The CM PRESS just came from the charter meeting put on by the anti-charter folks at the Downtown Community Center. The meeting was still going on when we left and it was in the questions from the audience phase. There were about 150 +- people at the meeting--a full house.
The meeting was well organized by Robin Lefler and her comrades and it was respectful of the good Councilmembers (Jim Righeimer and Steve Mensinger were in the audience--Wendy Leece was also there).
There was a minimum of scare talk from the anti-charter people.
All in all, it was a polite meeting--which was in marked contrast to the rude behavior some of these same people have shown at City Council meetings.
One thing, however: We think the antis are mistaken in being opposed to the charter and we think many know this and are just organizing for runs for the City Council this year and are using this charter issue as their stepping stone.
As we've written before, we support the charter. It's not our biggest issue by any means, but we've had a life long belief that the best government is the one closest to the people and that local people should be behind the steering wheel and driving their own community--not politicians in a city far away--such as those in Sacramento. We heard nothing tonight that changed our mind.
And, about that large crowd that was there. Not everyone was there because of the charter.
We know some were there because of the proposed commercialization of Tewinkle Park. The CM PRESS is with these folks on this. We've listened to the pros and cons of the idea, and we think it was an idea worth considering, but now we think it's an idea that should be rejected.
We think Tewinkle Park should remain pretty much as it is today with little or no commercialization.
We may have more to write on this meeting in the morning.
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THE WINTER HIATUS IS OVER AND THE LHC IS NOW SMASHING ATOMS AGAIN
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| Geoff West and Wendy Leece yucking it up |
"Following a blitzkrieg assault..." So starts Geoff West's latest amateurish attempt to sway public opinion against the charter and Jim Righeimer. [You masochists can punish yourselves by looking at his whole goofy column by clicking on the headline above.]
"Blitzkrieg?" Say, what a coincidence, Righeimer is a German name. You know about those Germans, by golly. Why, we all remember that other German who was a big shot in history, right? That would be Dwight D. Eisenhower (orig. Eisenhauer).
But, wait a minute, maybe West wasn't trying to evoke Eisenhower. Maybe he was trying to evoke images in a reader's mind of the hundreds of German intellectuals and musical giants who have contributed so much to civilization?
Probably not. Maybe West can help us out by telling us what image he was trying to conjur up in a reader's mind when he used the term "blitzkrieg." Yes, exactly what was he trying to have seep into the subconscious minds of readers?
At any rate, let's move on and look a little more at West's column with it's strung together over the top negative emotive terms to see if we can divine what West is trying to tell readers about the charter and Righeimer.
To save space, and to be kind to readers who may not want to slog through West's column, we'll just list most of the emotive terms that jumped out at us.
Boy, this Righeimer guy and the charter must be bad news to have all those over the top negative emotive terms used in one column.
But, dear gentle reader, it's not all over the top sour terms in West's lexicon. Nope. He also uses over the top positive emotive terms when he refers to two individuals who West apparently believes would, or who already do, support a go slow or different approach to the charter that may be more to West's liking.
First, West says of Hank Panian that he is a "revered educator and community leader." Yup. West actually used the term "revered." You see, "r" comes before "s," in the thesauraus. If it had been "s" first, we might have read that the gentleman is "saintly."
Then, West refers to Marian Bergeson as a"highly respected" resident [of Newport Beach].
Well there you have it. A revered educator and community leader and a highly respected resident [of Newport Beach], against a blitzkrieging Jim Righeimer who in a fit of pique over something has disemboweled someone or something as he rushed through his charter because of some failed projects and now the charter looks like a defacto cut and paste scrapbook with snippets from a junior high school social studies project.
Perhaps we should be kind to West. He doesn't always seem to know what he's talking about or what the words he uses mean.
For example, in something West wrote about a City Council meeting, he used the term schizophrenic to indicate it was split in two. Actually, if he had any understanding of words, he would have realized that the correct word is schizoid. Not at all the same thing.
When we pointed this out to West while he was trying to kiss up to us before a meeting recently, he got red faced and his voice got even more strangulated sounding than usual (possibly a nervous and uncontrollable spasmodic constriction of his larynx when a man with nice hair talks to him) and he squeaked "I write my opinions." Well, yes, but opinions should be based on something rather than shrill emotionalism and one really shouldn't use words if one doesn't know what they mean.
Indeed, West's opinions do often seem to be based on emotion instead of cool logic, and he seems to go from one the-sky-is-falling-and-life-will-end-as-we-know-it-in-Costa Mesa crisis after another unless,in West's opinion (always opinions with this guy; never facts) Righeimer and the other good Councilmembers stop trying to fix broken Costa Mesa and just sit on their hands like some previous Councilmembers.
And, West doesn't seem to have much of a sense of the trajectories of events. Or, as he might write "cents of the trigonometrics of tents." Hey, it's his opinion. He can use any words he wants.
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BUY UP OVERCROWDED BUILDINGS AND PUT IN PARKING?
At yesterday's City Council study session, Mayor Pro Tem Righeimer asked staff to come back with a plan to ease the dangerous on-street parking on the south side of Baker Street between Harbor and Fairview. His repeated suggestion to staff was that they should look into how the City can buy one or more of the tri-plexes/four-plexes along that stretch so they can be razed for necessary parking.
These are the same units where a man was killed in a drive-by shooting a couple of years ago.
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REPEAT: SAME STORY WAS RUN IN CM PRESS YESTERDAY ABOUT THE GENETIC BASIS OF FREE-THINKING BRITS AND CONFORMIST CHINESEWe wanted to emphasize the line below that is from the above story. This line puts the geneticists behind this study in danger of being called racists by the usual dimwits who don't understand nature or the way it works with organisms and who try to convince people that humans are above nature and its basic principles.
"If they are confirmed, the findings made by Chiao and her colleagues would suggest that races may have a number of inherent psychological differences — just as they differ in physical appearances."
And the dimwit chorus composed of our present flat worlders say: "What? You mean these racist scientists are saying that genes rule over things of the brain also? Why, why, haruumph, next they'll be saying that some races are inherently more violent or are dumber or are this or that. Don't they know that we're all the same except for different paint jobs? Don't they know that there is only one race, the human race? Haven't they heard and internalized these and other cliches that are really meaningless, but which give us libs happy feelings?"
No, dimwits, the truth of nature is that races (actually, races are subspecies) are to humans what breeds are to dogs and varieties are to roses. There is not a one size fits all human. Nature doesn't work that way. Nature constantly tinkers with life to help it adapt to different conditions, so life--some life--can survive and thrive in every niche possible.
And, nature doesn't care one whit whether this or this other type of life survives; it just "cares" that some life survives.
Genes are us.
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LET'S BE HONEST ABOUT HOW BEST TO SPEND CITIZEN MONEY IN COSTA MESA
In Costa Mesa, a large charity culture has developed that does NOTHING to improve the City and helps drive it down to skid row levels.
Here's why: The charities use our money for things that are consumed or which are intangible; such as food and services. The charities do nothing to improve the City so Costa Mesa will attract upwardly mobile people; they just give out freebies that leave no improvement trace once they are used up.
And, while the charities use our money on these consumables and intangibles, the local press helps them tug at your heart strings with gushy, formulaic stories about how this or that individual's life has been improved.
These stories are often about students. How many stories have you read about little so and so, who came from a broken home and is the first in his family to go to college? Just substitute names and this is the same story that has been repeated here in Costa Mesa for decades.
The reality is that the number of charities on the Westside that say they're helping students with school studies are legion. Funny thing though, the schools that these charities feed off of are still the worst in Costa Mesa. So, if the charities are doing such a great job with our money, why are the schools on the Westside still the worst schools? How long will citizens be saps and let the charity bosses trick them into giving money to things that don't work?
Well, if our money is not doing anything to improve Costa Mesa by giving it to the charities which are black holes that come back year after year, how should our money be spent to improve the Westside and Costa Mesa?
The answer is that it should be spent on improving the physical aspects of the city--the infrastructure--and it should be used to modernize the City so that Costa Mesa will become a magnet for people who don't need freebies.
The question is this: Do we want Costa Mesa to keep sliding to skid row status with charities and freebies, or do we want Costa Mesa to improve to attract upwardly mobile contributing citizens?
If we want the latter, then our money should be spent on making Costa Mesa the place upwardly mobile people want to be instead of the place they want to flee.
We can't kidnap upwardly mobile people and force them to live in Costa Mesa. We have to convince them that this is a great place to live and raise their families. And, charities don't do this.
Have no doubt about this, Costa Mesa is competing for top quality businesses and residents with other cities, and unless we improve the way this City looks and unless we start focusing on fixing the city instead of giving freebies out, we're going to lose the competition.
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REPORT FROM YESTERDAY'S CITY COUNCIL STUDY SESSION
Eric Bever named Mayor. Jim Righeimer remains Mayor Pro Tem.
Bever has been a long time improvement advocate in the City. It was Bever, before he entered politics, who organized the first major Westside Improvement meeting at Victoria School that, in hindsight, was the major turning point in bringing the idea of focused continual improvement to the City and especially to the Westside.
Before that meeting, the then liberal City Council and liberal Planning Commission pretty much dismissed the talk of improvement as coming from one or two people, but at the Victoria School meeting, there was a standing room only and overflow crowd of people who wanted to see improvement.
This led to the formation of the committees to study the Westside and the creation of the Westside Plans that you can see on the City's website.
Allan Mansoor, who was unknown to us at that time, also attended that meeting and then approached a few of us and said he also wanted to see the Westside improved and he wanted to know if we would get behind his campaign if he ran for City Council to help bring in improvement. At that time, we had already elected one guy to the Council and had shown what we were capable of doing at the grassroots level. After several meetings with Allan, the Improvers decided to back him.
--------CDBG Funds
The 3R Committee made its report on giving our money to the charities. This year, the amount that can be given to the charities is approximately $ 157,502. The City Council is allowed, but doesn't have to, give up to fifteen percent of CDBG funds it receives each year to the charities. The total CDBG funds received this year will be approximately $1,050,105.
-----Vision for Harbor Boulevard Improvements
This report by Peter Naghavi to the Council had two parts. In the first part, Naghavi discussed the things that are planned right now to improve Harbor Blvd.--given budgetary constraints--which mostly involved putting in attractive crosswalks and some street scapes.
The second part was a presentation by OCC students from an Advanced Design class which involved an integrated film of Harbor Blvd. as it is now with a morphing into what the students suggest can be done. It was a nice vision of Harbor Blvd. with curved sidewalks, more plants, modern lighting, various wall treatments and more that made the street much more aesthetically pleasing and modern than it is now. What impressed the CM PRESS was the fact that the students stayed realistic with their vision and within the realm of reality.
The closest examples we know of that are similar to the students' vision are some of the street scapes in Irvine or even parts of Bristol Street near Mater Dei High School.
We were pleased that both Jim Righeimer and Steve Mensinger told Mr. Naghavi that they wanted to see some ideas for improving W. 19th Street and also Placentia Ave. along with his ideas for Harbor Blvd.
Wendy Leece, who lives in a gated community on the Westside but who seems oblivious to the improvements needed over there, once again tried to switch the conversation from improvement to a talk about how much she loves employees, but Bever quickly got the focus back when he asked her what that has to do with the items on the agenda. Leece tried to save face by saying that it had to do with how we spend our money (read, Leece apparently wants to spend our money on employees and not on improving the City for residents).
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