She held office for a shorter term than anyone I recall in Culver City. Her breezy, lights-on, doors-open term is nearly, and sadly, finished. At an early moment still to be determined in tonights 7:30 School Board meeting, Diane Fiellos breathtakingly candid, and disappointingly brief, tenure as the Interim Superintendent will crash to the cold, unforgiving turf. The new Super will be introduced, and Ms. Fiello will morph into yesterdays news. Toast, I believe, is the colloquialism. I am sorry. Given a few more months, the refreshingly frank and clear thinker could have improved the executive culture in this hunched-over town of fearful, insecure leaders. For sheer honesty, Ms. Fiello outranked all of them. For the past 120 days, she has brought a strange new concept to work every morning at District Headquarters: Openness. This quality is an unwelcome stranger at many of the power desks in Culver City. I had thought for years that a key portion of the School Districts mission was for each person in authority to speak as if she or he were trying to digest 35 marbles simultaneously. This reminds me that Friday will be the 3-year anniversary of the momentous night when incumbent School Board member Stew Bubar broke a popular vote tie with newcomer Roger Maxwell by winning a marble lottery. How differently would the School Board have comported itself the last 3 years if Mr. Maxwell had been occupying the seat Mr. Bubar won? Such a circumstance might have left another Board member at a puzzling loss for cues.
The Day That Two Ladies Threw a Big, Fat Tantrum
This is about two angry black women who may be wearing out their flagging muscles stirring the pot of racial hatred in this town. Damon Runyan would have said, “Dese dames shudda been on Page 1 of Guinness for deir world-class hot-headedness.” Sandy Banks is a partisan “reporter” for the Los Angeles Times. Erin Aubrey Kaplan, every bit Ms. Banks’ match for little-girl tantrums, is a commentator whose ill-considered weekly reflections frequently are pitched at the level of scream. With these two race-minded gals at the controls, it is a wonder, possibly even a miracle, that blacks and whites are not already lunging for each other’s throats in the mean streets of Los Angeles. What a way to enter Thanksgiving Day. One reason the Times is staggering like an alcoholic in a telephone booth is that seasoned commentators and reporters who dotted their pages in the past have been replaced by green, undisciplined, unreflective true believers who bury journalistic principles beneath their own ideology. They are unfamiliar with the powers of reasoning, and they are aggressively uninterested in adhering to rudimentary journalistic principles. If Ms. Banks does not wear a victim mentality to work every day, she deserves a trophy for performing as the great pretender. My recollection is that Ms. Banks presented herself to readers of the Times several years ago as a self-anointed heroic single mother because she had been widowed. In polite society, madam, we wait for others to affix a hero’s mantle to us.
Burke Stumbles and Falls Again: She Is Promoting Hire a Felon Year
Now that the actor Michael Richards has been fired — I trust — from the Comedy Club, there is an opening for one of the unintentionally funniest women in Los Angeles, the age-encrusted County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. The old girl is a gushing fountain of yucks. Here is this morning’s knee-slapper. She is promoting “Hire a Felon Year,” which should qualify Ms. Burke for a full scholarship to the Old Broads Who Have Lost It And Won’t Admit It Nursing Home. At today’s meeting, Ms. Burke was scheduled to introduce this latest manipulation of the law to her fellow corpses on the Board of County Supervisors. She proves again that wisdom can negotiate a u-turn when some grandmas try to govern. You would hope she was waving a giant sign, proclaiming “I Have Lost My Mind — Call Me If You Find It,” when she made her latest nutty announcement this week.
Ms. Burke said, publicly, that city government and county government in Los Angeles are not hiring enough former jailbirds. Too few people arrested early in their lives are not receiving a merited second chance, she suggested. The problem is narrow-minded employers get cold feet when they see that the young men they are considering hiring have done hard time.
The Shame of the Living Wage Scam
The only 3 smart persons on the Los Angeles City Council yesterday were Dennis Zine and Greig Smith from the Valley, and Bernie Parks from South Central. Among the 14 Councilmen, they were the only ones with enough sense to look the living wage scam-mongers in the eye and effectively call them liars. Surrendering once again to the feckless sob sister mob, the City Council ordained that about a dozen hotels near LAX must pay their workers $9.39 per hour with health benefits or $10.64 without. There was, of course, no rational basis for casting a yes vote. Principles and moral values went on holiday. For one day at least, they were supplanted by socialist values. Take hard-fought money from the serious wage-earners of Los Angeles and hand it over to the dead-enders. Like good liberals, the 11 shameful Councilmen flogging this disgusting scheme obeyed only their emotions. This is the sadly reductive state of the Democratic Party. The Councilmen shunned the opportunity to reason out the proposition, which would have brought the opposite result. The scam works almost every time. Fill Council Chambers with shabbily dressed, pathetic looking men and women of numerous colors. Their only qualification is they must hold dead-end jobs. In truth, no one but a kid on the way up or an oldtimer on the way out would perform these jobs, and then only temporarily.
Sympathetic Council Waves a Red Flag Will It Be Heeded?
I thought I was fanning through my high school yearbook, so thick was the nostalgia at Monday nights City Council meeting. The City Hall staffer who composed the dreamy introduction to the first serious item on the agenda nudged our memories in the ribs. It sounded like copy you would peruse from a rocking chair on the back porch while swatting at flies and supping a sparkling glass of pink lemonade. The Culver City Sister City Committee, the staffer wrote, is part of a program that was initiated by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 to promote peace, friendship and goodwill between countries through people-to-people contact. With an elderly lady on my right and a young lady on my left, I began to sway to the lilting violin music that the sugar-sweet wording evoked. The staffer went on to say that Sister Cities gives our town a mandate to share Culver City with the world and with the spirit of bringing the world to Culver City. Such beguilingly perfumed, head-turning language has not floated this near to my nostrils since my wife proposed to me. The well-meaning staffer was hoping to convince us that we felt better than we did because we were reflecting on supposedly simpler times. This can be dangerous for a city in transition from yesterday to today. Out in the neighborhoods, residents prefer to remember the Culver City that was, when they moved here. Business owners know that era died the same year that segregation was outlawed. The present essay is a gentle, but firm, nudge in the rubs to noble-minded residents at the wheel of long-running organizations:
San Francisco Tries Out Another Goofy Idea
When Diane and I drove north for a weekend of relaxation, our reverie was disrupted when I picked up the San Francisco Chronicle. The City is preparing to spring another example of San Francisco values on us tomorrow afternoon. They keep toying with the notion of being the first community in America to commit municipal suicide. Here is a pill that will push them closer to the ledge of the Golden Gate Bridge. Like good socialists, the radical Democrats who lead San Francisco never are happy with the way their fellow liberals lead their lives. The notion of advancing or qualifying via merit instead of locked-in pre-arrangement infuriates these meddlesome race-baiters. They are certain that by dividing a classroom into so many blacks, so many Latinos, so many Chinese, so many Japanese and so many whites, a wonderful school will be born. The San Francisco School Board secretly possibly illegally, says the Chronicle devised a dreadful resolution to be introduced at tomorrows meeting. It would make race a factor in determining what school a child will attend. If the resolution passes, the San Francisco Unified School District would be required to consider race and ethnicity in a narrowly tailored manner, starting two years from the past September. Here is a brief summary of recent San Francisco history: For most of the 1980s and 1990s, San Francisco was federally mandated to consider race in assigning students to public schools. In 1994, a group of Chinese families seems to have successfully sued the School District, arguing that the clumsy social engineering kept their meritorious children out of the best schools. As part of the settlement, the School District created a complex scheme. But surprise, boys and girls the bad guys outsmarted themselves. The revised system has led to segregation, notably in impoverished areas.
Bob Is Blue About 90, And Laase Makes News, Too
At the breakfast table this morning, while pondering Hal Katerskys unclear future role in Downtown, correspondents from Bob Blue in Hollywood to George Laase in Culver City checked in to mourn the convincing defeat of Prop. 90. There were other important developments. Santa Monica has a new police chief, a surprise, Timothy Jackman, No. 2 at the Long Beach P.D., replacing Jim Butts, who moved on to LAX last summer. Ed Little, to the delight of our colleague Ross Hawkins, has his old job back, winning a fifth term on the Water Board, nosing out a hungry challenger, Paul Koretz. A fascinating but not necessarily definitive conclusion was written to the Santa Monica City Council race. While all 3 incumbents were returned to office the slimmed-down Kevin McKeown, Pam OConnor and Bob Holbrook Santa Monica remains more divided than its liberal reputation would suggest. Mr. McKeown and Ms. OConnor long have been strong proponents of Santa Monicas national landmark renters rights policy. Conversely, Mr. Holbrook keeps winning elections even though he stands just as stoutly on the other side. A cool $1 million was spent on the campaigns, half of it trying to defeat the top two votegetters because they are backed by Santa Monicans for Renters Rights. You will find my psychiatrist behind the first door on the left. Finally, Mayor Villaraigosa, chronically starved for attention on a minute-by-minute basis, continues to talk to anyone who will listen to him, taking any stance on any topic while he preparing to run for governor in 10. The mayors desperate daily ploys for attention remind me of Mr. Koretzs vain, equally desperate, ill-motivated bid to remain on the public dole. Termed out in Sacramento, Mr. Koretz, reputed to be the only heterosexual founder of West Hollywood, needed a public office somewhere, anywhere, to chase. As my colleague Mr. Hawkins pointed out a couple of days ago, after running a muddy campaign, Mr. Koretz wont be a poster boy for any group promoting ethical values. Before his Ill-Do-Anything-for-Food mood went away, Mr. Koretz would have served the Westside better by working for passage of Prop. 85, the failed parental notification measure. As I read the post-mortem quirky justifications for voting against 85, I shake my head in puzzlement and disappointment.
Prop. 90s Defeat Was a Loss for Culver City
Aside from Assemblywoman Karen Basss lopsided victory last night, there was grim news for Culver City business and property owners. Resisting a powerful national trend toward narrowing governments power of eminent domain, Californians resoundingly went the opposite way yesterday at the polls. With governments and lockstep newspapers the length of the state howling, fairy-tale fashion, that Prop. 90 would eventually cost taxpayers millions or billions of extra dollars in bogus lawsuits, ill-informed voters fell for the line. Scare works. City governments and their reliable acolytes across the state walloped Prop. 90 into oblivion, 53 percent to 47 percent. Exactly the outcome that businessman Les Surfas and many others did not want. Exactly the outcome that the broker/developer Bill Feldman wanted. The good news was that 90 would have provided drop-dead protection against whimsical intrusion by government moving intimidatingly against vulnerable landowners such as Mr. Surfas. It was a dreadful letdown for Culver City owners of land, businesses and perhaps even homes. Many among them are a twinkling in the eyes of City Hall, which has designs on reshaping this community. City Hall stands unrestrained this morning. It can continue to walk into homes or businesses and announce, I want your property. You may as well hoist your favorite white flag immediately.
The Unimaginable Pain of Basss Extreme Doubleheader
See the website: www.myspace.com/emiliamike
I cannot imagine the incalculable anguish that is coursing through the grieving Assemblyperson Karen Bass this afternoon. No one should ever have to endure the death of a child. One never completely recovers, we are told. For all persons who pray, Ms. Basss painful welfare needs to be mentioned. Mourning the loss of her only child 8 days ago in a car crash at the age of 23, Ms. Bass is in need of all intercession that can be delivered to her by her thousands of Culver City constituents, admirers and friends. One only may ache for her. Her capacity for tolerating the ugliest and the most beautiful extremities of life will be grimly tested this week. Since winning her first term two years ago, the Democratic Ms. Bass, serving an overwhelmingly Democratic district, has been a cinch to win re-election for as long as she wants to hold office in Sacramento. She was named Majority Whip before she had served a day in office, and Ms. Bass will be elected to a second term Tuesday night. In view of the tragedy-laced circumstances, the margin may be even more overwhelming than it originally was going to be. Four days later, on Saturday morning, there will be a memorial service for Ms. Basss daughter, Emelia Wright, 23, and her husband, Michael Wright, also 23, both of whom were killed in a pre-dawn, one-car crash a week ago yesterday morning. The 10 a.m. service will be held in the Chapel of the Sacred Heart on the campus of Loyola Marymount University, where Ms. Wright had been a student. No other service ever was publicly announced.
Some Swimmers Need to Learn the Value of Sharing
As my people, starting with Moses, have said for the last 3300 years, Its a living. Succinct. Spot-on. Who needs a flurry of fancy verbiage? The spoonful of money that Parks and Recreation Director Bill LaPointe scoops out of the till every other Friday probably would feed my empty-nest household as handsomely as his, with rattling change to spare. Not only will he earn a years salary in the next few days, Mr. LaPointe will deserve a 10 percent raise. By the time the remarkably self-controlled, enviably placid Middle Westerner finishes wrestling at the bargaining table with three upset teams of swimmers, his reputation for remaining unruffled will be shaken if not dented. This, Mr. LaPointe, is a test of your values, and I am wagering on you to escape alive. Get all the pillow time you can squeeze in between now and next weeks summit meeting with the feuding boys and girls. A marathon is coming. Given the perceived self-importance of some parties, dont gamble that anyone will have the courage to check his ego at the door. This is a war of egos at least as much as facts. This aint going to end with a prosaic shrug. The sweaty-palmed words that are welling up inside of the pounding chests of the swim teams negotiators may not drown out Iraq, but they will make a run at it.