Claremont No-Fly Zone Sunday

In a secret U.N. Security Council session on Saturday, a unanimous vote authorized the establishment of a "NO FLY" zone over Claremont to protect the rag-tag forces of Opanyi Nasiali against the superior firepower of the Lyons-Pedroza axis. Although it was expected that Russia and China would abstain as they did in the Libya matter a few weeks ago, they voted enthusiastically in the affirmative. In fact, they wanted to vote "Aye" twice.

Yesterday, Sunday, the first air recon was provided by two military jets, shown over Claremont above. They made four circuits of the community at low altitude (you may have heard them; they sounded like a nearby atomic bomb explosion). According to reports, large tethered gas-bags over the headquarters of Ground Commandant Gerecke were deflated and rendered harmless.

Our spotter can't tell a Jenny from an SR-71, but she thought they might be U.S. Navy F-18 Hornets. She reports the overflying aircraft did appear to have tailhooks which got her all in a lather.

More on That NSM Rally

We're still trying to figure how the National Socialist Movement came to pick Claremont as the place to hold a rally targeting illegal immigrants. A blurb popped up on the City's website announcing that the City was aware of the NSM plans for the March 19 rally and march in Claremont on Foothill Blvd. and a cross street to be named later.

(We're also waiting for Bob Gerecke and the Concerned Claremont Citizens, opportunists that they are, to tell us which one of the incoming City Council members and his supporters are responsible for the NSM's visit. We're sure Gerecke would love to find some way to pin it on the Kenyan guy - damn immigrant! A word of caution: craziness can come from the Left as well as the Right.)

The NSM event on the 19th is scheduled to run from noon to 1:00pm. A counter demonstration is also scheduled. The Daily Bulletin's Wes Woods II has a report with more details on the event and its organizers.

The NSM website has a press release announcing the event. It makes reference to the group's marches to "Reclaim the Southwest." There's also an obnoxious video:



(It occurred to us while listening to the audio of the clip above that the words, with little change, could have been uttered by a 19th-Century North American Indigenous Person Activist bemoaning the coming of the European invaders. This then reminded us that the swastika had been a symbol generally of good things in native-American cultures--as well as many cultures around the world--until it was appropriated by the German National Socialists and took on the associations of hate, totalitarianism, and death. Our lead image is a memento of those somewhat more innocent times.)

Looks like the NSM wants to piggyback its own agenda onto anti-illegal immigration sentiments being pushed by other more mainstream groups. Watching the NSM members parading around in their brown shirts would be amusing except that the German NSM, wasn't taken too seriously when they were getting started. So before you start laughing too hard, remember folks, there but for the grace of God go we.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks these sorts of groups, has a dossier on the NSM. Turns out they have a chapter in Riverside, so it's not like they have to travel too far. Anyway, here's what the SPLC has to say about the NSM:

NSM ideology mirrors that of the original American Nazi Party. The group openly idolizes Adolf Hitler, described in NSM propaganda as, “Our Fuhrer, the beloved Holy Father of our age … a visionary in every respect.” NSM says only heterosexual “pure-blood whites” should be allowed U.S. citizenship and that all nonwhites should be deported, regardless of legal status. As [NSM leader Jeff] Schoep put it: “The Constitution was written by white men alone. Therefore, it was intended for whites alone.”

The NSM is probably best known for carefully staged protests, carried out in full-blown Nazi uniforms and swastika armbands, that have managed to win substantial news coverage for the group. The best example of the NSM’s provocative rallies came on Dec. 10, 2005, when the group made international news after a planned march through a black neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio, sparked rioting by residents and counter-protesters. The riots cost the city more than $336,000, though the NSM members escaped the violence and were not liable for any of the destruction. “The Negro beasts proved our point for us,” Schoep crowed after the rally....

The NSM has had its share of movement scandal. In July 2006, it was rocked by revelations that co-founder and chairman emeritus Cliff Herrington’s wife was the “High Priestess” of the Joy of Satan Ministry, and that her satanic church shared an address with the Tulsa, Okla., NSM chapter....

A growing number of the NSM’s protests have targeted immigrants recently. On June 19, 2010, NSM members J.T. Ready, Jeff Hall and about eight other individuals (some of whom were not NSM members) congregated in Arizona’s Vekol Valley. Hall described the goal of their operation as to “fight the [Mexican drug] cartels and reclaim the land.” Armed with pistols and high-powered rifles, the group led patrols through the desert and “secured” an abandoned building. They claimed to have apprehended three illegal immigrants attempting a border crossing, although this has not been independently confirmed.

We're wondering how much the CPD presence is going to cost, and can we send the bill to Jeff Schoep at the group's headquarters in Detroit?

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.

Bob Gerecke Doubles Down on Stupid

Follow-up Smear Email by
Former Claremont Democratic Club President.
Believes Claremont Voters are Morons

Thursday (yesterday) found Bob Gerecke (right) still hyperventilating over the Opanyi Nasiali satire piece done in the Daily Bulletin and Claremont Courier last summer.

He sent a follow-up email to some of his friends in Claremont (OMG, does he have any?) that someone forwarded to us. See below.

Apparently he thinks this is the stick he needs to beat that mad dog Nasiali and clear the way for his city council favored candidates, Joe Lyons and Robin Haulman. Gerecke is almost a one-man mudslinging machine on this subject, getting by with a little help from his friends in the original ad (see list at end of post).

As we indicated yesterday, his is a completely cock-eyed view of Nasiali's piece. In fact, in his email, he can't decide what is serious and what is satire. He ascribes an almost unbelievable cleverness to Nasiali, as if Nasiali were writing in code to some people that most of us couldn't crack. Luckily he is riding to the rescue on his hobby-horse with a decoder ring and emails blazing.

Notice the list of scandalous statements ascribed in the email to Nasiali: this time he extracts them and removes the satiric punchlines, knowing most in his audience won't bother to look at the original for context. Oh, a clever guy, that Bob is. Almost as unbelievably clever as Nasiali

This whole thing is laughable except that it does have one serious point. It shows the extent of desperate action Gerecke will take when he thinks his candidates might not make the grade. It shows his unrestrained willingness to engage in sleazy campaigning.

It's amazing he believes anybody in town will buy what he is selling. He must think the total IQ of the town is somewhere south of room temperature. Gerecke (and his fellow-travelers who signed the original ad--listed below) should be objects of scorn, or pity, or both.

Here is the email:

From: xxxxxxx xxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 7:27 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: FW: RECENT BIZARRE STATEMENTS BY A COUNCIL CANDIDATE

Buzz:
FYI. Another stinkbomb from Bob Gerecke.

------ Forwarded Message
From: Bob Gerecke
Reply-To: Bob Gerecke
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2011 17:58:38 -0800
To: xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RECENT BIZARRE STATEMENTS BY A COUNCIL CANDIDATE

Hi, [redacted]

This adds information to what was in Wednesday's Courier; it's also written for those who didn't see the Courier.

PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ALL OF YOUR CLAREMONT FRIENDS.

As a concerned Claremont citizen, I was shocked to discover startling statements authored by Mr. Opanyi Nasiali, candidate for Claremont City Council, which were published on September 2, 2010 in the Opinion section of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. This article is available online in the newspaper’s archives and was re-printed in full in Wednesday’s Claremont Courier, page 18. Opanyi’s article, titled “Ways to Cut Government Spending,” included strange proposals that defy any definition of a responsible elected official. His proposals included the following, here extracted and quoted verbatim from his article:

· “Eliminate the police and let all citizens arm themselves.”

· “Eliminate public schools so that all children are home-schooled, if not in private schools!”

· “Get rid of Social Security.”

· “No public mass transportation facilities.”

· “Stop government subsidies to small businesses.”

· “Do not spend any money on research.”

· “Do not spend money on space exploration.”

· “Unemployment benefits? They cost too much.”

In two recent candidate forums, Opanyi said that he opposes restoring the cuts to our police department, and he repeated his preference for armed citizen self-policing – after all, it worked in the rural Kenyan village in which he was born! Despite his statement to some voters that he was writing "tongue in cheek", he really sympathizes with the most extreme of the views he expressed.

He wrote the piece quite cleverly, allowing himself to describe it as serious to those who like his proposals and as "tongue in cheek" to those who don't. Some of his points seem to come from the ultra-right agenda, but others appear to parody it. So, was Opanyi serious about some of his proposals but not about others? Or about all? Or about none? Does he himself see a distinction between ideas which are wacky and those which are simply very "small government"?

We can only imagine the chaotic effects on the work of the Claremont City Council, and the impacts on the public good of Claremont, if a person of such bizarre thinking were to be elected. I urge Claremont voters to give attention to the kind of thinking that delivered these proposals, and decide whether there is any place for it in Claremont City government.

PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ALL OF YOUR CLAREMONT FRIENDS.

AS VOTERS, THEY HAVE A RIGHT AND A NEED TO KNOW.

THANKS VERY MUCH.

-- Bob Gerecke

* * * * *

Signers of the original ad:

Ann Joslin
Bob Gerecke
Cynthia Humes
Jim Antonich
Lynn Savitzky
Roy Durnal
Sally Alexander

Full Circle

History repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce, and finally as desperation.


HISTORY

In 2003, a group calling itself Residents United for Claremont paid for an election eve, citywide mailer that tried to scare voters into supporting incumbents Sandy Baldonado, Karen Rosenthal, and Al Leiga. The RUC letter warned voters that they would face the loss of vital city services if challengers Jackie McHenry and Peter Yao were elected. McHenry and Yao won, and, contrary to what RUC had predicted, the sun still came up in the morning.

Click on Images to Enlarge

TRAGEDY

In 2005 came Preserve Claremont, about whom we've written much. PC raised nearly as much money as some of the candidates' campaigns. They used the money tattacking Jackie McHenry and Corey Calaycay with innuendo, rumor, and, in at least one case, a blatant lie. The PC experience so tarred the people behind it, that many, including a few leftover from the Residents United Campaign, rejected the group or at least started to display independent thinking.


DESPERATION

The hardcore PCers, though, just went underground and work mostly behind the scenes now. Some of the true believers like J. Michael Fay and Bill Baker, respective treasurers for city council campaigns of Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman, still take active roles when called upon for the their services and PC experience.

Haulman was the original chosen one of the PCers, but some of the antics surrounding her campaign - cheating in a debate or stealing another campaign's fliers - damaged her candidacy to the extent the Claremonsters had to have an insurance policy in Lyons. So, you see people like PC spokesman Butch Henderson donating money to both Lyons and Haulman. And they've hitched the Haulman-Lyons wagon to incumbent Sam Pedroza to get people to vote for the three of them as a slate, the hope being that Pedroza's coattails pull the other two along into office.

Yesterday's Claremont Courier had a full-page ad (purchased at the going rate of a little less than $900), taken out by a group calling itself "Concerned Claremont citizens." (Their civic-minded concern apparently isn't large enough to warrant a capital letter for themselves.)

The CCC ad took what had been a sarcastic letter to the editor from council candidate Opanyi Nasiali and turned it around by interpreting it literally. Nasiali's letter (posted below) appeared in the Daily Bulletin and in the Courier last September.


The ad proclaimed "WE ARE SHOCKED!" and falsely intimated that Nasiali was serious about eliminating the police and public schools. It asked the reader, "Is this someone we want on the Claremont City Council."


What's really shocking is the implied contempt the ad has for voters. They expect readers won't read Nasiali's full text and will just scan the bullet points, helped out by the large arrow pointing the eye neatly past the context-placing introduction.

The ad was signed by eight people, including Ann Joslin, a Claremonster in sheep's clothing along with her life partner in crime Planning Commissioner and aspiring council candidate Bob Tener. Joslin's still sore at Nasiali for opposing the Parks and Pasture assessment district and for his successful backing of the Measure S bond for Johnson's Pasture, both in 2006.

Not coincidentally, also in yesterday's Courier, Joslin and Tener have a letter extolling the virtues of Joseph Lyons. The Joslin-Tener letter, together with another from Architectural Commissioner Susan Schenk singing the praises of Robin Haulman, are designed to work in concert with the "Claremont Concerned citizens" ad. The latter is supposed to drive people away from Nasiali, who has been running ahead of Lyons and Haulman, and the letters are there to attract voters who buy into CCC's attack ad.

Another CCC signer was Bob Gerecke, who has been working for the Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons alliance. Gerecke is a past president of the Claremont Democratic Club, whose repertoire of dirty tricks in this campaign has included appropriating private property for campaign signs. Gerecke's wife Katie, is the past president of another Claremont 400 institution, the League of Women Voters.

Yet another is Sally Alexander, who one reader notes is the 97-year-old mother of Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons supporter Sandy Hester, making Alexander the oldest frontwoman in Claremont election history.

As we say, none of this is new. The Claremonster playbook only has two or three pages, all of them outlining some aspect of their bullying ways. Expect to see more of the same, possibly including one or two hit pieces paid for by municipal employee unions awaiting new contracts.

As this election winds down, we see all these strands coming together so that the all too familiar design becomes visible. In five days, on March 8, we'll see how it turns out. In Claremont, we've always gotten the government we deserve.

Attention to Detail

click image to enlarge

Last Wednesday's edition of the Claremont Courier was interesting not just for the letter by Professor McHenry putting the community onto Bridget Healy's exaggerations, but also for containing what is in all likelihood the final campaign piece of the Larry Schroeder campaign. Schroeder has become, by process of elimination if not by predilection, the Democratic Party candidate in this nominally non-partisan campaign.

His campaign piece was a single page four-color glossy sheet (reproduced above) inserted in the paper with the ads from furnace duct cleaners and insurance seminars. Apart from giving no reasons at all to vote for him, his flyer featured not quite 70 names in largish 14-point type.

What struck us was lack of attention to detail and accuracy in this piece. Line 3 absolutely jumps out at the long-time Claremont observer: Zephyr Tote-Mann (as Schroeder has it) contended for City Council in 2003. She was quite consistent in that election in spelling her last name, "Tate-Mann". We don't know any "May Stoddard" in Claremont, but a friend of ours is Mary Stoddard who lives at the same residence as Stuart, the preceding name on the list. And to our knowledge, there is only one "Joe Lyons" in town, but his name inflates the list (by one) by being listed twice. We have very helpfully highlighted these occurrences in the image above.

We realize that these observations are picking the fly-specks out of the pepper. They are small beer. Chump change. But we here at the Insider do it so you don't have to. Our broader question is this: Why can't candidate Schroeder get a one-page flyer more right than this? He's already gotten a pass from the newspapers on his idea related to the transportation money funding the Trolley: this was to sell the money to some community needing bona fide transportation money, receive maybe 75 cents on the dollar, and bank it in the general fund. Where was Schroeder a year ago when city staff and council were considering the Trolley? Where was his good idea when it might've done some good?

So many of Schroeder's ideas don't stand up to any probing. His views on the water company, for example, are based on ignorance of the facts of the water situation. You didn't have to go the water meeting a few weeks ago to figure that out.

Still, as our old daddy once told us, "Ignorance can be cured but stupid is forever." Maybe someday Schroeder will make a decent candidate and get wider community support than that he seems to be getting from the yellow-dog Democrats such as Bob Gerecke, Gar Byrum, Ivan Light, Sandy Hester, and failed congressional candidate Russ Warner.

Mismanaged Risk

PAST IS PROLOGUE

We've written quite extensively over the past several months on the affordable housing project on Base Line Rd. We've chosen the issue because we feel it offers a perfect case study for what has gone wrong in our local decision-making over the past 20 years.

Whether it's fiscal policy, police policy, parks and recreation policy, redevelopment policy, maintenance policy or employment policy, the same factors in mismanagement by city staff, elected and appointed officials, and the social network that ties them all together have been at the heart of all our various crises.

It's been very easy to predict the actions that staff, city officials, and the Claremont 400 will take because they have the same kinds of actions again and again in the past. As the saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Or, "The definition of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

Still, we have to wonder, what sort of growth as a community is it going to take to break out of this stupid cycle?


RISKY BUSINESS

On Monday we wrote about the lack of understanding of risk that clouds the arguments of proponents of the affordable housing project. The proponents, groups like the Claremont League of Women Voters or individuals like Claremont Democratic Club president Bob Gerecke and Human Services Commissioner Andy Winnick (more on the apoplectic Mr. Winnick in future posts), have criticized opponents who feel that the Base Line project should be moved to a different site because the project's Environmental Impact Report found that the site's proximity to the 210 Freeway will present hazardous pollutant impacts to children.

We find it odd that Winnick, Gerecke, and others who are nominally liberal Democrats in their politics would so eagerly abandon the environmental plank of their party's platform to push this project through. But, as we've said again and again, this sort of hypocrisy is what undermines the credibility of Winnick, et. al., in this particular instance and the Claremont 400 in general.

The ease and willingness with which they contradict and abandon previous positions is why such people cannot be believed. This capriciousness underlines the lack of rational thought involved in their positions on this and other issues. Measured against their own words, they are inconstant, emotional, and insincere - some of the very things they attribute to their opponents.

Winnick and others in the January 8th Claremont City Council meeting railed against the opposition to the Base Line Rd. project in condescending, patronizing and mocking voices. Worse, not only did they choose to ignore the weight of considerable scientific and medical evidence (a 10-year long study by the USC School of Medicine involving 11,000 subjects), but they pretty much called anyone who use such evidence in their arguments ignorant and racist.

In their arguments, Winnick and other proponents of the Base Line Rd. project say that it is not for the city of Claremont, the project opposition, the USC researchers, or anyone else to determine what risks the future affordable housing tenants should take. Winnick and company say that it should be up to each individual tenant to decide for themselves.

It is this Winnickian point that we find most hypocritical of all. One of the main complaints of Democrats with our current economy (Winnick, an economist, should know this) is that the burden of risk has increasingly shifted to individuals, away from employers and away from the government.

Private corporations, for instance, are requiring employees to pay ever larger portions of their health insurance (if it's even offered). And the private retirement pension is pretty much a thing of the past. Employees have to fund their own 401(k)s or other individual retirement accounts.

Or consider the debate over privatizing Social Security. Conservatives argue that individuals would be much better and much more efficient at managing their own investment risks than the government. Liberals, on the other hand, say that Social Security is supposed to be a safety net, a kind of insurance policy, and that it's best managed by the government in the safest, lowest risk sorts of investments.

Yet, in this one particular, local project, the local League of Women Voters, Winnick and the rest - who are all on the liberal to moderate end of the political spectrum - are making the argument for less government intervention (except for construction money) and much more individual risk.


REVERSED PSYCHOLOGY

We've been left puzzled by the upside-down world that Winnick and the League have been inhabiting. However, we did manage to find some very useful scholarly advice written in October, 2004, that helps us understand or at least recognize such hypocrisy. The essay we found discussed the need for students to think critically when evaluating information:

By Critical Thinking I mean developing the habit, the routine reaction, to question everything one reads or is told -- and to do so from two perspectives:

First, we have to train our students to always ask – “What is the veracity of the author or speaker?” – which itself has two aspects:

• Does the person have an agenda, is s/he likely to be trying to persuade in support of some cause and how likely is the person to be shading the truth in support of that cause? – and
  
  
• Even if the person is attempting to be honest and “objective”, even if the person thinks s/he is being “scientific” or as the principles texts call it thinks s/he is “practicing Positive theory” – nevertheless, we have to train our students to ask: “What is her/his ideological perspective?” – “Where is s/he coming from?” – for we must all understand, and we must teach our students to understand, that no one is truly objective.

Good advice from a professor of economics and statistics, to which we might add the question, to what extent are the speaker's words consistent with past statements and positions?

The author of this piece? Andrew J. Winnick, California State University, Los Angeles.

League Maneuvers

TAYLOR POWER PLAY

As we noted in Wednesday's post, the Claremont City Council ended up certifying the environmental impact report (EIR) for the project. However, they only did so after two votes.

Councilmember Ellen Taylor made the first motion, which would have approved the EIR but which would also have removed from consideration any of the possible alternatives to the project. This was a power play on Taylor's part because if approved there would have been no chance of the project being moved.

Taylor's motion was defeated 3-2 (FOR: Taylor, Yao; AGAINST: Calaycay, Elderkin, Pedroza).

The second motion, which was approved 4-1 (with Calaycay dissenting), kept the alternatives available for future consideration.

Perusing the video for Tuesday night's council meeting, we counted a total of 32 people who spoke during the public comment on the project EIR. Of those, 22 were against the project and 10 for - more than a super-majority against putting the project on Base Line Rd.

What was more interesting than the numbers was the composition of the speakers. The people who spoke against the project were not members of Claremont's elite. They were average citizens. The proponents, on the other hand, were mostly all either connected to the Claremont League of Women Voters or they were city commissioners (or both). Among them were:

• C. Freeman Allen (LWV member)
• Bob Tener (Planning Commissioner, former Architectural Commissioner, City Council aspirant)
• Gwen Carr (LWV member, Human Services Commission Chair)
• Bob Gerecke (LWV member, Claremont Democratic Club President, spouse of Katie Gerecke, former LWV President)
• Andy Winnick (Human Services Commissioner)
• Mary Noonan (LWV member)
• Sharon Hightower (LWV Member, former Planning Commission Chair, chair of the city's General Plan Advisory Committee)
• Helaine Goldwater (LWV member, former Police Commission chair)

Looking at the above names really underscores the main problem with the process for approving these sorts of projects. If you are an average citizen you are really competing on an unequal playing field in trying to have a voice in the process. Your voice is really worth less than half of any of the people listed above. (Odd to see Mary Noonan throwing in with these folks, but such are the times we live in.)

The process is inherently unfair because there are no checks and balances. In these matters, the Claremont 400 and their representatives act as proponents, legislators, and judges. That is why people are compelled to challenge the city in court or in elections (RECALL!, as was shouted out more than once Tuesday night).

Moving the matter to court at least removes the city as final arbiter. Of course, litigation is never easy, but as the Palmer Canyon lawsuit showed, the city can be roundly defeated when the case is strong enough.


THE LEAGUE ON THE ATTACK

What's particularly odd about this case is the ignorance displayed by people like Winnick, Tener, Gerecke, Hightower, Goldwater, and the like. They've tried to take the main significant issue raised by the EIR - the fact that there will be unavoidable hazardous environmental impacts to children growing up on the Base Line site - and frame that as if it were an invalid argument raised by the project opponents.

This is, of course, a lie. The environmental concern about the site was NOT created by the people opposed to the Base Line project. The issue was raised by the city's EIR and by the USC Keck School of Medicine study that found children who lived within 500 feet of major highway had a much higher likelihood of impaired lung development.

When speakers like Mary Noonan get up and say that their children grew up next to the 10 Freeway and that their lungs are just fine, they think they're criticizing the project opponents. However, they are really taking on the USC Keck School work, which was a 10-year, peer-reviewed scientific study involving 11,000 children and published in the British medical journal The Lancet in February, 2007.

To someone watching from the outside, Noonan and the others sound every bit as ignorant as Flat Earthers in their remarks. We seriously doubt that Noonan or Winnick or Goldwater have spent 10 years, as the USC researchers did, compiling data on lung development in their children.

Yet, the League and Claremont 400 proponents of this project seem to be arguing that the USC study was part of a grand conspiracy of Base Line Project opponents to defeat their well-intentioned plan for affordable housing.

Imagine the cunning it took for the USC researchers to plan more than 10 years ago to set about to undermine the Claremont affordable housing project, to apply for grant money for their study, to gather research subjects, to devote 10 years of research time, resources and energy to their devious plan!

The ignorance of Winnick, et. al., extends to other arguments. For instance, they blur the distinction that the USC study made between living within 500 feet of major highway and merely living in the vicinity. To the study authors, there is a very significant difference. That is why some of the study's authors have weighed in on the subject.

And, Winnick and the like say that since we've built such developments in the past, we should continue to, which is really the same logic as saying that since we allowed certain kinds of auto exhaust systems in 1949, we shouldn't have catalytic converters.

The League also falsely argues that the timetable for building the affordable housing project makes the alternatives impossible. They claim that if we were to switch to one of the other possible sites it would take much longer than sticking to the current plan. This is nonsense and quite the opposite of the real situation.

In reality, if the city doesn't go to an alternative plan, one without the environmental concerns of the Base Line Rd. site, they will not qualify for the grants the city is counting on to build the project - that is, after any litigation on the matter has been hashed out. All you have to do is look at the Padua Park project to see where such stupidity leads. Seven years after a similar fight, after litigation finally ended, the park has no outside funding and the city is having to build the project in stages.

So, we have to ask, does the League really believe that changing to an alternative site would take seven years? Of course not! For one thing, an EIR would likely not be needed, and there would likely not be the opposition there is to the current plan. But the path-of-least-resistance strategy is lost on the clueless League, whose members seem to take an almost sadistic pleasure in hammering flawed projects down the throats of the public.

The League and friends also like the Andy Winnick tactic of disparaging members of the public who disagree with him. On Tuesday night, Winnick said he found the arguments opposed to the project (which by extension includes the arguments of the SCAQMD, the USC researchers, LA County Supervisor Michael Antonovich's oiffce) reprehensible. What Winnick is really peeved about is that ANYONE would question his assumptions. There is no logic or reason at work here.


THE EXAMPLE OF 2006

In the end, you can count on the League and the Claremont 400 will do as they always do: Turn on the opponents. They aren't just making bad arguments, the League says. They are EVIL.

In the 2006 Parks and Pastures Assessment District vote, they attacked opponents of the assessment saying that the claims of those people that they supported an alternative funding measure to buy Johnson's Pasture were false. The assessment proponents in essence called the opposition liars.

In that assessment campaign, the League, who just as they have done with the affordable housing issue, ran a large newspaper ad in support of the assessment. Further, the assessment proponents argued that the alternative, a bond measure, would never pass and that the assessment opponents would not work to help get a bond passed.

The reality was, after the assessment failed 44% to 56%, that a number of people who had opposed the assessment stepped up and worked with people they had formerly opposed and got a bond passed with a remarkable 72% of the vote in November, 2006. And many of the Claremont 400 people who had worked on the assessment - former mayors Diann Ring, Judy Wright, Al Leiga, Paul Held, and many others - were nowhere to be seen in the bond campaign.

So when the League and others claim that their affordable housing opponents are disingenuous in saying they support affordable housing at any other site but the current one, you have to take that with a grain of salt. There's the clear, recent example of Johnson's Pasture to show that people who've opposed one thing can turn around and work together to get an alternative accomplished.

If anything what that past example showed is the unreliability of the Claremont 400 when it comes to compromising and to working together with the larger community to achieve the consensus the League is always prattling on about.

This is where a community relies on its elected officials for guidance and leadership. The problem is that in the past the Claremont 400 has controlled all of the levers of power so that any compromise was impossible. Whether or not that control is as monolithic as in past years remains to be seen.

COMING UP: The Insider is at work on more video from Tuesday's meeting, including plenty of footage of a sour Andy Winnick so that you can see for yourself just how humorless and angry he can be.

Affordable Housing eMailbag

A reader notes that the Claremont 400 seems to have dueling talking points on the Base Line Rd. affordable housing project. On the one hand, they say the housing is for the poor. On the other, they argue that the project will allow much-needed middle-class workers like public safety workers or teachers to live there.

Our reader writes:

The Claremont 400 need to get their Karlrovian talking points in line. In today's Courier (Wednesday, November 28, 2007) Bob Gerecke writes in his letter the wonderfulness of having housing where "teachers, firemen and police" can be bear in case of disaster. So therefore the affordable and low cost housing is a boon. But meanwhile Mayor Pro Tem Taylor says the housing is for "poor people". Now my question is are teachers, firemen and police "poor people"? To be successful in the use of karlrovian speaking points they need a consistency in hammering home the relevant points of their argument. And bring a retired teacher I never new I was poor people, especially when at 31 I was able to purchase a home in Claremont for my family. (Nice home mind you in northern
Claremont).

And further in the debate, are these educated teachers, firemen, and police going to wave their rights and the rights of their children or even desire to move into a facility where an independent study and a governmental agency have both pointed out the health risks associated with the site.

Wow, the Claremont 400 talking points are confused and misguided. I would suggest they take on new ones that are more realistic if their plan for Claremont dominancy is to succeed.

Which is it? Poor? Middle-class? And what exactly makes the Claremont 400 think that the housing will be limited to any one class of workers? As usual, the claim is based on no evidence whatsoever. It's simply an emotional claim made to try to sway public opinion with no supporting facts to back it up.

The reader also cited a letter in the Claremont Courier by Claremont Democractic Club President Bob Gerecke, whom we last heard from when he inserted himself into last March's City Council election. Gerecke's wife, Katie Gerecke is a former Claremont League of Women Voters president, and the League, as much as any Claremont 400 organ, is pushing the Base Line Rd. project.

* * *

Another thing you'll see in this argument is the Claremont 400's refusal to discuss the fact that the project's draft environmental impact report (DEIR), which the city commissioned at a cost of $160,000, noted that there are serious problems with air quality on the site.

The DEIR specifically mentioned a 10-year USC Keck School of Medicine study released in January, 2007, that found that children who grow up within 500 feet of a major highway have a greatly increased risk of impaired lung development. The Base Line Project will be entirely within the 500-foot limit.

The 400 try to confuse the issue by saying, as Councilmember Ellen Taylor did a few days ago, that "we all live near freeways in Southern California." True, but we don't all live within 500 feet of freeways. Here, Taylor, is intentionally trying to manipulate public perception and ignores engaging on the facts.

Taylor and company try to muddy the waters further by arguing that Claremont has allowed other housing developments to be built along the 210 Freeway. This ignores the fact that the USC study wasn't released until early this year, so the projects Taylor refers to were built without this knowledge. In effect, Taylor is arguing that we should pretend that the USC study was never done and that we should proceed in ignorance of that information, as we did before.

Taylor and friends also try to ignore the fact that the South Coast Air Quality Management District has weighed in with a letter saying the projecd should not be built on the Base Line site. They want to pretend that if they don't talk about these things, they don't exist.

Do facts, logical argument, and critical thinking mean nothing to Taylor and the Claremont 400?

We would all agree that air quality is certainly central to the affordable housing discussion. It's a shame that people like Gerecke and Taylor have to degrade it further with the smoke they're blowing.

Hypocrites-R-Them

For some reason, the hypocrisy and absurdity of Claremont 400 politics has us musing about the duality of human nature.

Anybody remember back during the March 2007 election when the Claremont Democratic Club endorsed Sam Pedroza and Linda Elderkin for City Council? There was a bit of complaining, some by local Democrats who didn't support either of the endorsees. Those people argued that it was a non-partisan election and that the Democratic Club had no business endorsing anybody.

You may recall Bob Gerecke, the club's president, writing a letter to the Claremont Courier defending the club's endorsements. Gerecke's confused and emotional screed seemed to argue that if local Democrats didn't stand behind their candidates, first the city, then the state, then the nation would be overrun by Republicans. Democratic voters, Gerecke believed, have a duty to their party to vote for Democrats--in particular the two he wanted you to support.

Of course, Gerecke conveniently ignored independent Jackie McHenry, who was the only councilmember to take positions on a number of city issues that mirrored what one would expect the national Democratic Party to favor: the armed forces banners (against); sustainable building--well before Mayor Peter Yao took the issue up (for), the city's proposed homeless ordinance--since pulled because of a court ruling that a similar statute was unconstitutional (against). Even Councilmembers Ellen Taylor and Sandy Baldonado, both registered Democrats, had worse records than McHenry on those issues.

At the time of the election, we believed that Gerecke's hysterical portrayal of Claremont as a potential springboard to higher state and national offices by Republicans was just a power play by Gerecke and his Claremont 400 friends. They just wanted to get endorsements for their candidates. They didn't care about the truth of those endorsement arguments.

For instance, Democrat Pedroza also got an endorsement and support from a person named Mike Kunce, whose organization Claremonters Against Strip Mining was fighting the proposed Vulcan Mining Co. gravel mine. Yet, we noted that Kunce also was a $1,000 donor to an anti-immigrant movement called the California Border Patrol Initiative in 2005. Hardly a Democratic position, and a strangely ironic source of support for Pedroza, who is a Latino.

So, the signs were there early. Pedroza isn't the tow-the-party-line Democrat Gerecke would have you believe. Was Gerecke lying or just stupidly naive?

And Pedroza does have a history of talking out of both sides of his mouth, as he did during the past year. In August, 2006, Pedroza argued against the affordable housing project at Baseline Rd. and Towne Ave. Then, after a good talking to by the Helaine Goldwater arm of the Claremont 400, he switched positions, arguing in October, 2006, in favor of the project.

We bring all this up because of a Republican fundraiser invitation that has been circulating around town. The occasion was an April 26th Claremont event for California Assemblyman Anthony Adams, who is a Republican. There were a number of local Republicans listed as sponsors for the event, but one name caught our eyes: "Councilman Sam Pedroza!"

So here you have Pedroza, the beneficiary of the Claremont Democratic Club's endorsement, using his new official title to help raise money for our area's Republican assemblyman's campaign war chest. Bob Gerecke's silly claim that our local politics are partisan and that Republicans could benefit from the March Claremont election turns out to be not-so-silly after all. Only, he got it completely backwards--it's Gerecke's Democrat endorsee who's out to help Gerecke's Republican opponents.

Silly man! As Sam Pedroza could explain to you, life is so much easier when you don't have to be accountable for your positions.

What can you say? It's Claremont, folks.

Endorsements

We've already spotlighted the odd, inexplicable endorsements by Claremonters Against Strip Mining (CASM). Now onto the Claremont Democratic Club. They endorsed Sam Pedroza and Linda Elderkin. Why? For the same reasons as CASM endorsements. The Claremont 400 wants Pedroza and Elderkin pushed, and they want votes taken away from the other candidates.

Remember: the president of the Claremont Democratic Club is Bob Gerecke. Gerecke's wife Katie was the former co-president of the Claremont League of Women Voters, until she was suspended for unknown reasons (word is she took partisan stances on some issues--a League no-no).

The irony of the Democratic Club endorsement is that Sam Pedroza is also taking support from CASM president Michael Kunce, the CEO of Armstrong Garden Centers. Kunce is a registered Republican and in July 2005 donated $1,000 to an organization called the California Border Police Initiative. That organization was dedicated to sealing off California's border with Mexico by creating a state border patrol unit.

Kunce's support of this anti-immigrant group is ironic because his industry, the gardening and landscaping business, is so incredibly dependent on immigrant labor, both legal and illegal immigration. Kunce's backing is even more ironic since Pedroza is of Hispanic descent. Of course, this sort of ironic hypocrisy is nothing new in Claremont.

But, remember, this is Claremont--land of the inconsistent, the hypocritical, the goofy!

Here's a link to the 2005 Kunce donation (scroll down to 7/25/05): ElectionTrack.

And here is a link to the organization itself: http://www.calborderpolice.com/.