MAILBAG - May 25, 2007

Trash-fee-increase warning was needed

Regarding the public hearing of June 19 about increases to the solid waste collection service charge, I feel that if the city of Laguna Beach had informed the residents that an increase to the solid waste fees would be in our future that more residents would be recycling items that usually get thrown into the solid waste container. Then we would have less solid waste and no reason for the increase.

As I travel through Laguna Beach, I notice that on trash days in most neighborhoods, the recycle container is the smallest of the containers put out or is absent.

In my household, we fill our large recyclable container to overflowing and the solid waste container is half full.

If the city of Laguna Beach educated residents of the need to recycle more, and that in doing so, it would save us all in the future, there would be no need for the fee increase.

I would hope that this would give you the chance to warn us that the increases will come if more do not recycle, and that, by recycling more, we would throw away less and be doing our part for the environment as well as saving money.

Imagine a community united in saving money and the environment at the same time.

LIZA STEWART

Laguna Beach

City has sold out to Aliso developerI hope all the anti-development, anti-progress, anti-upscaling, anti-”soothing seaweed facial” left-wingers in this town feel better now, having written their letters of shock and disappointment that the “fix” seems to already be in with the City Council on the Athens/Montage Aliso Creek project. What did they expect? City Hall is addicted to the revenue!

“Build it and they will come! And they will leave their money! And we will buy more lifeguards! And we will get reelected! And the Hearts of Montage will make more donations! And we will get reelected.”

So what if it makes the town unlivable for their constituents.

The developers will make and then sell whatever self-serving deal they can get, with the City Council’s willing participation, and the naysayers will be branded troublemakers because they aren’t happy just getting their periodic “...complimentary two glasses of Montage Reserve Private Label wine...”

Why aren’t the naysayers grateful for the two free glasses of wine from the Montage? After all, it is the compensation for the traffic jams, parking woes, pollution, and congestion brought on by development.

Don’t they understand that city hall is already addicted to the wine provided by Montage and all the visitor-serving interests in town? Even the Chamber of Commerce long ago sold its soul to the visitor-serving businesses.

The truth is, nobody cares about the day-to-day quality of life for Laguna residents except the left-wing naysayers, who simply ask: “Is more and bigger always better?”

By the way, I don’t drink, so please keep the complimentary wine and sell it to a visitor!

JAMES DORF

Laguna Beach

LAPD defense reeks of McCarthyismAs the attorney for the U.S. Army, Joseph Welch rebuked Sen. Joseph McCarthy with this famous admonition: “At long last, have you no sense of decency?” Someone needs to ask Eileen Garcia the same question after her letter last week (“‘Goons’ provoked police during rally,” Mailbag, May 11).

A one-woman fire, she has now decided to fan the flames of any tangential conflagration that promotes ignorance, this time the May 1 fiasco in McArthur Park. Using a fracas in L.A. to further publicize, elevate and glorify the Minuteman Project agenda is sad.

Despite all of the confusion, no official investigations completed, she called the participants “goons,” claims that they were “organized Communists, Socialists and Anarchists,” — the same people who threaten the Minuteman Project at their protests.

But her twisted logic didn’t stop there. She even likened the LAPD fortitude with that of herself and her martyred pals. Her thinking appears to propose that she and her ilk are deputies or assistants for patriotic law-and-order, sort of an immigration “posse comitatus.” They’re more like “comatose.”

Anyone who has studied the long history of racial tensions and confrontations in Southern California knows that these disputes go back decades.

White folks, the power brokers of L.A., have kept blacks and Chicanos contained within their own distinct ghettos, marginalized and disenfranchised.

The Zoot Suit (1943), Watts (1965 and 1992), and the LAPD homicide of Ruben Salazar during the East L.A. Riots (1970) are but a few of the skirmishes induced by the frustrating, segregationist, brutal policies of L.A. City Hall.

Hasn’t Eileen ever read the Christopher Commission Report, the indifference and racism that plagues L.A.? What if the protesters are legal citizens, hence exercising their lawful right of assembly and redress of grievances?

After a four-year investigation by the US Department of Justice concluded in 2000, the L.A. city attorney received the following federal comment: “There are serious deficiencies in city and LAPD policies and procedures.”

The DOJ threatened to file litigation that could have taken the LAPD out of local control unless the decades-long racial profiling, physically abusive tactics and rampant police misconduct weren’t remedied immediately.

Don’t forget the LAPD also beat Fox News reporters and photographers who were wearing obvious press ID, but let’s confer with the Minutemen to decide who to pound and/or lock up because every fascist knows the media are complicit “pinkos.”

Who do we shoot next with those indiscriminately fired bullets? Do we use rubber or full metal jacket?

And don’t let the fact that Eileen wasn’t there distract her. Don’t let LAPD Chief Bratton’s immediate demotions of high level officers, his pulling of the elite 60-man Metro Squad off the street, calling his own officer’s response excessive, quote “out of control,” Mayor Villaraigosa’s disgust, or numerous opened FBI and LAPD internal investigations deter her from finger-pointing and dispersing bigoted, screechy, intolerant propaganda.

Joe McCarthy set the sleaze bar of intentionally false, inflammatory, unsubstantiated allegations resulting in public witch trials pretty low and that’s a barrier even the Minutemen will have trouble stooping to crawl under.

ROGER E. BUTOW

Laguna Beach

Jean Raun deserves high honorThe Woman’s Club of Laguna Beach recently announced their selection of Jean Raun as the 2007 Woman of the Year.

I am so pleased by the Woman’s Club decision to honor Jean.

She is deserving of this very significant award recognizing the depth of the contributions she has made to our broad community over the course of 44 years.

Twenty years ago, I joined the League of Women Voters and met Jean Raun. Like many before me, and many since, Jean took a genuine interest in who I was and how my as-yet-untapped possibilities could be brought forth in partnership with others to make a difference. Jean’s generous mentoring has continued unabated, as has the gift of her commitment to public service.

There will be a luncheon to honor Jean on Friday, June 1, beginning at 11:30 p.m. at the Woman’s Club of Laguna Beach, 286 St. Ann’s Drive.

Tickets are $30 (checks should be made payable to the “Woman’s Club of Laguna Beach”) and must be purchased in advance.

Jean has touched the lives of so many within our community. Come recognize Jean and her many accomplishments by being present on June 1.

LINDA BROWN

Laguna Beach