city of extraordinary beauty and innovation that has struggled with chronic homelessness, fentanyl deaths, retail theft, and housing costs that have priced out the middle class. As her...
Tonight, the lights went out on Spirit Airlines, and with them, the hopes and livelihoods of thousands of American families. Fourteen thousand direct jobs-gone. Mothers and fathers reading pink slips at 3 a.m., wondering how they'll feed their children, pay the rent, or keep the car running. Smaller airports silenced. Dreams deferred. All while Senator Elizabeth Warren dusts off her hands and calls it a win. This wasn't market forces at work. This was government arrogance...
I am writing to bring your attention to a controversial new plan for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) music program, set for deployment in Fall 2026. Proposed by the new VAPA Coordinator, Jim Wang, this plan threatens to significantly delay instrumental music education and may circumvent the original intent of taxpayer-funded measures. Proposed Change Currently, SMMUSD students begin choosing between Choir, Band, or Orchestra in the 4th grade. Under the...
As a candidate for Santa Monica City Council, I walk our streets every day and see what "suicidal empathy" has done to our city. Imagine a single loose thread in a finely woven garment. If you address it immediately, the fabric remains strong. But if you let that thread catch and pull slowly over time, it unravels the entire garment until it loses all strength and integrity. That is exactly what is happening to the social fabric of Santa Monica. I lost my brother to fentanyl w...
Dear Residents of Santa Monica, When the train finished in 2016, our lives near 9th and Wilshire changed completely. For almost a decade I've written about the decline of the downtown area, being attacked by addicts, cleaning human feces out of our condo's carports, and witnessing a skid row reality take over my local Reed Park. I've become a crank to myself, trying to sound the alarm about a disintegrating city right before my eyes. Before my work responsibilities buried...
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 Mayor Negrete, City Manager Chi, and Members of the Santa Monica City Council, I am a longtime resident of Santa Monica, homeowner, taxpayer, father, and owner of a small business here in our community. I am writing to you today not as an adversary, but as a concerned citizen deeply invested in the future of our city. Like many of my fellow residents, I have witnessed the gradual erosion of Santa Monica's vibrancy-a place once renowned globally for its beaches,...
OREM, Utah - In a plot twist that could have been lifted straight from a Netflix binge-watch, authorities yesterday arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, the prime suspect in the shocking assassination of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk. Robinson, a clean-cut former scholarship student from suburban Washington County, allegedly climbed onto a rooftop at Utah Valley University on Wednesday morning and fired the fatal shots that ended the life of the 31-year-old Turning...
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 Mayor Negrete, City Attorney Doug Sloan, and Members of the Santa Monica City Council, For years, I've been calling out the waste, fraud, and outright cruelty in your so-called "solutions" to homelessness-from the absurdly expensive housing boondoggles to the deadly harm reduction handouts that enable addicts to destroy themselves and terrorize our neighborhoods. Well, the game just changed dramatically, and if you value your reputations (or want to avoid legal...
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,...
How the Supreme Court ruled differently in immigration and criminal justice cases As the Supreme Court wrapped up a spate of rulings at the end of its term, Justice Sonia Sotomayor didn’t mince words. Following a decision that voided the kind of universal, nationwide injunctions that had obstructed the Trump administration’s path to revoking birthright citizenship, Sotomayor read aloud from her dissenting opinion from the bench on June 27: “No right is safe in the new legal...
What's behind the decline in pro-gun lawsuits? After the Supreme Court fashioned a new test for the constitutionality of gun laws in 2022’s Bruen decision, gun rights advocates pounced, inundating courts with challenges to firearm restrictions. They sought to overturn assault weapons bans and magazine-capacity limits, prohibitions on young adults buying or carrying handguns, and laws meant to create gun-free zones. Now, the pace of challenges has slowed. In the six months o...
The 192-acre Santa Monica Airport is scheduled to close in 2028. The city's contract firm, Sasaki Design Consultants, has proposed three possible airport development scenarios: virtually all park, or a combination of park, commercial and housing. Surveys indicate that most residents support a park. Missing from the discussion has been the housing perspective and state requirements. The Housing Commission at its June meeting sponsored a presentation on the airport, which...
July 3, 2025 - In an effort to prop up a fading shopping and entertainment area in downtown Santa Monica, the city council okayed the outdoor consumption of alcohol from 6 pm until 2 am on the Third Street Promenade on the weekends. While the move is undoubtedly popular with heavy drinkers, it is unclear whether the new law will be enough to counter the perception of downtown Santa Monica as largely a territory for the drug-addicted homeless. Officials are not even able to...
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...
1) The Santa Monica Coalition/Safe Cities is in favor of additional outdoor restaurant seating for service and consumption of food and all alcoholic beverages. But the City charges almost as much for the outdoor seating as property owners are receiving in rent for indoor brick and mortar space 2) The Mayor's and City Council's publicly stated goal and objective is to expand the program from 5 or 6 am to 2 am daily. 3) In just the last week there have been multiple arrests for...
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,...
This campaign is focused on one urgent goal: securing a complete waiver of all permit issuance fees for Pacific Palisades residents who are rebuilding homes lost in the recent fire. Many of our neighbors are struggling to recover, facing not only the trauma of loss but also overwhelming financial burdens-especially those with little or no insurance, or seniors on fixed incomes. Despite misconceptions about the area's wealth, most Palisadians are middle-class families, and...
