Letters to the Editor 4-27-17
Taste test
Dear ER:
I am not a chemist, but I can see, taste, and smell (“Desalination: Savior or albatross”). The Cayman Island Seven Mile Beach is reputed to be one of the best in the world. Crystal clear water, and an abundance of coral and sea life just yards off the shore. Surprisingly, the entire island’s drinking water is from a desalination plant situated right in the heart of the beach. The water taste good and the beach is pristine. So, what are the environmental issues for our beaches?
Ed Skebe
Manhattan Beach
Headwaters’ problem
Dear ER:
Conserving water is great, we all should do our part. Whether we should build an energy-sucking desalination plant to provide what we could easily catch in rainfall, or whether that would hurt efforts to stop bay pollution can be debated. But be aware, the majority of the water sent down the California Aqueduct is used by agriculture and most of that is controlled by the Kern Water Bank and the Wonderful Company, which is owned by the billionaire Resnicks. They keep sucking from the Aqueduct, from groundwater (collapsing the aquifers) and making themselves richer by growing water-intensive crops (almonds, pistachios). Any discussion about water in California should start there.
Larry Lem
Facebook post
Hello Mary Lou
Dear ER:
Mary Lou is and always will my Hero (“Before Gidget, there was Mary Lou,” ER April 13, 2017). She has helped so many of us surfer girls. She gave us confidence during times we didn’t have it. She always welcome us surfers from Santa Cruz with a smile. Well deserved Mary Lou
Amy Miller
Facebook post
Better than the news
Dear ER:
With all due respect for the Easy Reader staff, for sheer entertainment, the letters column beats the stories each and every time. Take, for instance, Donald Szerlip’s claim that any obstacle to unhindered and unregulated growth will ruin the City of Redondo Beach (“Brand versus business,” ER Letters April 20, 2017). Okay, he didn’t quite say that, exactly. He was wise enough to curb his excesses and generalizations, but, hey, he takes lotsa license in his polemic and thus I’ll take a little — when exactly the opposite is true. As world authorities are increasingly noting, and nearly unanimously (except Chicago School idiots), capitalism has reached its carcinogenic stage (as if it ever had any other). As revered economists from Marx to Richard D. Wolff have proven, ceaseless growth is impossible in a finite system (Earth or any segment of it). Hell, that’s simplest logic. So, no, barriers to insane business metastasization will not ruin the city but unregulated business will.
Wayne Mogilefsky is a superb propagandist (“Incentives, not mandates,” ER Letters April 20, 2017). I’m not being facetious here, I’m deadly serious. His letter is a masterpiece in the art of weaponizing semantics, and I’ll be using it in my tutoring of UCLA, USC, KCL, and LSE students in Rhetoric and Communications. It’s a shining example of the NuJournalism tactic wherein ‘truth + truth + truth = lie’, involving citations carefully shorn of true context and truncated from far more potent counter-proofs dethroning them. I could flense his magnum opus to a fare-thee-well, but it would take all day to unpack such masterful conflation, so let me cite the key to the entire mishigas: the code word “incentive,” versus “mandate,” is a foil for “voluntary,” as in “We’re suggesting X, Y, and Z, but, really, you don’t have to do a damn thing (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).” From that, the entirety of his missive finds itself unlocked. Still, this is a magnificent piece of propaganda, and I salute Mogilefsky. Whoops. Hang on a second, I have to wipe that rictus of a smirk off my face so I can eat my dinner!
Mark S. Tucker
Manhattan Beach
Council two-step
Dear ER:
Hopefully the Hermosa Beach city staff spread sawdust on the council chamber floor before the special meeting last Thursday, for of all the tap-dancing the City Council had to do to distance themselves from the “mandates” in PLAN Hermosa.
Barring revelations about the Russians tampering with the document, there are only two explanations for how the mandates were included in PLAN Hermosa. Neither is good. The cynical explanation first. The City Council wanted the mandates and back-peddled only after the public realized how the Council’s green ambition would impact them personally. Is it surprising that a City Council elected on a No Oil platform would do things to eliminate oil (i.e., carbon) from the city? Council members Jeff Duclos, Hany Fangary, Justin Massey, and Stacey Armato have never hidden their aggressive environmental agenda and have been vigorously supported by a cadre of people who stand to profit from it, politically or financially. Of course they wanted the “mandates.” It would be impossible to bring their dream of a green utopia into existence without these edicts because most people are fond of their natural gas ovens and “conventionally fueled” cars.
The other explanation is incompetence. The City Council hired consultants based 1,100 miles away in Ft. Collins, Colorado to help draft PLAN Hermosa. This suggests they knew exactly what they were looking for. If not, then why did they spend another $13,500 to develop a “carbon neutrality tracking tool” after the initial $25,000 engagement? Admittedly, four of the five council members have no prior experience in office, but it strains credulity to believe they waited for a consultant to unveil its recommendations like the grand prize on a gameshow before writing nearly $50,000-worth of checks.
Whichever explanation you choose to believe — and you can put me in the cynical camp — the result is the same. The city came within a wisp of third-hand smoke from carbon neutral oblivion. But you shouldn’t be surprised. These are the people we elected, and as a recent president was fond of reminding us, “elections matter.”
Kit Bobko
By email
What’s important
Dear ER:
As a resident of Redondo Beach’s District 1, I believe we need experience not only in the day-to-day handling of City business matters, but also experience in balancing the longer-term critical issues of revenue, vital City Services, and quality of Redondo Beach’s residents’ lives.
When looking at my two choices in the upcoming, council runoff election, I have been drawing on my personal experience as well as getting to know the candidates. I have come to the conclusion there is one clear choice: Martha Barbee. Having been unanimously elected by the City Council to fill a seat left vacant, and now with months of experience, there’s no “honeymoon” period for her.
After this past rancorous, divisive election, our City cannot afford to elect a candidate endorsed by a small, slow-growth activist group intent on stalling current and future development in Redondo Beach. We need the District 1 Council member to waste no time in getting back to City business.
With her experience as a mother and grandmother and on the local PTA and the significant endorsements from the four Redondo Unified School Board Members (as well as other Community leaders), Barbee will look out for our kids, teachers, and our schools, for one. As a mother and former teacher myself, that is important to me.
Cee-Cee Murphy
Redondo Beach
Nils-ist
Dear ER:
Redondo Beach District One voters, if you want a representative on the Council who will represent you and not special interests, you need to vote for Nils Nehrenheim by May 16. Nehrenheim has worked tirelessly in leading the efforts to stop the overbuilding of the Legado Condo project at the old Bristol Farms site, and leading Measure C to ensure residents get a waterfront development that will support our recreational interests and beauty of the only harbor in the South Bay.
On the flip side, incumbent Martha Barbee has voted the special interest party line, along with members Christian Horvath and Laura Emdee, by voting to enter into a 99-year lease with CenterCal to build a mall on public land just 35 days prior to the election on Measure C. Clearly they did not care to wait until the community voted on this project and just wanted to push it through. Because they did not care, CenterCal has sued the City. Barbee also voted with Horvath and Emdee to spend $9 million of taxpayer monies to buy-out the Fun Factory lease seven years early, and to build a new boat ramp in an unsafe location that will lead to injuries and more financial liability for the City. The Council is now ignoring the community’s will again by not sending the voted in Measure C zoning to the California Coastal Commission for certification. This irresponsibility and disregard for the community’s will has to stop. Vote for Nil’s Nehrenheim so our voices are heard!
Dawn Esser
Redondo Beach
Blowback
Dear ER:
I need to set the record straight. The only meeting between George Jung and I was at the Tonsorial Parlor when he came by last week with a film crew (“George Jung of ‘Blow’ fame returns to Tonsorial Parlor for one more cut,” ER April 20, 2017). I had never met George before. (Editor’s note: Jung was convicted of cocaine sales and the subject “Blow,” a book about cocaine sales in the South Bay during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s).) Richard Barile (who was also convicted of cocaine trafficking) and George go back to before I worked at the Tonsorial Parlor. When I started at the shop, Richard wasn’t cutting hair anymore. He had the Silo restaurant in downtown Manhattan Beach and, as it were, the coke business. As I said to George, “I finally meet the face behind the voice.” Back in the day, he called the shop a few times and asked for Richard. I said he wasn’t there and he would say, tell him Boston George is in town. I would simply pass that info on. At the time, I never really thought too much about it. I obviously knew some of Richard’s friends and or possibly associates just from cutting hair. But any knowledge I had was simply common knowledge. Or second hand hearsay. I never really knew much more and didn’t want to. The article made it look as though I had worked with them in the drug business. I never did. I of course knew something was going on, But nothing to the degree that it was. I was blown away as much as everyone else when the book came out about the cartel. As far as George snorting coke off of every picture in the shop. Maybe Richard’s pictures, but not the ones I’ve hung since the shop’s been mine. Don’t get me wrong, I was as curious as anyone to meet the legendary George Jung. And I have to say, he seemed like a good guy. Funny and somewhat sage like. I’m sure he had a lot of time to reflect in prison. And it was fun going down memory lane, talking about the old beach life with him and Robbie Allen (Barile’s former partner at Tonsorial Parlor). It was fun times, exciting times and scary times. A generation of first times, in many ways. Just like the romance of the Wild West that my shop’s walls are covered with. Good guys and bad guys. For what it’s worth, I believe there is a similar romantic feeling for our generation’s time, our own Wild West, one might say.
Dale Snowberger
El Segundo
Editor’s note: Easy Reader apologizes for any inference that Snowberger was involved in the drug business.