Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Sorted by date Results 344 - 368 of 570
May 18, 2021 After taking the weekend to mull the matter, Governor Newsom and the California Department of Public Health decided that California would not be following the guidelines put forward May 13 by the Centers for Disease Control regarding masks. On Thursday, the federal CDC declared that vaccinated people could safely remove their masks in all situations: indoors or out, crowded or not. But on Monday, California officials, ruling over a state with one of the lowest...
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...
Pfizer has submitted a request to the Food and Drug Administration to approve its innovative Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 12 to 15 years old. At present, this vaccine is only approved by the FDA for emergency use for individuals aged 16 and older. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is solidly behind the vaccination of children. "To prepare for this change, Public Health is urging providers to consider expanding the range of vaccines they are delivering...
Our legislators' hunger for more and more housing units in the region ignores one remarkably significant limiting factor: water supply. Over recorded history in the region, California has suffered multiple droughts, many of the more recent episodes requiring strict rationing of residential water supply. Los Angeles is currently at only 46% of average rainfall for the Water Year according to the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). Riverside is at 50%, and other...
State Senator Josh Newman, a Democrat, is pulling from consideration his proposal to allow the objects of a recall petition access to the names and contact information of those who signed the petition. Newman, reelected in 2020, was himself the victim of a recall election in 2018 - which he lost. He says the present system of privacy for those who sign a recall petition allows for potential fraud. Those who sign the recall petition may not realize what they are signing. The...
How does one get a free room with oceanfront view, no taxes to pay, and no building codes to follow? According to Los Angeles Councilman Mike Bonin, be a vagrant. The controversial councilmember is already routinely lambasted on social media for the unsanitary and dangerous conditions caused by vagrants in his district. His proposal to allow the homeless to legally camp in the beach parking lots at Will Rogers and Dockweiler Beach and next to Fisherman's Wharf was met with a...
On every page of the official Black Lives Matter website, a button urges one to "donate today." Benefactors may warm themselves with supporting BLM's "ongoing fight to end State-sanctioned violence, liberate Black people, and end white supremacy forever." In their 2020 Impact Report released in February, the activist organization attempts to explain how they are going about achieving these lofty, distorted, and utterly vague goals. In the process, they try to explain what...
The case against Assembly Bill 101, a law that would require ethnic studies be a part of the high school curriculum in the state's public schools, was made by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin of the Amcha Initiative in the San Diego Tribune. AB 101 will be heard before the California Assembly Education Committee this week. The Amcha Initiative is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to combating anti-Semitism on school campuses. Rossman-Benjamin's contention is that the entire curriculum...
UPDATE/CORRECTION: The Santa Monica Shines program does not involve inspections from city of Santa Monica code inspectors. Sustainable Works conducts the walk-throughs to grant the Assurance Seal and they are a separate entityt hired by the city. The empathy course that seems so mysterious involves guidance in how to interact with business customers or guests who do not want to follow the county's safety guidelines, i.e. are refusing to wear a mask or socially distance. Half...
Dressed up in the language of compassion and social justice, the City Council's vote on March 30 to accommodate 6,168 affordable housing units, 70% of whatever new housing is built, and then to disperse these affordable units throughout the city, including along Montana Avenue and Main Street, is in reality a despicable theft of the earnings of hardworking residents and will end up benefiting no one. There are so many fatal flaws in the logic, data, and goals involved in both...
Police were needed to protect construction workers on Wednesday night at Echo Park as over 200 protestors arrived to decry the attempt to clear an estimated four dozen homeless people who'd set up camp on park grounds. The City of Los Angeles said they need to close the park to conduct about $500,000 in damage to lighting and plumbing and to remove hazardous waste and make public safety improvements. The park has been the site of a tent city commune of up to 100 people at...
March 11, 2021 The City of Santa Monica on Tuesday joined the County and City of Los Angeles in adopting an ordinance granting an additional $5 per hour "hero pay" to workers at large grocery chains and drug retailers. The law takes effect immediately and is supposed to sunset after 120 days. The Covid-19 virus began sweeping through the local population last spring, with several plateaus and surges during the year since. Throughout this whole time, "essential workers" at...
During an alarming surge in the number of homicides committed in Los Angeles, with the majority of victims people of color, Black Lives Matter-LA has begun a campaign to deplatform and abolish unions protecting law enforcement officers. At a news conference held during a protest outside the Los Angeles Police Protective League office, BLM-LA made it clear this is just the first step in their determination to completely eliminate law enforcement. The LAPPL is the union...
February 26, 2021 Community health clinics think the answer to solving vaccine rollout disparity is to let them administer more vaccines. At a webinar on February 24, representatives from health clinics and the President of Chares R. Drew University of Medicine and Science made the case for allocating more doses to health clinics that service poor communities. "Advancing equity is in our DNA," said Louise McCarthy, President of the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles....
I have read with disappointment the Staff Report accompanying Item 8.A. The report is long on process narrative but entirely deficient on hard objectives and measurable milestones to achieve those objectives. The City must stop focusing on the process and focus on quantifiable OBJECTIVES and the measurable milestones required to achieve them. The Staff Report does not provide any indication of the total amount being either received nor spent on the unhoused issue in Santa...
If you are wondering how your tax dollars are spent on addressing the homeless crisis in Santa Monica, do not ask the City as they would likely not be able to answer. They would probably even think it is impolite of you to ask. The lack of oversight and accountability in homeless services has been brought up to the City's attention by advocates and former and current clients of homeless services for years now. Such inquiries routinely fell on the City's deaf ears or were met...
February 22 District Attorney George Gascon issued a statement today explaining why his office accepted a plea bargain from convicted sex offender Kenneth Rasmuson for the murder of two 6-year-old boys rather than seek the death penalty. Rasmuson pled guilty to two counts of murder and admitted the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. A recent court ruling would not allow the special circumstance to be dismissed. The defendant admitted he killed 6-year-old...
In their daily email to the public on Saturday, February 13, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health appeared to be moving toward a mandate of double masking. On February 3, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and the de facto czar of national coronavirus policy, asserted that double-masking could be a method of helping to prevent the spread of COVID-19. On Saturday, the county reiterated this message. According...
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 main purpose of this letter is to urge the City Council and Councilmember McCowan to reconsider Mr. Cardona's position as stated in his January 6, 2021 response to Olga Zurawska's Demand to Cure and Correct. Mr. Cardona's position invites a dangerous precedent for democracy by normalizing Brown Act violations In his letter, Mr. Cardona claims that the very fact that Councilmember McCowan had publicly disclosed her serial meetings with the Council majority prior to the...
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...
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...
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...
First, digital conversations on "matters of public concern," legally the centerpiece of First Amendment jurisprudence, were consistently blocked by partisan social media operators throughout the 2020 election cycle. That alone is arresting; it has changed public access to information and calls for action. Social media moved from offering a "public forum" (with concurrent legal duties, including openness) to a "content editor" (typically imposing higher liability, such as for...
A Demand to Cure and Correct alleges a Brown Act violation regarding the selection of Council leadership, calls for Council to conduct new vote without participation of Councilmember McCowan. Letter sent on December 18, 2020 to Mayor Himmelrich, City Councilmembers, Interim City Attorney Cardona, Interim City Manager Dilg and City Clerk Anderson-Warren reads: Dear Mayor Himmelrich and Santa Monica Councilmembers, Pursuant to California Government Code Section 54960.1, I am...
