Category: Politics

Canvassers For Cindy Montañez.

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For Cindy Montanez in Van Nuys.
For Cindy Montanez in Van Nuys.

Two canvassers were walking down Orion Avenue north of Victory last night, passing out literature for Cindy Montañez, who is perhaps the best known and best financed person running for the vacant City Council District #6.

According to her campaign literature “she is the only candidate endorsed by the LA County Democratic Party”.

Montañez (b. 1974) was raised in the city of San Fernando, CA along with her five siblings by parents who were immigrants from Mexico. She attended UCLA.

She is an accomplished public servant and explorer who has navigated many hidden corridors of the political landscape. Not yet forty, she stands poised and positioned for state or national fame.

Like Mulholland before her, the path to power flows down pipes from the Owens and Colorado River, baptized and blessed by DWP, the largest municipal utility in the United States.

Her brief resume:

*Democratic Assemblywoman from California’s 39th Assembly District from 2002 until 2006.
*Montañez stepped down in 2006 to run for the California’s 20th State Senate district. However, she lost that primary to Los Angeles City Councilman Alex Padilla.
*After leaving the Assembly, Montañez was appointed to the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
*Cindy now works as a government affairs consultant for various clients, as well as the Assistant General Manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

She seems the most likely to get elected.

Her name and gender are backed up by solid government work.

Who Has the Most Land in the Middle East?

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screenshot_188

President Obama is visiting Israel this week.

As we have been hearing (ad nauseum) for many years, “Israeli Settlements” or suburban housing erected for families is the main obstacle to peace. Put Israel back inside Israel proper, make it conform to borders settled by the United Nations, and peace will follow. Many US Presidents have talked of the “two-state solution”, the idea that a democratic Palestine and a democratic Israel might live side-by-side in peace.

But the truth is that any Israeli state is anathema to the Arabs. They simply do not accept that Israel has a right to exist. Israel in Tel Aviv is wrong. Israel anything must go.

From 9/11 to the 1970s hijacking of planes, to the killing of innocents at the Munich Olympics, the big bloody event has always captivated and controlled the Palestinians and their allies. They have pursued their own cause by sacrificing women, children and non-combatants.

While Israel is now being asked to unsettle its settlers, what guarantee is there that putting Israelis into exile (in their own nation) would buy peace? None at all. After leaving the Gaza Strip, Israel was bombarded by rockets, aimlessly aimed to kill innocents.

Why not ask the Arabs, who allegedly are tearfully and remorsefully concerned with the Palestinian plight, to give over their land to make a new nation? Why not? Land is land. If a people want to make a democratic and prosperous nation, they can do it anywhere on Earth!

Here are the statistics (taken from Google) on land areas in the Middle East:

Israel: 8,019 sq miles (20,770 km²)

Some Arab Nations:

Egypt: 387,000 sq miles (1.002 million km²)
Jordan: 34,495 sq miles (89,342 km²)
Syria: 71,498 sq miles (185,180 km²)
Saudi Arabia: 830,000 sq miles (2.15 million km²)
Libya: 679,400 sq miles (1.76 million km²)
Algeria: 919,600 sq miles (2.382 million km²)

Other Nations:

Iraq: 169,235 sq miles (438,317 km²)
Iran: 636,400 sq miles (1.648 million km²)
Pakistan: 307,374 sq miles (796,095 km²)

Public to Vote in Secret City Election, Today.

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The Voyager Motel
The Voyager Motel
The Voyager Motel, view North
The Voyager Motel, view North

I voted in an election today to choose a new mayor, members for the Board of Education, a Community College District person, and a City Attorney.

I don’t know any of the people, save for Eric Garcetti, who my friend likes and taught tennis to when he was a young man.

“He always was polite. He is a Rhodes scholar.”

Poor Wendy Gruel did not get my vote because her last name recalls bad prison food like watery porridge.

Armed with my LA Times print-out and reading glasses, I walked from my house over to the Voyager (Adult) Motel and entered a room where one table was full of elderly attentive volunteers.

I forgot my wallet and asked an older woman if I needed ID. “Not in America!” was her feisty reply. She directed me over to the other side of the room, to a table staffed by young, multi-cultural texters who barely looked up when I walked over to them.

“Thanks for the ballot.”

“Huh? Oh, no problem.”

I took the strange and clunky, elongated ballot, put it into the plastic holder and used the short pen pointer to make holes next to the names I didn’t know.

After voting, I got a small sticker.

And then I remembered another upcoming election….

For the past few weeks, I have had door knocks and emails from two men running for the City Council District #6 seat, unknown Derek Waleko and unpronounceable Dan Stroncak. The seat was formerly held by fat huckster and do-nothing, now Congressman, Tony Cardenas.

City Council District#6 election will be on May 21, 2013.

Not today but on May 21, 2013.

Got that straight?

An election was held today in which less than 20% of voters will participate. Another election will be held on May 21, 2013 in which very few will vote, for City Council District #6, a desperately dirty, tired, poorly run area, populated by some beautiful but neglected homes, overrun by crime and illegalities, both small and domestic, large and international.

In our pocket, couches and condoms are street décor, and the local bird is a helicopter.

Who will come and focus their energy, attention and resources on Van Nuys?

If not me, who then?

State of the Union

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Chicago, IL
South Side
2013

“Tonight, I propose a “Fix-It-First” program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country. And to make sure taxpayers don’t shoulder the whole burden, I’m also proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America that attracts private capital to upgrade what our businesses need most: modern ports to move our goods; modern pipelines to withstand a storm; modern schools worthy of our children. Let’s prove that there is no better place to do business than the United States of America. And let’s start right away.

Part of our rebuilding effort must also involve our housing sector. Today, our housing market is finally healing from the collapse of 2007. Home prices are rising at the fastest pace in six years, home purchases are up nearly 50 percent, and construction is expanding again.

But even with mortgage rates near a 50-year low, too many families with solid credit who want to buy a home are being rejected. Too many families who have never missed a payment and want to refinance are being told no. That’s holding our entire economy back, and we need to fix it. Right now, there’s a bill in this Congress that would give every responsible homeowner in America the chance to save $3,000 a year by refinancing at today’s rates. Democrats and Republicans have supported it before. What are we waiting for? Take a vote, and send me that bill. Right now, overlapping regulations keep responsible young families from buying their first home. What’s holding us back? Let’s streamline the process, and help our economy grow.” -Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, 2/13/13

America.

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Let us celebrate both the re-inauguration of President Barack Obama and the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let us raise the flag, sing songs, salute our democracy. And let us talk, as we do every four years, about the greatness of our land, our democracy, our uniqueness.

Photograph of the Englewood district of Chicago, 2013 by Curtis Locke.

Voting Day in Van Nuys.

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It was voting day today, and like many Americans, I walked over to cast my ballot at the Voyager Motor Inn, joining men and women from my community, including unrentable females not normally seen on Sepulveda.

My neighbors up the street were coming out of the motel, and warned me that one door was green and the other red, and you did not have to wait in line for green but nobody would tell you.

I didn’t know what the hell that meant, but I walked into the crowded smelly motel and tehraned myself to the front of the line, walking past others waiting, and into the room where I handed my ballot to a volunteer at a table.

My name and address were clearly printed on back…. so the young lady asked for my name and address.

I signed my name into the book and was handed a long, skinny ballot which I then placed into a voting booth whose poster board walls would blow down if I sneezed.

Misinformed, manipulated, misguided, prejudiced, biased, open-minded, incisive and ignorant, I had already made up my mind about the propositions and what they really meant.

Two of the measures would provide funding for all children in California schools, 50% of whom are here by way of undocumented parents. There are 7 billion people on Earth and I wonder what would happen if any one country could just settle all its citizens here?

But I better not start that argument.

Another measure promised to stop union contributions and seemed backed by the Republicans who only believe that large corporations and CEOs should have a voice.

Mercury Insurance sponsored another ballot.

Warren Buffet’s partner’s daughter poured $100 million into Prop. 38 funding early childhood education. And I wondered why she could not have spent $100 million to redesign our voting ballot to make it graphically clear and readable.

Prop. 36 made the three strikes law only applicable if the last crime was violent. That made sense to me as my neighbor was almost imprisoned for life after he had two non-violent strikes and one DUI.

I almost voted to overturn the Death Penalty (Prop. 34), which I know does not deter crime, and is barbaric, but then I realized that we are quite a barbaric state, with people who tag church walls and murder congregants who step outside and confront. I think death is deserved for some, even if it is not logically warranted.

And I did not think it enforceable to require condoms on set for adult performers. (B) And I voted yes to accelerate public transportation because it is both a job creator and a civic necessity, bringing cleaner air and better development to Los Angeles (J).

Finally, or to begin with, I voted for the Presidental candidate who killed Osama Bin Laden, extracted us from Iraq and will do so in Afghanistan, saved the auto industry, and tried and partially succeeded in reforming our health care system which is so unfair, expensive and monstrously geared to the 1%.

I am all over the place, a liberal and a conservative, tolerant and racist, traditional and progressive.

I guess I am just a Californian.