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Kim Nguyen is running for Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Office 158. Kim placed first in the June primary election, and is now facing off against the second place finisher. Currently, Kim is a Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice. During her more than 16-year legal career Kim has handled complex civil matters in the state and federal courts and argued before the California Supreme Court. Theodorsia and I are proud to support her for her ability, experience,...
I’ve been thinking about money. Might be we need to change our attitude toward money. $1.1 billion. Money raised so far by candidates in the 2016 Presidential election. $529 million. Money raised so far by super PAC's supporting those candidates. These figures are the latest FEC figures released October 11, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit tracking money in U.S. politics, and its effect on elections and public policy. What's a super PAC anyway? It's a t...
We have all heard about the bad water in Flint, Michigan. Many have read about the mess with water in Compton, but in Atlanta, Georgia the Atlanta Journal - Constitution filed a request through Georgia’s open records law, and guess what came up: More than half of Atlanta’s public school buildings had elevated levels of lead in drinking water, with some as high as 15 times the federal limits. What is really despicable is I also put in a public document request and I hope you are sitting dow...
I just wonder what Mayor Clarke and Culver City are planning for Kirk Douglas’s 100th birthday this fall. I thought the September/October 2016 issue of The Saturday Evening Post was particularly interesting. Many foods contain chemicals similar to prescription drugs and can improve health. A delicious case in point is a semi-fat hard cheese made in Italy that research shows can lower blood pressure akin to the popular drug ENALAPRIL. According to a study published in the April issue of the J...
I love celebrating birthdays. Do you like to celebrate yours? Some people love birthdays. They look forward to their birthday and wake up feeling happy. There are also people who don’t rejoice on their birthday; for them, it’s not a day they want to mark. They just want to get past it. I’ve seen that some of the people who don’t like birthdays haven’t really had a lot of happy birthday experiences. I once learned that a person dear to me didn’t expect any joy on her birthday. So I ordered a s...
Dear Editor: Culver City is an ethical desert due to lack of state-mandated ethics training and City Attorney Carol Schwab’s lax attitude toward ethics. In matters involving factual determinations the City Council is legally required to be a “reasonably impartial, noninvolved reviewer.” Politics and common law bias—“an interest … of such importance [] that it could have influenced [] judgment”—are verboten. At the September 12, 2016 City Council meeting, after presenting indisputable pr...
Well, folks, the City Hall group that cousin Neil fondly refers to as the “Wing Nuts” are hoping and praying you don’t see the facts and figures before you cast your ballot in November. The Cuban cigar-smoking crowd with their gold toothpicks is afraid of the truth. Liabilities as of Fiscal Year 6/30/2015 for Culver City 1. Accounts payable $8,512,275 2. Accrued wages payable $2,100,383 3. Accrued interest payable 294,617 4. Deposits payable $4,788,316 5. Unearned revenue $4,141,369 6. Due o...
“NO OPERATING SYTEM FOUND”. Four frightening words you never want to see on your computer. Debuting on my screen yesterday; my beloved laptop is sick. Which explains why I’m sitting here in the library writing this. What, I’m not the only person who doesn’t have a spare computer just lying around? Yesterday’s grief brings today’s miracle: the library! They have computers (26 of them). They have laptops (yours for two hours). They even have a private room (small) (but with air conditioning)...
To our Temple Akiba community, As the Holy Days approach Cantor and I have been spending a great deal of time preparing. Much of it has been through conversation with each other, colleagues, friends, family, and our community. Many have asked: “Will you be addressing the upcoming elections? Will you share your thoughts on who we should vote for?” Some have shared, “This is the most pivotal election of our time.” Dear friends, you will not hear a sermon on who to vote for. We WILL share our messages on personal growth, responsibility, brining...
For those of you who didn’t have their accounts depleted at Wells Fargo Bank by very nasty bank employees doing mean things, why not celebrate by taking that very special person to Las Vegas? Ever dream of commanding a gondola? The Venetian Las Vegas Gondola University offers instruction to up to nine participants per day that begins with a history of Venice followed by gondola fundamentals. Learn “Rowing 101” and the hands-on experience of rowing a vessel. At the end there is a ritual cerem...
Garbage is nothing, right? No value, by definition. Wrong! Let your imagination go swimming: What if garbage had the power to inspire dreams? Garbage is worthless, meaningless. Ah, but we're spoiled, and perhaps have limits to our creativity. Can beauty be cultured to emerge? Favio Chavez saw unlimited possibilities in the garbage of Cateura, a small town in Paraguay next to one of the largest landfills in South America. Cateura's a poor place; people mainly live as gancheros; by scavenging...
All of us have heard on the radio or seen on television or read in the newspaper about law enforcement agencies doing bad things to good people. How many instances have there been when police and/or the court and/or the laboratory did something so evil that an innocent person spent as much as 10 or 15 or even 20 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit? Not here in Culver City!!! Personally, I would rather not have more efficiency in the police department if it meant punishing those who...
On a deeper, personal level, I don’t like how Colin Kaepernick is using his stardom for social protest. That said, most of us don’t like to have someone else hold a mirror up to us to show our flaws. And in doing so, Kaepernick is trying to prod us into doing something we would rather not acknowledge or even think about. Most of us tend to protect ourselves by looking past the everyday societal reflections we encounter without ever stopping and really looking at them--mostly out of fear of how we will see ourselves. So, we go on with our daily...
Dear Editor: We won. We exposed the ineptitude, incompetence and lack of ethics of the Culver City City Council. We exposed that, in Culver City, influence peddling trumps reason and justice. Ken Smith, a prominent member of Grace Church, has given new meaning to the phrase, “Ask and You Shall Receive.” We exposed Smith’s business, social and political relationships with former City Council member Andrew Weissman that Weissman conveniently forgot to mention. Apparently, in Culver City, bias greases the wheels of progress. That is, progr...
In November vote for our firefighters, our paramedics and our police and against the power-grabbing politicians who just want their $250,000 salaries and $200,000 pensions. It seems as though in every area of the human experience ladies are making headway. More and more jobs are becoming available and the salary gap is narrowing. Why, even the U.S. Navy SEALS will have females next year. So why is it that in the Culver City fire house in the past 100 years no progress has been made? That’s r...
Picture yourself on New Year's Day, making resolutions. You look back, asking, "Why did I do that?" or think, "I should never have done that." You know how we think about what we could have done, and we feel bad? And we wish we'd done it differently? Now imagine it's January 1 and you can change things, get the time back. Would you go for a redo? There are 82 weekdays till New Year's, and 33 weekends. That's 2,760 hours. Instead of looking backward come New Year's Day you might try looking...
Dear Editor I was quite saddened to see another article of more of downtown Culver City restaurants closing in the August 19-24th paper. It seems just as soon as they open these days, their gone. By the sounds of it we have yet another “Italian” restaurant to go in its place. I feel bad for the struggling restaurants left that are contending with the dilemma of raising prices to meet rent or close. But even worse when the Downtown Business Association doesn’t attempt to really help with encou...
Dear Editor: At the September 12, 2016 City Council meeting will the City Council express shock, like Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca when he discovered that there was gambling in the backroom? It could. After all, the City Council members are learning from us that: (1) in 1996, the City adopted a Code of Ethics; (2) a copy of the Code of Ethics is not posted on the City’s award-winning website; (3) the Ethics Advisory Committee exists on paper only; (4) Culver City has pothole and graffiti...
I was on a bus when I met Hannah and her friend Adari. I sat next to Adari so I could talk to her; she was wearing a full burqa, or so I thought. Her eyes were gorgeous, and the eye makeup was beautiful. Hannah wore an abaya, a robe-like dress, not the full burqa. Well, I looked it up to get the terminology right. What Adari wore was a niqab, a head covering that covers the whole face, except for the eyes. I asked, "Do you speak Arabic?" hoping to practice my Arabic. She didn't speak much...
Mayor Clarke and members of the Culver City Council, we need to send a group to Mesa, Arizona on a fact-finding mission. I don’t know what their elected officials do, but we need to know. Voters in Arizona will be asked on November 8 to approve a four percent sales tax hike that could generate more than $38 million a year to meet growing public safety and higher education demands. The measure, if passed, would boost the city sales tax rate from 1.75 percent to 2.15 percent. For those of us w...
Is it possible? Is it possible? Could the moaning and knees shaking noises coming from the City Hall be from the very nervous and worried pencil sharpeners group members? It’s pure speculation at this time, but the rumors are saying, “Why would Martin Cole leave a job paying approximately $275, 000 (wages and benefits) unless someone or something made Mr. Cole extremely upset? Don’t forget, some just might be having sleepless nights afraid of Cole spilling the beans on a few projects from the r...
Every time we drive the four miles to Costco for gasoline I wear an ear-to-ear smile because these low prices screw Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Also, the Iranians, sometime next year, will increase production by one million barrels a day even though the world has a daily surplus of almost two million barrels – equal to the daily consumption of France. The pump price should go lower and stay there but there is a serious problem and I immediately recognized it when the lights on the t...
You know that wonderful feeling you get seeing the Olympic spirit, when you feel heartened and encouraged by those beautiful TV images on the first night of the Olympics? What happened? I was shocked to see the Olympics Opening Ceremony overtaken by advertisements at a speed rate that could have its own category in the Olympics. The Olympic Motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius (Latin for "Faster, Higher, Stronger"). This year It might as well be "Faster, Higher, Stronger - Ooops, Time for a...
Do you remember several articles printed long ago? They were so unbelievably funny or just so very informative that they bear repeating. Therefore, you may see some references that seem familiar sprinkled throughout this column. I just bet students who read the rankings of colleges and universities would be pleasantly surprised how well the military academies stock up – and for graduates it’s free. In most institutions of higher learning grads take the diploma with their right hand and the...
Judith Love Cohen, a longtime Culver City resident, was a trailblazing electrical engineer working in the forefront of 20th century science whose many accomplishments included valuable contributions to the Apollo program. After graduating from USC in 1957 with a degree in electrical engineering Cohen joined Space Technology Laboratories in Redondo Beach, which later became TRW. The accompanying photograph of her with a satellite was taken there in 1959. "Guiding Girls to Lofty Goals," a story...
