Fruit Falling Far From the Tree

CUSD Board Member

Jeff Stark

That photo of Jeff Stark at the Labor Day campaign kickoff for Russ Warner, the Democratic candidate running against incumbent Republican David Dreier for California's 26th congressional district seat, reminded us of some Stark's own family history and how it's linked to Dreier.

Dreier, for those of you who don't know, got his undergraduate degree in political science from Claremont Men's College (now Claremont McKenna College) in 1975. Dreier later earned a masters degree in government from Claremont Graduate School (now CGU). He also worked as a director of corporate relations at CMC. In 1980, our district elected Dreier to Congress, where he has been ensconced ever since.

At CMC Dreier (photo, right) no doubt crossed paths with Jeff Stark's father, Jack Stark, who was CMC's president from 1970 to 1999. Dreier would have also met Jeff's mother, Jil Stark, who was the director of the Marion Miner Cook Athenaeum. It turns out that the Starks kept in contact with Dreier after he became a congressman.

We checked and saw that both of Jeff's parents donated to Dreier's campaign war chest. The Huffington Post's FundRace listed two donations for Jil, one in 2009 for $1,000 and one in 2007 for $1,150. Notice that the latter contribution Jil's trustee position with the now-defunct PFF Bank & Trust, a 116-year-old local institution that survived the Great Depression but couldn't survive our Great Recession.

You'll recall that Jil Stark made a small fortune off PFF stock options right before the stock price plummeted. She may have used some of that windfall to help out a friend:

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Jack Stark, too, got into the act, throwing a $600 bone Dreier's way in 2009:



We noticed that the Starks' son Jeff is a registered Republican, so one would presume he's a Dreier supporter as well. That's why we were so surprised to see him caught at the Russ Warner event. We hear Jeff didn't stick around very long. Maybe word got out to Dreier's office. Or to Jeff's folks.

Next time, Jeff ought to send Ken Corhan in his place. Ken's much more slick when it comes to this kind of sneaking around.

Congressional Info On Demand

You political junkies might enjoy a site called Know Thy Congressman. It's got an easy to install add-on that allows you to pull up any U.S. representative's or senator's biography and record in office.

Say you're reading an online article or webpage that mentions Representative Joe Schmoe and you'd like to know more about Schmoe's voting record. You simply highlight the name, click on the KTC tab that gets installed in your Bookmarks Toolbar, hit the search button that appears, and up pops a window with everything you ever wanted to know about Schmoe, from his place of birth to links to YouTube videos, to lists of his largest donors sorted by contributor groups and institutions.

There's a favorite word count, and there's even a Maverick O'Meter that measures unpredictability. (Claremont's congressman, David Dreier, gets a low 10.5% mark.) KTC also gives you your congressman's contact information and a handy earmark link.

Time to Trim the Fat

We were thinking about our post about the $1.8 million earmark the City of Claremont received courtesy of Congressman David Dreier. It really is a prime chunk of bacon, applewood smoked and thick-cut.

You'll recall that a reader had sent us a link to a spreadsheet that lists all of the earmarks in the recently passed federal 2009 Omnibus Appropriation Bill. Here's the earmark in question:

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We're still scratching our heads over this business. It's great that Congressman Dreier is getting federal money to help the cities in his district, but as we pointed out a couple days ago, there isn't really any argument to be made that Claremont is any more deserving of the money than Montclair or Pomona. Claremont's staff may just be better at sidling up to the feds and sweet-talking them.

But given Claremont's upper middle-class demographics, aren't we really being more than a bit selfish in diverting money from places where it might be more needed and where it might do more good? And because the need remains in other places, in the end, don't these sorts of fiscal diversions end up driving up the final price on things like the 2009 Omnibus Appropriation Bill?

In the retail business you might file this sort of thing under the heading "Leakage," like losses to shoplifting and pilferage. Selfish self-interest from towns like Claremont has a double cost, it turns out. We use our city staff to steal federal and state grant money from our less well-off neighbors, and then we have our local charities asking us to give more money to help out the people whom we've stiffed.

Sorry, Pomona. Nothing personal. In the social Darwinian world of competing municipalities, it's just the cost of doing business.

* * * * *

Incidentally, we were looking through some of the numbers in that spreadsheet. Congressman Dreier did have seven solo earmarks worth $5,152,000, and seven other earmarks that he shared with some of his fellow elected officials. Those 14 earmarks totaled $17,245,000.

While that sounds like a lot, there were plenty of others whose totals were worse, and it's not necessarily whom you'd expect. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for instance, had 21 solo earmarks for $15,667,000 and 33 total for $43,574,500, but that's hardly a surprise. However, Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), a member of what had been the party of fiscal restraint, had 19 solo earmarks for $16,290,000 - more than three times Dreier's solo earmark total, and more than Pelosi's solo amount:


By the way, has anyone seen the Fourth Estate poking around this information? Maybe it's too complicated or unsexy a story for a daily paper to delve into, but we think there's an audience for this, especially in these at a time when everyone's having to pinch pennies and cut back on expenses.

Earmark Remarks

We received an email from a reader who caught our post about the $1.8 million earmark the City of Claremont is receiving courtesy of Congressman David Dreier for an Emergency Operations Center.

DATE: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 10:02 AM
SUBJECT: 1.8 Million Dollars?
TO: Claremont Buzz

Buzz,

You may have overlooked the CERT (Claremont Emergency Response Team), as an emergency operation in Claremont. This is an active group of volunteers sponsored by the LA County Fire Dept, and managed by the Claremont Police Dept.

The CERT team is led by Capt Stan Van Horn of the CPD, who teaches curriculum and holds monthly drills for training.

After training, members are assigned to special groups with various responsibilities, in case of a major emergency. We are trying to be ready for fire, flood, earthquake, or attack, where large numbers of people may be injured or without shelter.

There are 50 or more volunteers who have taken the 20-40 hours of advanced training, have practiced triage, communications, emergency management, evacuation,and have learned how to use the police radios (on a special frequency) etc. Ongoing classes for volunteers are adding numbers to the CERT group regularly.

At last Saturday's training in Metrolink Parking Lot there were about 30 in attendance, who got a first look at the new trailer with the CERT generators, pumps, and tools for emergency. We learned water purification, and how to operate an emergency trailer grill for cooking, and about the radio mentioned above. Team members have uniforms and hard hats for identification and safety.

I hope that some of the money from the $1.8 million will find its way to CERT use. Our community will be safer as a result and the money will be well spent.

x

ps: Did you know that a mass burial site for up to 100,000 bodies is designated here in the Los Angeles Area? (Not in Claremont)

No, we didn't know about the mass burial site. We did learn from last night's city council meeting that the money is the second Dreier earmark in the past two years for police communications equipment. So, sounds as if the reader will get his wish for the use of the federal money.

At least that's what they're telling us. With the folks running City Hall, $1.8 million here means that much can be shuffled off to the "Police Station" pigeonhole, if they so choose, or just used in such a way that the stuff ends up as part of a new station/emergency ops center.

Emergency Operations

Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now -now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

We tried to remind ourselves just where that $1.8 million Emergency Operations Center fit in the list of Claremont priorities. It just didn't ring a bell--or alarum, or siren, or whatever would be appropriate in the circumstance.

Here is a list of priorities from one of last year's City Council study session on the subject. This list came from an agenda report dated July 22, 2008, from City Manager Parker to the Council. No EOC that we notice:

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You can go through the entire agenda report yourself; we see no mention of an EOC in any of the funded or unfunded Capital Improvement Projects for FY 2008-9, or 2009-10, either.

And yet we have Congressman David Dreier, presumably as a result of lobbying by staff or council, showering down $1.8 million for an EOC in Claremont. (We could be wrong, but we thought the City Hall was reconstructed nearly a decade ago with FEMA money for something very near that purpose, and the Citrus Room was designated the EOC.)

This is just the kind of Federal waste that people of all political stripes rail about. From the Right: big money for a project neither necessary nor desired by the community. From the Left: big money for a rich community at the expense of nearby poorer ones. (the same analysis of the Omnibus Earmark Act found, for example, two projects benefitting Pomona totaling $875,000 (for ground water cleanup in South Pomona and the construction on the 71 south of Mission Blvd.)

Claremont, with a population of some 35,000 receives $1.8 million (more than $50 per capita) for an unnecessary frill. Pomona, with a population of about 150,000, receives $875,000 (not quite $6 per capita) for projects that more directly affect the health and safety of the community.

Whose life is going to be made better knowing that Jeff Parker, Tony Ramos, and Paul Cooper have a comfortable place to go, with lots of neat radios and computers and large LCD screens, when the Big One hits? They have the mobile command center trailer already. And what scarce staff resource is going to honcho this money and this project?

(Proposed answer to previous question: Most likely this is a make-work project to fund a couple more city staff members during the upcoming lean times; don't look for it to pencil out in any cost- benefit way.)

In the meantime, we have gotten copies of the proposed drawings for the EOC. When Jeff Parker shows up at Council meeting tonight in a Starfleet uniform, you'll know we are right.

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* * * * *

The stanza introducing this post is from 'The Bells', by Edgar Allan Poe

Bringin' Home the Bacon

David Dreier Earmark:
$1.8 million for Claremont
Emergency Operations Center

The 2009 Omnibus Earmark and Appropiation Bill signed last week by President Obama contained a little love for Claremont, courtesy of Congressman David Dreier. In a massive analytical spreadsheet posted by Taxpayers for Common Sense (both of them), we find down on line 7,575 (of 9,309!) an earmark of $1.8 million inserted by Dreier to fund an Emergency Operations Center for Claremont. This earmark represents more than one-third of the dollar value of Dreier's 7 "solo" earmarks, totaling $5,152,500. With other members of Congress, Dreier was involved in 14 earmarks totaling $17,245,000.

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The spreadsheet may be DOWNLOADED here. Within it there are worksheets showing all earmarks, earmarks by senator, earmarks by house member, earmarks by state and by party. It is worth your time but be warned: it is an Excel spreadsheet and you have to be comfortable navigating and doing searches in Excel. The download takes a few minutes as it is a 3 Megabyte file. (Lotsa earmarks)

There is an explanation of the methodology behind the spreadsheet here.

A tip of the green eyeshade to a Reader.

Big George Rides Again

You may still be recovering from the ridiculous David Dreier "Homosexual Lifestyle" flyer, but now an even better piece of mail could be coming soon to a mailbox near you.






The invitations for Galleria Beretich's Christmas Show have just been mailed out. They feature two wonderful photos by David Griffith of Coco the Cat and Big George, Claremont's most famously well-endowed critter (who is, literally, hung like a horse).

The Christmas Show is Sunday, December 7th, from 3:00 to 6:00 at Galleria Beretich at 1034 Harvard Avenue.

Be sure to stop by and ask for Coco's opinion on foreign policy, the financial crisis, and the new Claremont Trolley.

Down-ballot Election Results

A smattering of some of the down-ballot results of interest to Claremont. It's hard to get reliable links to the official elections websites, so take these with a grain of salt. (Results compiled between 6 and 7 a.m. on Wednesday, November 5)

David Dreier, incumbent congressman from the 26th district, which includes Claremont, appears to have withstood a challenge from Democrat Russ Warner. With 318 of 469 precincts reporting, Dreier had 53.5% of the vote to Warner's 40.2%. We commented here on one of the mail pieces opposing Dreier. The Federal Election Commission has now posted the campaign finance disclosure from the Blue America PAC for the hit piece. It cost $19,652.44 to prepare and mail.

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See here for latest results in Dreier's race.

In a district adjacent to Claremont, the north Pomona division of Three Valleys Municipal Water District, carpenter John Mendoza appears to have trounced incumbent Fred Lantz, 55% t0 45%. This has a lot of the look of the election two years ago when Xavier Alvarez took his seat from the then-incumbent: a relative unknown versus a long-time water wonk. We don't know much about Mendoza, he has no website and didn't fill out the League of Women Voters Smartvoter information. Mendoza didn't come off all that well in an article in last month's San Gabriel Valley Tribune, where he rapped the current board for "making a lot of decisions about water but they are just sitting there at the top, collecting pay and benefits." The article goes on to say that Mendoza, if elected, would still collect benefits, "but I won't take advantage of them." Huh?

Lantz is husband of Pomona councilmember Paula Lantz. Maybe some of our friends in Lincoln Park (Meg?) can elaborate on this race. [Update: John Clifford over on M-M-M-My Pomona points out that John Mendoza not only ran for and won the Three Valleys seat, but also ran unsuccessfully for a city council seat in this election, losing to Stephen Atcheley but edging out the Daily Bulletin-endorsed Querubin. Mendoza was busy; he also sponsored an increase in the Utility Tax in Pomona, Measure PC, which failed by nearly three to one.]

In incomplete returns, 21 of 25 precincts reporting, Glenn Southard nemesis Michael Wilson is trailing by 900 votes in Indio's city council election. Try this link for updated results--no guarantees it will work. The margin against Wilson has widened as more returns have come in. According to the Desert Sun, Wilson was outspent by the two leaders by four or five to one. Leader Wilson raised more than $60,000; incumbent Watson raised some $45,000, and Wilson raised around $12,000.

Measure R, the new Los Angeles County half-cent sales tax increase, squeaked by 67.4% to 32.6%. It needed 2/3 to pass. It was opposed by Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor, the Claremont City Council, and many local politicos. It's a win for LA Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa and the MTA and the Westside. Whether we will see much out here in the San Gabriel Valley is doubtful, according to opponents.

Norma Torres, police dispatcher and Pomona mayor, and "Friend of Xavier", is on her way to the State Assembly. With about 2/3 of the votes counted, she leads by more than 15,000 votes, 60.6% to 32.8% for Wendy Maier.

Anthony Adams and Bob Huff both are leading comfortably in their races as Claremont's State Assemblyman and State Senator, respectively.

For you national political junkies, here is an interesting set of maps on the Obama-McCain race, with analysis.

Democracy Takes a Hit

The end of the latest political season is nigh, which means campaign hi-jinx on all sides are running rampant. File these latest events under the heading HYPOCRISY:

Saturday's Claremont Courier had an article by Tony Krickl with the headline "It's the Season for Dirty Campaign Tricks and Literature." (The Krickl piece is not posted on the Courier website.) The article talked about some of the usual stuff like campaign lawn signs going missing, and it also mentioned complaints about an anti-Obama mailing with racist overtones.

Krickl wrote that local Republicans, too, had complaints about an unidentified man who left a leaflet that had a list of "The Early Signs of Fascism" outside the local Republican headquarters.

And the Daily Bulletin reported last week that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office is investigating a complaint from a Pomona resident:

POMONA - Roberta Perlman-Hensen has been a resident of Los Angeles County for nearly three decades, so she was surprised when she recently received an unsolicited absentee ballot - from San Bernardino County.

Perlman-Hensen lives in Pomona but has a business address in Chino.

"It was really odd. Apparently someone filled out a card with my name," she said.

The matter was odd enough that the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office is having the county District Attorney's Office investigate.

What a lot of these complaints have in common is that the incidents are pushed by independent groups who support their candidates of choice not by offering up reasons to vote for those persons but by giving negative messages about their candidates' opponents.

These sorts of occurrences are by no means limited to state and federal elections. In the last three Claremont municipal elections, for instance, city-wide mailers went out to voters on the last Friday before the respective elections. That particular day is chosen because the targeted candidates cannot respond in time before election day to rebut the charges raised in the mailers. We saw an unsubtle and ineffectual dig at Elderkin, Yao, and Pedroza in the last election. Before that, it was Valerie Martinez's and Roger Hogan's Claremont Business PAC. And who can forget, six years ago, Residents United for Claremont, the forerunner of the 2005 Preserve Claremont.

So it came as no surprise late last week that a hit piece mailer went out attacking incumbent Congressman David Dreier (R-26). The piece was a large, four-color, glossy mailer that had the photo of two men in swim trunks lying on beach towels together with the headline: "Why are taxpayers paying for David Dreier's Homosexual lifestyle?" The headline was in white letters, except for the word "Homosexual", which was in red.

The mailer claimed that "...Dreier took 92 trips overseas with his male partner on our tax dollars." The mailer also indicated that it was paid for by Blue America PAC, which is an organization headed by DJ, record producer and political blogger Howie Klein. Here is the mailer itself:

Click to Enlarge

What was disturbing about the Blue America mailer is that it so clearly seeks to stir up homophobia to help Dreier's Democratic opponent, Russ Warner, win tomorrow's election. Isn't a Blue America supposed to be a tolerant America? We are finding it a little tough to square that circle.

Update, November 5, 10 a.m. The Federal Election Commission has posted the campaign finance document for the mailer. It is available at the FEC website, and also reproduced here. Click on the image at the right to enlarge so that the disclosure is readable.

Warner, who has not disavowed the Blue America mailer--that we have heard*, stands to benefit here. Silence seems to be the rule on this one: silence from the Daily Bulletin and the Courier; silence from the Claremont Colleges, where quelling hate speech is a daily event; and silence from Warner and his supporters.

Where, one must ask, is the outrage? It's more than a little hypocritical to rightly complain about racist hit pieces on the one hand and to support with silence homophobic pieces on the other. And, whether from the left or the right, what do exactly you win when you abandon all first principles to win an election?

Update, election morning, 7 a.m. We received a note from a member of the Claremont community on this issue pointing out hypocrisy on the Dreier side: "The fact that Dreier is gay, closeted, and enjoyed a multi-decade relationship with his chief-of-staff has been well-known since the story broke in 2004. Many GLBT Americans are offended by Dreier's hypocrisy, and your post would have been better for mentioning that fact."

We are agnostic on Dreier's re-election. Or not. And were a bit tentative in even exposing this whole affair. Our reader implies that the piece in question was along the lines of an Act Up! action--queer, here, and in your face.

*We checked the Warner for Congress website about 11:15 a.m. Monday and couldn't find anything authoritative or otherwise. We'll check as we can throughout the day and tomorrow.

7:00 a.m. Tuesday. Still no statement one way or the other from the Warner camp. Our purpose here is not to put pressure on Warner--God knows he's probably busy enough today--but this note was the easiest way we could come up with to allow for an anticipated change in the fact situation underlying statements in this post. We checked several times yesterday afternoon and evening, but have removed the times in this footnote because they had too much of a "countdown" look to them. Probably Warner doesn't even read the Insider, and has the intelligence not to respond if he did. This is getting way too complicated for us--"lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta threads,"

10:00 a.m. Wednesday. We will stop posting on this subject now. Dreier apparently has won re-election.

Gold Lining

In other transportation news, Congressman David Dreier, an alum of Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University, recently sat down with three Democratic counterparts representing cities with an interest in the Gold Line Foothill Extension.

The four, Dreier, plus Reps. Adam Schiff, Grace Napolitano, and Hilda Solis (Claremont City Councilmember Sam Pedroza's political patron), got together for a 25-minute video roundtable in which they talk about why the Gold Line is a great project deserving of better treatment from the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

The video, with the title "Special Congressional Report," comes from Rep. David Dreier, Rep. Grace Napolitano, Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Hilda Solis. The Los Angeles Times' Steve Hymon had a post about the video on his Bottleneck Blog. Hymon reports that the show, which was apparently made for cable TV, probably isn't an off-the-cuff conversation moderated by an independent host:

The show features the four of them sitting around in a circle being asked questions by a moderator named Jo Maney. Here is her first hardball question, addressed to Dreier:

"Can you tell us a little bit about the Gold Line Foothill Extension and how it will help reduce traffic congestion and save energy?"

Maney then goes on to forget to tell viewers a crucial detail: she happens to work for the guy she's interviewing. Maney is Dreier's press secretary.

Centinel over at the FC Blog also wrote about the video in a post (with apologies to the 1994 Arkansas Razorback basketball team) called "25 Minutes of Hell."