Veterans History Project, Culver City Salaries Bloated

By Neil Rubenstein

Observer Columnist

A big thank you to Culver City council member and former Coast Guardsman Jim Clarke for the following:

The Veterans History Project was created by Congress in 2000 to collect, preserve and make accessible personal accounts of American war veterans. The project goal is to ensure that future generations hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.

Veterans from World War I, Word War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq Conflicts, including U.S. citizen civilians who were actively involved in supporting war efforts such as war industry workers, USO workers, flight instructors and medical volunteers are invited to participate.

A volunteer team is making it easy for local veterans to do so. Interviews will be conducted at the Red Cross Chapter. Each interview will be sent to the Library of Congress. Interviews will be available on the Library of Congress website at http://www.loc.gov/vets. Each participant will be given a webpage dedicated to him or her. Veterans will receive a DVD copy of the interview.

To schedule an interview or for questions, please contact Mike Farrar at 562-490-4003 or 562-256-4961, or email him at mike.farrar@redcross.org.

This column was on top of various situations such as dealing with wages, pensions, assault weapons and the recent Assembly race. And now, from our sources: The Pentagon has ordered $1 billion of Russian helicopters to supply the Afghan Air Force. It seems Congress was sold a "bill of goods" when our military quoted facts and figures in a study saying the Russian Mi-17 was superior to the Boeing Chinook built in Pennsylvania. As recently as September, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter cited the study in a letter to House members defending the decision. Carter "left" his job the 1st of December for advocating we buy Russian aircraft when American products were better, and lying to Congress.

If you are into military history and are in Ventura County, be sure to see the VFW Military Museum at 1555 Simi Town Center Way, Suite 220, Simi Valley, PH: (805) 377-7926.

Sylvia Browne, a regular on "The Montel Williams Show" for many years, has passed away. Being a psychic who believed in reincarnation and the ability to communicate with dead loved ones as well as see the future made her a very popular guest.

From the "bloated pension" file we here in Culver City have two former employees getting over $180,000 a year. Mr. C. Black and Mr. J. Eastman shouldn't worry. They will not get a hernia since their retirement check goes direct deposit. What makes this disgusting is Governor Brown just got a raise to $173,987. If you want to take this to another level, California's Attorney General gets $151,127 per year effective 2014 and there are well over 30 million people living in the Golden State. And in 2010 our City Attorney Carol Schwab, with only 40,000 people, got $210,206.79 in wages.. The facts clearly speak for themselves.

When is the Culver City Council going to stop raising taxes and fees and do something about pensions and wages???

In a few months we should ask the Mayor what role he plans to play when he hits the campaign trail seeking election.

How much longer do we have to wait before Police Chief Don Pedersen forms his committee for Los Angeles County Sheriff?

For those who missed an article, all my commentaries can be found at http://www.CulverCityObserver.com by placing Rubenstein in that website's search box.