Corn-pone Opinions

You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is.

More than 100 years ago Mark Twain recollected an incident from his youth along the river in Missouri. His point has quite a bit of relevance to Claremont (and elsewhere) today.

...I had a friend whose society was very dear to me... He was a gay and impudent and satirical and delightful young black man -a slave -who daily preached sermons from the top of his master's woodpile, with me for sole audience. He imitated the pulpit style of the several clergymen of the village, and did it well, and with fine passion and energy. To me he was a wonder. I believed he was the greatest orator in the United States and would some day be heard from. But it did not happen; in the distribution of rewards he was overlooked. It is the way, in this world. ...I listened to the sermons from the open window of a lumber room at the back of the house. One of his texts was this: "You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is." ...The black philosopher's idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business prosperities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone opinions -- at least on the surface. He must get his opinions from other people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no first-hand views.

* * *

We can't tell you how many variations on this theme we've heard here in Claremont: from a local businesswoman quitting a local election campaign because she was given to understand that pursuing that course would harm her business prospects, to very smart people declining to speak up on--say--local school issues because they believed to do so would harm their kids' standing or prospects in Claremont schools.

The Claremont 400 has that kind of power and are not afraid to use opprobrium and more tangible means to enforce it.

* * *

Original essay here.

The Ring of Dance

The news that Meg Worley and Kevin Lahey, the Pomona couple that started a blog called M-M-M-My Pomona (they lost one "M-" early on), have moved from the area left us feeling a little glum, as if we'd lost a friend.  Worley and Lahey have moved on to bigger and better things up in San Jose.  We wish them the best in their new endeavors, but we'll sorely miss the fresh voice and crisp writing Meg brought to the table.

We read of this departure in David Allen's Daily Bulletin column and in Allen's own blog, where Allen touched on the evanescence of life in the digital age:

M-M-M-My Pomona offered a window into the Lincoln Park neighborhood and the wider world of Pomona, especially in the blog's earlier days. Many of the community of blogs in Pomona have gone dormant; the form seems to have peaked in 2009 or 2010.

It's a little strange to think of something as new as blogging as having already fallen out of favor, but that's the way the changing media landscape bounces. The form still seems to have a lot of untapped potential locally.

In his column, Allen wrote that Pomona has a fairly lively blogging world compared to surrounding areas:

In 2010, the Pomona bloggers had their own float in the Christmas Parade, riding together on a flatbed truck, carrying laptops and waving to children. Now that's influence. (Which I can say, as a former grand marshal.)

Contrary to Pomona's reputation as a backwards, disconnected place, the city has been a hotbed of blogging, with up to a dozen active blogs commenting on local affairs from personal perspectives and linking to each other.

To my knowledge Claremont has only one community blog, and if Upland, Rancho Cucamonga or Chino have any, they're certainly quiet about it.

Actually, besides the Insider, Claremont does have Life in Claremont, which is the domain of Charlotte Van Ryswyk, a violin and viola teacher and the music specialist at Vista del Valle Elementary School.  Life in Claremont is extremely well-written, has a unique voice, and offers a little of everything: books, music, food, and, as the title promises, day-to-day life in our humble burg.  And a few new Claremont-oriented blogs pop up now and again and then pass away quicker than mayflies.

Still, compared to Pomona, our blogging scene is pretty barren.  Allen's article nailed the difference between Claremont and Pomona, and it may account for the lack of blogs here.  The blog form is a pretty egalitarian one, and Claremont tends more towards elitism.  Here's what Allen wrote in his M-M-M-My Pomona article:

"I think it's significant and telling that Pomona has a lot more community blogs than Claremont," Worley told me. "It's not just population. It's a different style of community engagement."

In Claremont, there's a social and political hierarchy. How long you've lived there and who you know matters.

Pomona, by contrast, has an improvisatory nature. With a thin layer of government, and civic competence sometimes in short supply, people have to find their own solutions. It's like "The Little House on the Prairie," but with Mexican food.

Perhaps it's that very egalitarianism inherent in a blog that appealed to us Insiders in the first place.  So much of one's experience of Claremont's high society is exclusionary, and a blog bypasses that quite neatly.  We can all have a voice, not just a select few.

* * * * *

Allen, by the way, had a couple columns, one in June and a follow-up in July, that discussed how Claremonters view themselves compared to how people from our neigboring cities often see us, as this from Allen's July 14 column shows: 

"I can give you a great example of the `friendly' people of Claremont," said Bob Terry, proceeding to relate an anecdote about a mixer in Claremont some three years ago for several area chambers of commerce.

Terry said one of his fellow Rancho Cucamonga Chamber officials briefly placed fliers on the Claremont Chamber's table while looking for a chair. The women at the Claremont table picked up the offending papers and dropped them on the floor like they were toxic waste.

Nope, we can't allow any mixing at a mixer.

"That is just one of many `friendly' encounters we have had over the years with the Claremont Chamber," Terry added.

Allen's June 25 column indicated that at least one Chamber representative seemed surprised to hear of a lack of unanimity concerning the town's general wonderfulness:

"Do you think Claremont is snooty?" [Claremont Chamber member Susan] Brunasso asked me, honestly curious.

"Of course," I replied.

As Claremont's ambassador, Brunasso should try asking that question in Montclair or Pomona - and brace herself for the response.

Claremonters' sense of superiority rubs people the wrong way, I explained.

There's a thin line between thinking your town is a great place to live and thinking it's the only place to live, we agreed.

"There's a pride here that can be taken for arrogance," Brunasso acknowledged.

It's really more than arrogance, though.  It's a profound lack of awareness, a lack of empathy, that blinds certain people, the ones termed the Claremont 400 (a phrase we co-opted long ago), to the perception of Claremont through the eyes of outsiders.  It's an unawareness that underlies a certain willingness to bend the truth, sometimes beyond all recognition.

Back in the Claremont 400's heyday, an issue would come up, and the 400 would spin it however they wished.  If you were on the other side of an issue, it took a huge effort to counter the spin because few people bothered to look deeper into what the 400 were saying.  Think of the City Council election this past March.  In the past, the 400 candidates could get up at a forum and spout whatever foolishness they wanted and not get called on it.  A blog makes it much easier to point out the deeper truths.

In days gone by, every election, every hot-button issue, would bring to light some little lie here, some untruth there, that would go uncorrected and, with the Claremont Courier or Daily Bulletin as unwitting conduits, become incorporated into the city's accepted wisdom.  A blog makes for the perfect place to shine a little light on precisely those things our town fathers and mothers would prefer remain hidden.

More than anything else, a blog levels the playing field.  It's a great tool for democratizing the information stream.  No one person or group should get to serve as the Great Information Filter, deciding what gets released and what truth is too inconvenient to be heard.  As Kevin Costner's Crash Davis says to Susan Sarandon's Annie at early on in the movie Bull Durham, "Why do you get to choose?  Why don't I get to choose?"

Don't we all have some valuable bit of information to contribute to the civic conversation?  It's just a matter of speaking up.

This line of thinking brought to mind Denise Levertov's poem "Caedmon," which tells the story of the first English poet.  Caedmon was an illiterate herdsman at a monastery who hid one night because, inarticulate and uneducated, he was ashamed that he wasn't able to join in singing with the learned monks. Then, in a dream, a figure appeared and commanded Caedmon to sing of the Creation:

All others talked as if

talk were a dance.

Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet

would break the gliding ring.

.....

....Until

the sudden angel affrighted me—light effacing

my feeble beam,

a forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:   

but the cows as before

were calm, and nothing was burning,

             nothing but I, as that hand of fire   

touched my lips and scorched my tongue   

and pulled my voice
                     into the ring of the dance.

* * * * *

Here in Claremont a certain segment of the population takes pride in our civic participation; yet, in reality a small number of people - not 400, more like 40 or 50 - get an idea (think Claremont Trolley) and the idea propagates out into the community through our various volunteer organizations, through letters to the local newspapers, and through City Hall until we forget what silly notion propelled the system into motion in the first place. 

There's no reason why these few and no one else should get to choose what course we take on any matter.  Why do they get to choose?  We just need more people to get involved instead of sitting at home and complaining when they disagree with some local policy or project after the fact.

So, whomever you are, whichever angel or muse moves you, stop your texting, put that remote or that game controller down, and step up.  Add your voice to the dissonant chorus that democracy is supposed to be.  Otherwise, you cede the decision-making to bullies from all parts of the political spectrum.  And then you have to live with the consequences.

Election Tomorrow

The polls open at 7am tomorrow, and a select few voters (less than 20% of the eligible registered voters, if the past is any guide) will have the opportunity to vote for two seats on the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education as well as for the Citrus College Board of Trustees District 2 seat.

If you need to know where your polling place is, check the LA County Registrar-Recorder's website and enter your street address and zip code.

There are two candidates for the Citrus College District 2 position:  incumbent Sue Keith and Tracy Rickman.

The three CUSD candidates are, in alphabetical order, Joe Farrell, Hilary LaConte, and Sam Mowbray.   Farrell is the outsider, having been one of the leaders of the No on CL school bond campaign last year.  LaConte is the incumbent, having been board president when the district tried unsuccessfully to pass the $95 million CL bond.  Mowbray is a former CUSD board member and is seeking to return for a fourth term on the school board.

The Daily Bulletin endorsed Farrell and LaConte.  The Claremont Courier, on the other hand, endorsed Mowbray and LaConte.  Judging from candidate lawn signs, campaign supporter lists, and letters to the Courier, the Mowbray-LaConte combo is the Claremont 400's ticket of choice for this election. The Courier and the 400 seem to have given LaConte a pass on the failed bond, which got less than 40% of the vote a year ago.

The Courier and the 400 have also opted to look the other way with regards to LeConte's possible circumvention of the state's Brown Act sunshine law when she was board president in October, 2010 - something that drew criticism from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Bureau of Public Integrity recently.   This last bit we thought particularly odd for the Courier, which in the past has been something of an advocate for open government.

Through its endorsments the Courier has usually been the most accurate barometer of voter sentiment in Claremont, so we'll see if 2010 CL bond vote or the Brown Act inquiry have much of an effect on the voting. We suspect that it neither issue will matter much at all, but the turnout should tell all.   If CUSD voters are really bothered by enough to overcome their usual apathy, then LeConte might be in some trouble.  

Last Saturday's Courier carried letters from two LeConte-Mowbray supporters, Nancy Tresser-Osgood and Dave Nemer.  Both lamented the low turnouts in past elections (Nemer also had a haiku on the same subject in a prior edition of the Courier).  Tresser-Osgood and Nemer are either terribly naive or just plain ignorant, or both, when it comes to local elections.   The 400's candidates traditionally do best in low-turnout elections.   When election turnout goes over 30%, the vote usually goes against the insider (small "I") candidates.

That's why our City Council elections are in March and the CUSD elections are in November of off-years.   If those elections were changed to general election dates, the turnout would swamp the Claremonster candidates.  In past council elections Llewellyn Miller, Peter Yao, Jackie McHenry, and Corey Calaycay all ran as outsider candidates in what were relatively high-turnout municipal elections.

Similarly, because it was a bond measure, the CL vote had to be held during a general election and was soundly defeated.   Conversely, the City's $12.5 million Measure S Johnson's Pasture bond won because its support base was much wider than just the Claremont 400.  Measure S got over 72% of the vote in November, 2006.

We'll have to wait until after the polls close at 8pm tomorrow night to know the answers.  Check back here to see the final results.

2010 Census Figures

The U.S. Census Bureau has some of its 2010 Census data up and available for review. Check out the American Factfinder to look for information about Claremont and just about any other American city.

There's some interesting Claremont data, by the way. For one thing, our population grew more slowly than the Census Bureau had estimated in 2009, when Claremont's population was supposed to be a little over 35,400. Instead, the 2010 Census listed the city of Claremont population as 34,998. That's a gain of only 928 people in 10 years, a number that supports the notion that we're a built out city.

Furthermore, Claremont's graying trend continued, a point we've come back to over the years. In 2000, 7,031 Claremonters - about 21.7% of the population - were under the age of 18. Last year, Claremont's under-18 population had dropped both in total numbers and as a percent of the population, down to 6,459 or 18.5%.

Despite those numbers, Claremont over the past decade has continued to live in a Fantasyland devised by the Claremont 400. In their separate domains, the City and the Claremont Unified School District have both refused to face our demographic reality and continue to devote millions of dollars to things like Padua Sports Park or to maintaining an overabundance of school district facilities and staff rather than allowing for the population trends in their decisions.

The City could have better spent its money on senior programs or more senior facilities, since that is where the greater need seems to be. In the school district's case, as we've argued before, they've done things like propping up enrollment figures by allowing an ever-larger number of interdistrict transfers - now nearly 20% of CUSD's enrollment. The families of that 20%, by the way, do not have to pay for CUSD bonds, and their attendance is underwritten by CUSD taxpayers.

We've learned through years of observation that no amount of hard data can change minds that long ago committed to wrongheaded courses of action. The City's staff may know better, but they're often held hostage by people saying things like, "We just have to have a downtown trolley." We can hope for change, but there's been little evidence to date of much willingness on the part of the Claremonsters to incorporate reality-based thinking into our local policy decisions.

* * * * *

Some other trivia:

• Claremont has become a little more diverse since 2000. The city's Hispanic population now numbers 6,919 or 19.8%, compared to 5,221 and 15.4% in 2000.
  
  
• Similarly, Asians now account for a larger segment of Claremont's population than before. In 2010, Asians numbered 4,564, or 13.1% of the total. In 2000, those number were 3,912 and 11.5%.
  
  
• On the other hand, the numbers of blacks/African-American dropped slightly, from 1,962 in 2000 to 1,951 in 2010.
  
  
• Claremont had an increase in housing units, thanks to the real estate boom that ended around 2008. 10 years ago, the Census listed Claremont as having 11,559 housing units. In 2010, there were 12,156.
  
  
• In a sign of the times, 548 of those housing units were unoccupied in 2010. That's 4.5% of the total, up from 2.4% in 2000.
  

Here are the Census figures, new and old:

(Click to Enlarge)
From the 2010 Census

2009 Population Estimate

2000 Census Data

Do No Harm

Our post about former Claremont mayor Karen Rosenthal upset a reader, who disliked our dredging up something her husband, Michael Rosenthal did to lose his medical license in 2001:

Date: Thu, March 24, 2011 11:43:46 AM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: Rosenthal

While the re-emergence of former mayor Rosenthal may be newsworthy, to bring up the near decade-old issue concerning her husband is just plain mean and totally irrelevant. Your humanity has hit a low point. Please apologize to your readers and to Mr. Rosenthal.

We stand by the post, dear reader. Yes, the former Dr. Rosenthal's license revocation happened 10 years ago, but we consider the matter quite relevant because it illustrates the egocentrism and the lack of empathy that the Rosenthals and the Claremont 400 possess still. They have yet to apologize for their own behavior. It's been our contention here at the Insider that the 400 put the citizens of Claremont through the wringer when they ran the town and then played extremely ugly politics when they saw their hold on City Hall weaken.

After the 2005 Preserve Claremont campaign, not one of the hardcore PC backers apologized publicly, even though they were roundly chastised in letters to the Claremont Courier and in several ads taken out by private citizens outraged by the PC witchhunt. In fact, they've continued to be very active in local campaigns.

A prime example is Mrs. Rosenthal, who quietly reentered the local political scene and who served on council member Joe Lyon's campaign committee. Not only did Karen fail to learn anything from the PC mess she and other supporters of Lyons and candidate Robin Haulman borrowed the same strategy this time.

Rosenthal's unapologetic behavior is consistent with the pattern of her public life. Consider the 2000 Black Hole Award the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) gave to Claremont and then-Mayor Rosenthal for their handling of Irvin Landrum shooting and for many other things. A CFAC press release from 2000 said:

Claremont was cited for:

• its refusal to disclose records relating to a lawsuit settlement;
• its protests contrary to fact that a federal court order precluded disclosure,
• its short-lived proposal to have mental health professionals standing by to assess the threat level posed by citizen speakers at public meetings;
• its city manager's disclosure of the criminal records of a man, in order to discredit him, who had called for an investigation of the death of his nephew, shot by police officers;
• its use of council committees to hold unannounced meetings on a variety of matters; and
• its refusal to allow citizens, during a permitted parade, to hand out leaflets to curbside spectators.

CFAC sent a faxed copy of the award citation, with a letter invitation to respond at the Assembly or otherwise, to Mayor Karen Rosenthal. In comments to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Ontario on Sunday, October 15, after the Assembly, she denied having been given notice and dismissed the award as "a public relations scam" and fund-raising effort.

Mayor Rosenthal was not quoted on most of the specifics, but said overall, "They just like to fabricate these very volatile stories out of things that didn't happen or weren't as dastardly as they claim or are unresolved at this time," with the last item apparently referring to a continuing investigation into the shooting. She said the mental health observer was simply a committee recommendation that had not been adopted, and the anti-leafleting restriction was "to prevent littering and disruption of neighborhoods" and had "nothing to do with free speech."

Similarly, the attitude both Rosenthal and her husband demonstrated after Michael Rosenthal lost his medical license was unremorseful, unapologetic. Mr. Rosenthal was more concerned about any harm to wife's reputation than to the patient who lost 2,000 cc of blood during a D & C procedure Mr. Rosenthal performed. The woman later had to have an emergency room hysterectomy. Some things time cannot heal, dear reader.

Mrs. Rosenthal (photo, left) continues to display the same lack of remorse she did publicly as mayor and as Mr. Rosenthal's wife when the news of his license revocation became public. This failure to own up to their past actions occurs repeatedly among the Claremonsters. It's why we at the Insider keep coming back. Every time we think they've finally learned to play nicely and we go into hibernation, this group returns thinking they can turn the clock to 1998, before Landrum, before they started losing elections.

The harm Karen Rosenthal and her fellow 400 members caused cannot be undone, and without some little public act of contrition on the part of the 400, a good segment of the city's voting population will always suspect the Claremonsters of the worst motives in anything or anyone they back.

You are right, dear reader. Apologizing is always a good place to start, but Mrs. Rosenthal and her compatriots are the ones who need to step up and take ownership of their actions. That, unfortunately, is a step they have been incapable of taking.

Act II

There are no second acts in American lives.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tanned, rested, and ready...
However, Claremont, being a sovereign nation, offers up as many chances at redemption as its nobles need. Case in point, the comeback of one Karen Rosenthal (photo, left), a former Claremont mayor. After a long hiatus, Rosenthal was back on the Claremont political scene this year as a member of Joe Lyons' campaign committee.

In addition to hosting Lyons' campaign night party, Rosenthal was in charge of hospitality for Lyons' campaign. Those of you who were around when Rosenthal was mayor can appreciate the cognitive dissonance induced by the sight of Rosenthal's involvement in Lyons' election. While mayor, Rosenthal was best known for her eye rolling behind the dais when she disagreed with some speaker during public comment at council meetings. Rosenthal's official nastiness exceed even that of her fellow Weird Sisters Ellen Taylor and Sandy Baldonado.

Rosenthal's letter prompted this response by one of our readers:

Date: Sat, March 12, 2011 7:38:08 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject:the one thing at lyons4citycouncil that made me laugh out loud was listed under the "campaign committee" heading


Hospitality
Karen Rosenthal

If you are at all familiar with Rosenthal's history, you know that her defense of smear tactics is consistent with her remarkable ability to rationalize just about anything. In 2003, it was Rosenthal's heavy-handed mismanagement of the Irvin Landrum shooting that prompted voters to reject Rosenthal's reelection bid. Ever resilient, Rosenthal has from time-to-time tested the waters to see if people had forgotten how badly she behaved while on council.

Lyons' success has apparently emboldened Rosenthal's post-election renaissance. After the March 8 election, she had a letter in the Claremont Courier justifying the smear campaign on councilmember Opanyi Nasiali by a group that included members of Lyons' campaign.

Rosenthal was back in the council chambers Tuesday night, berating council member Corey Calaycay and trying to imply that he's a misogynist. Claremont's mean girls are using this as an opportunity to knock Calaycay down a peg or two and to soften up the ground for their next campaign. The Courier's Tony Krickl describes how Calaycay's comments about the diversity on the council are being twisted into an attack on women:

At the ceremony, he applauded the ethnic diversity of the new council. He also pointed out its geographic diversity since the 5 council members all live in different parts of town.

But he didn’t mention that there are no women on the council; a fact not lost several women sitting in the audience. It’s the first time since 1962 that Claremont doesn’t have a female councilmember.

After Calaycay’s remarks, a few women in the audience remarked about the lack of female council members and didn’t like that Calaycay pointed that out. Even though he actually didn’t.

As Krickl points out, these latest attacks by Rosenthal and her fellow former mayor Judy Wright (photo, right), prompted Calaycay to apologize for remarks he didn't make. One of our readers commented on the fact that Krickl rightly noted that the lack of women on the present council is quite possibly a result of the lack of women candidates (a total of two women versus nine men in the last two elections). Our reader also remarked that the missteps of mayors Wright and Rosenthal may have contributed to the council's present gender disparity:

Date: Wed, March 23, 2011 12:41:09 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: Corey Calaycay

So I just read on the CourierCityBeat blog that apparently Karen Rosenthal and Judy Wright took exception to Corey’s remarks about diversity. Perhaps, as the CityBeat pointed out, if more women ran there would be a greater chance of having a woman on the Council. Or perhaps it is a case that the voters are smarter than Karen and Judy think……the matriarchs of Claremont didn’t do all that wonderful a job and perhaps women candidates lose because of that association in the voters’ minds. Perhaps they are thinking……well, how much worse could it get…..might as well give the guys a chance. After all, both Karen and Judy had their shot. Judy during the Orange County debacle, if I remember correctly, and Karen during the Landrum affair where her greatest achievements were opening her mouth and pouring gasoline on the fire.

[FYI, Claremont, with Wright on the council, invested and nearly lost $5.4 million dollars when the city used reserve money to buy into the failed Orange County Investment Poll in the early 1990's. After five years of litigation, the City got its principal back but lost out on that many years of interest on the money.]

The powers of rationalization possessed by Claremonsters like Judy Wright and Karen Rosenthal never cease to amaze us. For instance, we recall that one of the other items that caused voters to reject Rosenthal involved her husband's medical practice. Dr. Michael Rosenthal ran a birthing center in Upland and was twice disciplined by the Medical Board of California, once in 1997 and again in 2001. The first action resulted in a five-year medical probation. The second resulted in the revocation of Dr. Rosenthal's license.

LA Times reporter Tipton Blish covered the story:

The board accused him [Michael Rosenthal] of mishandling three abortions in 1999, when he was running his own Upland-based Family Birthing Center serving women with low-risk pregnancies.

He admitted to the board that he misled patients, lied to another physician, failed to reveal an abnormal pap smear result, failed to perform an ultrasound on a patient who had already delivered four babies by caesarean section, and started an abortion procedure on a patient in her second trimester.

At the time, Rosenthal was on probation for two other incidents, one in 1986 and one in 1992. In the latter case, medical board prosecutors said he gambled that a pregnancy would be without incident and didn't tell his patient that he had lost his privileges in San Antonio.

His privileges were revoked after his insurance company stopped his malpractice coverage in 1992.

Never mind that the medical board complaints state that Dr. Rosenthal was self-prescribing himself Prozac while he was operating his birthing center, that he failed to notify his patients that had no malpractice insurance or no hospital privileges, or that when serious complications arose in a couple procedures, he dumped the patients at San Antonio Community Hospital's emergency room.

No, for the Rosenthals, the biggest concern wasn't the medical board's findings or Dr. Rosenthal's treatment of the patients listed in the complaints, but rather, personal responsibility be damned, that their reputations remain untarnished, which is ever foremost in the minds of our Claremonsters. The Tipton Blish article conclude with a pair of quotes from the Rosenthals:

"The single biggest thing is embarrassing Karen," he said. "I have resolved this in my own mind a long time ago.... For myself, I just don't care."

Karen Rosenthal defended her husband, saying that none of the charges were ever proved in court.

"He is a great doctor. He delivered over 5,000 babies and is very well loved in the community," she said.

* * * * *

It's not too hard to see where all this is headed. This isn't about gender disparity on the Claremont City Council. This is all about Plan B for getting former Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy (image, left) on the council. Healy, who lost badly in 2009, desperately wants her own second act. Plan A, spearheaded by failed candidate Robin Haulman, didn't work out, so now the Claremonsters are trying to claim that we need more women on the council. They plan on arguing this for the next two years and then offering up exactly one woman, their woman, to run in 2013.

What they don't get is that as long as they keep offering up the wrong women, their candidates are going to fail. Not because voters don't like women, but because the rest of Claremont isn't quite as stupid or forgetful as the Claremont 400 would like them to be.

The Results Are In

The unofficial results from Claremont's municipal election are in, and the winners are:

SAM PEDROZA - 24.3%, 3,336 votes
OPANYI NASIALI - 19.7%, 2,697
JOSEPH LYONS - 18%, 2,470

Robin Haulman ended up with 2,275 (16.6%) , or 195 votes behind Lyons. Jay Pocock had 1,430 votes (10.4%). You can see the vote totals here.

Haulman's loss was a bit surprising. She was the Claremont 400 candidate of choice, and the turnout was a pretty low 23.9%, which usually favors the 400. Haulman actually outpolled Lyons in most of the precincts' absentee ballot totals. But among yesterday's voters, she lost to Lyons, the 400's backup candidate. So perhaps the combination of missteps by Haulman and her campaign together with Bob Gerecke's dirty tricks changed voters' minds about Haulman by the end of the election.

Incidentally, a glance at today's Claremont Courier informs us that Lynn Savitzky and Cynthia Humes, two of the seven signers of that Bob Gerecke attack ad against Opanyi Nasiali, have disavowed any knowledge of the ad (image, left - click to enlarge).

Apparently, Gerecke and the Claremont Democratic Club, which was circulating the ad at the Claremont Farmers Market last Sunday, used Humes' and Savitsky's names without their permission. As always, Bob is a real class act.

No one's said anything about this, but Sam Pedroza, just as he did in 2007 with Preserve Claremont, enjoyed the benefit of the attack ad without having to take any responsibility for it. He had the full support of the people behind the ad. Gerecke and the Democratic Club endorsed Pedroza, walked precincts for him, and conducted phone banking in support of Sam.

And, just as he did in 2007, back when he had a little more solid backing from the 400, Pedroza ignored the clean campaigning pledge he and the other candidates signed. Another minor commentary on Sam and the worth of his word.

Here We Go Again

Reporter Tony Krickl has an article in yesterday's Claremont Courier that tells of a post-debate incident at last Thursday's League of Women Voters forum. Krickl's article said that Alexander Sweida, the husband of City Council candidate Robin Haulman, took about 50 fliers belonging to candidate Jay Pocock and threw them in the trash.

Not surprisingly, former Claremont mayor Ellen Taylor, a/k/a The Cookie Monster, a/k/a Queen Ellen, was centrally involved. Taylor (photo, right) is the Claremont LWV chapter president.

Krickl reported that after the LWV forum ended, Betty Crocker, who works for candidate Opanyi Nasiali's campaign, was talking to Sweida when she saw him accidentally drop "about 50 [Pocock] fliers" onto the floor. Sweida scooped up the fliers and by his own admission threw them away. Krickl quoted Crocker as saying "He looked like he got caught caught with his hand in the cookie jar," which turned out to be a apt metaphor, considering Taylor's involvement in Thursday's incident.

Krickl spoke with Sweida, who claimed he took offense to the fliers because "he felt they contained lies about his wife." The article said the part Sweida took exception to was a line that said "Haulman and [Joseph] Lyons support tax increases (DO YOU?)."

For your reference, here's a Pocock flyer insert from yesterday's Courier. It contains the exact quote cited by Krickl:

Click on Image to Enlarge

In the Courier article, Sweida defended himself by saying he checked with Taylor first and asked "if he could dispose of the material because he felt it contained negative claims about his wife." Notice that he did not used the word "lie." Taylor gave the okay, and Sweida said, "I was just complying with the League's policy on negative campaign material...."

Incredibly, Taylor, who was quoted in the Krickl article, said she didn't review Pocock's fliers before giving Sweida permission to throw them away, she just took his work and allowed him to do it.

Well, we just don't know where to start. Setting aside the First Amendment, which Taylor and the LWV apparently support only on a situational basis, from our perspective this incident simply underscores what we've said all along: The LWV is very closely aligned with certain candidates in every election, picking and choosing who wins and who loses, their hypocrisy is embodied in their actions, and anyone considered an outsider in Claremont local politics faces an unlevel playing field.

Taylor tried to claim that the local LWV is an unbiased organization, and she cited the fact that they had San Dimas resident Ruth Currie moderate the candidate forum. Taylor didn't say that this is a new development for the LWV and that during the last City election in 2009, former LWV president Barbara Musselman moderated the LWV's forum. Musselman, along with people like Katie Gerecke, another former LWV president, supports Haulman and Lyons in this election.

If nothing else, this latest incident should put to rest any idea of impartiality or credibility on the LWV's part, at least when it comes to Claremont's local issues. In this campaign, as in every Claremont city election, the LWV is very much in the corner of their chosen ones. For instance, at the beginning of the debate Thursday, Haulman was introduced as the only woman running this time. Odd how the LWV used gender as a factor to single out one of their favored candidates and overlooked race with respect to the only African-American running, Opanyi Nasiali, or Rex Jaime, the only Filipino-American in the contest. Consistency, as is usual with the LWV, is not in evidence.

Now what about Alexander Sweida's claim that the Pocock flyer contained a lie about his wife's position on taxes? We checked the video for the mid-January Active Claremont candidate forum and discovered that the very first question posed by moderator and former council member Jackie McHenry was:

Do you believe that a tax increase is necessary to address revenue shortfalls [in Claremont]? If so, what taxes do you believe should be raised?

The first two candidates to answer were Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman. Both cited the Mayor's Committee on Economic Sustainability, and both Lyons and Haulman supported a hike in the City's utility tax. So you tell us, where's the lie in Pocock's line about Haulman and Lyons?

Here's video of Lyons and Haulman answering the tax question last month (notice how Haulman refers to her cheat sheet for her response):




Those of you out there in the real world, those outside the Claremont city limits, can see here just how crazy our local politics are. A truth refracted through the narrow lens of the Claremont 400 and the Claremont League of Women Voters becomes a lie, the perpetrator lays blame on his victim. Just as in the case of Haulman's false claims about her involvement in saving Johnson's Pasture, the truth matters not one bit.

Let's not let the Claremonsters confuse the issue. The central point in this instance is not whether a given candidate does or does not support tax increases; the heart of this matter lies in the sorry ethical behavior of those who control the reins of power and in the corresponding actions of those who would be kings and queens of this ridiculously small and silly fiefdom.

Mailbag

We received this note in response to our post from a couple days ago regarding the Claremont Police Officers Association and their preparations for contract negotiations with the City (to be filed under "Prepping the Battlefield"):

DATE: Wed, February 16, 2011 1:26:41 PM
SUBJECT: "crime scenes"
TO: Claremont Buzz

Really smart post -- nice work connecting the dots, and a pleasure to see. I like Dieter Dammeier, and think highly of Claremont cops, and still thought you righteously nailed them to the wall on this one.

Yes, it's unfortunate that the CPD officers give residents the false choice of having to either support their contract demands or else fear for their collective safety. We don't doubt that our police work hard for their money, but let's face it, a Claremont officer doesn't face nearly the same daily challenges as, say, an officer working the LAPD's South Bureau. The CPOA needs to set aside its own selfish interests and start thinking about what sacrifices they can make rather than insisting that everyone else - their fellow non-safety employees, people who count on services provided by the City, and cash-strapped taxpayers - pay for the CPOA's every demand.

Driven by an Inland Empire unemployment rate of 13.9%, public sentiment is lurching away from support for the CPD officers refusal to pay their share of their CalPERS pension plans. Witness the Daily Bulletin's editorial on just this subject. The Bulletin noted that Claremont's Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Sustainability came to the conclusion that the status quo for the City's budget is no longer viable.

That committee report, which was released last week, recommended a 1.5% hike in the City's Utility Users Tax, from the present 5.5% to 7%. The report also called for all city employees, including police officers, to start picking up their share of the costs of their pensions. The Bulletin agreed that the employees need to pay their fair pension shares, but they disagreed with the committee's proposal to increase the utility tax:

We admire the committee's thoroughness, looking at all sorts of possible tax and fee hikes before settling on the utility users tax as the most feasible and effective. But we do not favor raising the tax in this economic climate, nor did the three council candidates we have endorsed - Sam Pedroza, Opanyi Nasiali and Jay Pocock. We doubt that voters would approve the hike.

Nasiali, one of nine members of the economic sustainability committee, was the only one to oppose any utility tax hike. He was one of two who wanted employees to pay their own share of pension costs as quickly as possible, rather than phasing the change in over four years as the majority favored. (The employee share for public safety employees is 9percent of salary, for other employees 8percent.)

Requiring employees to pay their share ASAP - or perhaps, to reduce the discomfort somewhat by requiring them to pay 4percent in 2012-13 and the full amount from the next year on - is a reasonable course of action. (Glendora has imposed such a change on its employees; Claremont sanitation workers have already agreed to pay their own full amount.)

Government agencies started picking up employees' share of pension obligations as well as paying their own employer share when times were good - but times are no longer good and, besides, such largesse never was sustainable in the long term. Better for employees to pay that share than for mounting pension costs to require more and more layoffs and reductions in service over the years.

There are two items worth noting here. First, according to the Bulletin, incumbent Sam Pedroza is opposed to a utility tax hike. So it seems unfair and hypocritical to us that Pedroza supporters, some of whom are working behind the scenes to elect a slate consisting of Pedroza, Robin Haulman, and Joseph Lyons, are lambasting Nasiali and Pocock for being similarly opposed to raising the utility tax. Second, the same Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons supporters are spreading false rumors that Nasiali wants take away employee pensions. As the Bulletin piece stated, Nasiali is simply advocating that employees pick up the eight- or nine-percent that they are supposed to be paying in the first place. And, by the way, the city would continue to pick up its share of the employee pension payments.

So any talk of a wholesale elimination of the pensions is a lie, and we urge readers to get the name of any campaign volunteer who makes such statements, along with the name of the candidate they're working for. Better yet, ask for them to commit such statements to paper or to a recording, and forward those to us for a future post.

With election day only a few weeks away, the gloves are coming off those Claremont 400 fists, and it's up to the rest of us to hold them accountable for their silly games.

On the Campaign Trail

THE BULLETIN ENDORSES

The Daily Bulletin came out with its endorsements earlier this week, and there was at least one surprise.

As expected, Sam Pedroza made the cut, which we would expect given that he's the incumbent, and the local papers generally defer the such. Also, Sam's brought home plenty of Sacramento pork in the form of three large grants totaling several million dollars from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (more of which in a future post). So Sam's done Claremont's part to both save and destroy the environment while at the same time contributing to California's $25 billion budget deficit.

The Bulletin also endorsed Opanyi Nasiali, which was a mild surprise, seeing that the Claremont 400 have never liked him because he's not their black man. Ever since the Irvin Landrum shooting in 1999, the 400 have been all for supporting African-Americans (have we dropped the hyphen? - we can't keep it straight). Nasiali's both African and self-made American, but that seems to irk the 400 to no end and also, for some reason, the local Democratic Club, who are apparently desperate enough to have their volunteers running around generating complaints while putting up Pedroza and Robin Haulman signs.

Nasiali, by the way, is living proof that no good deed goes unpunished. In 2006, Nasiali argued successfully against the $45 million or so Parks and Pasture Assessment District, saying that it was wasteful and that a more limited general obligation bond would be a better way to go. To prove his point, after the assessment lost 56% to 44%, he turned around and helped lead the successful Measure S campaign, which ended up winning 72% of the vote. Nasiali also convinced the Claremont College presidents to agree to allow the colleges to waive their non-profit status under the bond, which lowered the overall Measure S tax burden to individual property owners. The 400, hypocrites that they are, ignored Nasiali's key contributions in building a true community consensus on the Johnson's Pasture issue and worked actively to defeat him in the 2007 council election.

Lastly, the Bulletin endosed newcomer Jay Pocock, who (with Nasiali) helped lead the No on CL campaign against the Claremont Unified School District's $95 million school bond. That measure lost 60% to 40% and was eerily similar to the Parks and Pasture/Measure S campaigns in that the No side argued, again successfully, that there was a better way help the schools. Sore losers that they are, the CUSD school board and the Claremont 400 are aiming for payback in the city council election. Still, the Bulletin went for Pocock over Haulman, the 400's candidate of choice, for the last of the three seats up for this election.


MORE EVENTS

And word comes to us from another candidate, Citizen Michael John Keenan (image, left), that the Claremont Forum, which also sponsors Claremont's Sunday Farmers Market, will be the site of a Keenan campaign even tonight from 7pm to 9pm, so says CMJK:

Bill McClellan has agreed to play some of the folk like-struggle-getting-to-the top inspirational acoustic music. Some buddies may sit in too! Find Bill at http://www.fairmarketband.com/ or http://www.fairmarketband.com/.

There will be a table of Trader Joes fare and a table of Trader Joes drinks. Definitely a Sangria and an Ale selection. Tea, Coffee and Juices for the ineligible imbibers should they show up.

The Claremont Forum is located at 586 W. First St. in the Claremont Packing House.

* * * * *

Oddly, in this council race the Claremont Democratic Club is not supporting Keenan, who is a registered Democrat, nor are they supporting another Dem, Joseph Armendarez. As we've said, they are actively campaigning for Haulman, Pedroza, and candidate Joseph Lyons, who admitted at last month's Active Claremont forum that he had never attended a City Council meeting before deciding to run in this election and who has never really been involved at all on local issues.

To be fair to the Democratic Club, Joe Armendarez has been similarly disinterested in Claremont issues, at least for the past 10 years or more. Keenan, however, has been very active in nearly every important Claremont issue for at least the last dozen years, and he has probably attended more City Council and city commission meetings than Haulman and Pedroza put together. So the lack of support for him from the local Dems puzzles us, since they claim to not endorse any single candidate and say they're merely trying to support the Democrats running for council. Based on his community involvement, Keenan deserves the club's support as much as Pedroza or Haulman and certainly has earned it more than Lyons, who may be a nice guy but who seems lost when it comes to what's happening locally.

If you want to ask the club or their president, Zephyr Tate-Mann, about this, you can take it up with them this weekend. Our friends within the Democratic Club who aren't happy with the direction the club's taken, have told us the club will be precinct walking tomorrow for Haulman, Pedroza and Lyons. A special Insider shout-out to any reader who forwards a photo of Zephyr or her hubby Rudy on one of their walks! Rudy, who hails from Louisiana, brings his own muddy bayou brand of electioneering to Claremont. Rudy runs every local issue through the narrow prism of his party politics rather than any out of any sense of community interest or fairness.

We hear, but haven't been able to confirm, that the Manns and company will be out walking in two shifts from 10:30am to 12:30pm and 1:30pm to 3:30pm, so keep your eyes peeled. You can start watching for them at the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW) Local 1428 hall at 705 W. Arrow Hwy., where they'll assemble before their morning and afternoon walks.

We understand that the Manns and the Democratic Club will also be phone banking. (A special Insider award to whomever can forward us a digital recording of one of these calls.) If you like what you see and hear from them, or if you want to complain, you can reach them at the club's phone number, (909) 632-1516, or you can contact Zephyr at (909) 626-2858, which is the contact number listed by the party for her here.

We'd give you the same information for the local Republican club, but they seem to be sitting this one as an organization, apparently because it's supposed to be a non-partisan race.

Monday Mailbag

Well, we received a number of responses to Saturday's Robin Haulman candidate forum video, mostly some variation of this comment on the Robin and her Claremont 400 puppet masters:

DATE: Sat, February 5, 2011 2:46:14 PM
SUBJECT: that video
TO: Claremont Buzz

Robin Haulman is AWFUL. The C-400 candidates are all cut from the same brittle and unappealing cloth.

Agreed. Birds of a feather, you know.

Debatable Tactics

Claremont 400 Marionette

Elections bring out the worst in the Claremont 400, who would do just about anything to keep control of this silly little town. Some of the campaign theatrics seem to have been lifted directly from infomercials or patent medicine salesmen. For instance, at the 2009 election kick-off party for former Claremont Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, one of her supporters, Ken Corhan of Measure CL fame, got up and asked a question, acting as if he were just some random member of the public rather than one of the people who signed Healy's nomination papers.

Witness the traditional candidate forums, of which there are many. The most important of these, or at least the ones with the largest attendance, are the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, Active Claremont and the League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area.

The first two of those organizations have already held their events. The LWV candidate forum is Thursday, February 17, in the Padua Room of the City's Alexander Hughes Community Center.

In the past, the LWV forum has seemed to favor the Claremont 400 candidates, often by picking questions that highlighted their candidates' issues and by avoiding those that might bring their friends harsher scrutiny. In contrast, the Active Claremont forum has been something like the People's Choice Awards, with the audience presenting questions to the candidates.

The AC website has video of their January 19 forum posted online. You can download the video file and, if you're into self-flagellation, you can watch the entire one hour and fifty-four minutes. One interesting change the AC board made this year was to allow the audience members to ask the questions themselves, rather than writing them down on index cards as has been the past practice.

This change worked out well for one audience member, Mel Boynton (photo, right). Boynton took the mic and asked the following:

I'd like each of the candidates to address what you know about the Youth and Family Committee and its 11 goals for working with the school district, the City and non-profits and what you'd bring to the table to make that, uh, increase the quality of life for our youth and family [sic].

How many candidates would be able to enumerate even one of the those eleven Youth and Family Master plan goals, which appeared in the amended YFMP in 2007? Of all the many issues facing Claremont how could a candidate have known to prepare for a question like the one posed by Boynton?

It turned out that only one of them could give the sort of answer Boynton was fishing for. That person was Robin Haulman, who ticked off nine of the 11 Youth and Family Committee goals, virtually word for word, from page 15 of the YFMP's action plan. Haulman didn't even bother to memorize the 11 goals. She just turned to a page in the notebook she referred to throughout the debate and, with the aid of her reading glasses, simply read straight from the YFMP action plan.

Even with the aid of crib notes, Haulman got only nine of the 11 goals and didn't even bother to answer the second part of Boynton's question. So, while we can count on Haulman to know some of the goals, if elected she won't do anything to improve the quality of life for our youth and families. The takeaway was that Haulman does fine when she can recite text, but she can't put an answer into context, which qualifies her as the perfect Claremont 400 marionette.

Here's a video clip of Boynton's question, followed by Haulman's response (watch Haulman looking for the right page to read from as Boynton asks his question):




And, just for your reference, here's the section of the YFMP that Haulman lifted her answer from. If you print it out and read along as you watch the video, you can see just how closely her answer matches the list:

Click Image to Enlarge

How do we know Boynton is hooked up with the 400? Well, for one thing, Boynton was listed as a Bridget Healy supporter in 2009. And he's supporting Sam Pedroza, Robin Haulman and Joseph Lyons this time around.

Coincidentally (or not) Boynton is on the board of the Pomona Valley chapter of the United Nations Association of the US, which had as its last speaker Joseph Lyon's campaign treasurer, J. Michael Fay. Fay, you'll recall, was also the treasurer for the Yes on CL school bond campaign last November. Another board member (and current president) is Katie Gerecke, who has served as a Claremont League of Women Voter's president and whose husband Bob is a past president of the Claremont Democratic Club.

Also, as he said in his introduction to his question, Boynton is a member of the City's Youth and Family Committee, which includes Butch Henderson as a member. Henderson, along his wife Rosemary, is an honorary co-chair of Robin Haulman's election committee.

Boynton's question itself wouldn't be an issue if it weren't coupled by that quite specific response by Haulman. How could Haulman have known to include that one specific page out of the thousands of pages of city staff reports, memos and correspondences without some advanced notice?

We couldn't help but notice, too, that Boynton's LinkedIn page used to list "political strategies" as one of his specialties (he deleted that particular specialty after we posted this):


Boynton's CV also lists some of the organizations he belongs to. These include the Claremont United Church of Christ, where Butch Henderson was the senior pastor, and the Claremont Democratic Club, which has become the Claremonsters' tool for election outreach in what is supposed to be a non-partisan election.

So, to recap, here's what we learned from the Active Claremont forum:

• Mel Boynton? Smooth operator.
• Robin Haulman? Not so much.

Sunday Sermon

As we've often said, some Claremonters (the ones that count, anyway) possess a peculiar, almost religious devotion to their city workers with members of groups like the local League of Women Voters or the Claremont Community Foundation acting as oracles or priests. Sometimes they are even actual religious leaders.

A mere hint of outsourcing any of city services will result in widespread hysteria among the true believers, the Claremont 400, as the recent civic discussion over Claremont's waste management showed. Imagine the wailing that would ensue if the city were to consider disbanding Claremont's police department and entering into a contract with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office. The pitchforks-and-torches set would be out in force at the next City Council meeting.

Yes, Claremont loves its public servants.

As if to prove our point, the Yes on Measure CL campaign, the folks who are trying to pass a $95 million school bond, sent out a mailer last week adorned with photos of one of Claremont's finest, CPD Officer Sean Evans, who was quoted and featured in a couple photos.

We were mulling over our politicized police department, which seems intent on lending the Measure CL campaign a helping hand or two, no matter how many claims of non-partisanship City Hall makes. Looking at the recent flyer, it struck us that, as Officer Evans blessed the children gathered around him in one of the photos, he might have possessed just a touch of that beaming, beneficent, iconic presence leaders of all types, religious and political, like to affect in order to inspire the masses:

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

Scared Straight

With Halloween fast approaching we might have expected to get a good scare from our beloved Claremonsters. The sky-is-falling strategy has traditionally been one the Claremont 400's favorite tactics to get people to vote for someone or something.

They used fear-based strategy when current council member Corey Calaycay was running in 2005 ("our city staff will all quit if he's elected") and again in 2006 with the failed Parks and Pastures assessment district ("developers will buy Johnson's Pasture if we don't act now"). Somehow the Claremonsters always manage to disregard reality in their attempts to get voters worked up for or against anything. With the park assessment district, for instance, they ignored the fact that the open space they were trying to save had been stuck in probate court for nearly 10 years without changing hands and that the City was the only likely buyer. The urgency they tried to create was false.

This campaign season they're at it again, telling Claremont Unified School District residents that we need to pass the $95 million Measure CL bond because our schools are falling apart. They tell us that our school buildings will collapse on top of our kids if we don't pass this bond. This past Wednesday, the Claremont Courier carried just such a letter in which Uncommon Good executive director Nancy Mintie compared the state of Claremont High's theatre to a slum. Mintie writes with the famous Claremonster voice of authority, saying she was an attorney who fought slumlords, so she should know.

In her letter, Mintie went on to say that the sorry state of CUSD's facilities is proof that Claremonters should support the proposed school bond. But if we read Mintie's letter correctly, what she's really saying is that CUSD is a slumlord! Just like the slumlords Mintie opposed in the past, our school board and the district's admnistrators took the $48.9 million from the last school bond in 2000 and squandered it. They didn't pump all of that money back into fixing up their properties, and they neglected the young people who occupied those building. We clip the first three paragraphs of her letter, right. Buy the Courier to read the rest. Click to enlarge.

Following Mintie's argument to its logical conclusion, one should be compelled to deny CUSD access to any further bond money because they can't be trusted with it. But, this being Claremont, Mintie drew the opposite conclusion, despite her rather persuasive evidence to the contrary. Instead, Mintie said she supports this bond in order to fix our decrepit school facilities - precisely what CUSD and its supporters said the last bond was going to accomplish.

If Mintie were being truthful with us and herself, she'd say that CUSD needs to borrow more money because it mismanaged the last bond and didn't keep its promises from 10 years ago. But, as we've seen, the Claremonster capacity for deceptions of all sorts is limitless.

We have every right to be fearful - of Mintie's screwball logic, of our school district's waste, of the money being pumped into the Yes on CL campaign by bond and building contractors, of the willingness of our school board and its friends to hide the truth and rewrite the past. Run as fast as you can away from these people!