BEVERLY HILLS
October 21, 2011 | Page 31
From the Publisher CLIF SMITH HOW TO GET PLAYED FOR THE . . . We want to thank Mayor Barry Brucker for again blindsiding his own council by, this time, sending out a widely-distributed professional-looking “Message to the Community” eblast email. The email went out Tuesday while he was closeted with his city council colleagues in closed session. He did not tell them. (Did the PR firm he hired at city expense create it?) Why are we critical of our mayor? Because he has personally conducted a crusade to keep the City of Beverly Hills defenseless and unprepared for the coming battle with MTA’s tunnel under Beverly Hills High School. He has pandered to Los Angeles politicians while attacking our own School Board (he also adds The Courier to his enemies list, but not Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky or Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.) We are very grateful for his “Message.” In it, he confirms just about everything The Courier has been reporting for months. We ask our readers to compare his “Message” (reprinted in full on page 8 of this issue) with what just happened at the Metropolitan Transit Authority Planning Committee meeting Wednesday afternoon. At that meeting, what we have warned of came true and worse. This is the summary: just like Yaroslavsky, Villaraigosa and L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz promised —we can expect the MTA to dig its subway tunnel right under Beverly Hills High School. While Brucker continues in his “Message” to tell us how cordial he is and what good relations he has with the MTA, Yaroslavsky and Villaraigosa, they dropped a bomb on him, Beverly Hills and even portions of Century City (especially those not owned by their campaign contributors). Not only did MTA staff reject every single suggestion Brucker and fellow-MTA apologist Vice Mayor Willie Brien gave them to avoid the Beverly High tunnel, they concluded that there are so many earthquake faults around us that we must realize that the affected properties could be unbuildable and thus worthless—certainly not worth their current value. For the dozens of Beverly Hills property owners who will get tunnels under their homes and properties, good luck getting even decent compensation from MTA for intrusion via “eminent domain” takings. Noise? Wait and see but MTA says “no more than 34 decibels.” Vibration? Wait and see but MTA says 72 decibels likely. What will your properties be worth in the meantime? Who knows? The noise and vibration will cloud your home values. The uncertainty means that you just lost tens of thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. Thank you, Barry Brucker. Mayor Brucker has proudly told us that he has hosted Supervisor Yaroslavsky and MTA head Art Leahy in his home. His “cordiality,”he claims, is in stark contrast to the clear line-in-the-sand drawn by the Beverly Hills Unified School District Board of Education. When they (and The Courier) uncovered the “bait and switch” planned by MTA to put the tunnel under Beverly High, they said “no way.” Councilman John Mirisch said “no way.” Councilwoman Lili Bosse said “no way” Councilman Julian Gold campaigned with “no way” but promptly joined Brucker and Brien in refusing to fight. Worse, they refused to prepare to fight. Our own Marla Schevker, denied access to MTA documents to prove the suspicion, found the “smoking guns” in the City of Los Angeles Planning Department. We chased down documentary proof that the subway route our own citizens committee approved was now gone. When we published that information, the MTA cried “foul” and accused us of printing falsehoods. Brucker said we engaged in “Yellow Journalism.” He likes to keep saying that, along with his personal insults of elected leaders of the school board. Read Brucker’s “Message.” He tells us that he will get the school district lots of MTA money. Oh? The MTA “experts” said there is no impact on the campus, which means no money. All along, Brucker has tried to persuade us, the PTAs and everyone else that he can cut a deal because he is “honey” and the School Board is “vinegar.” Those of us who have been around knew this was pure, utter naïve nonsense and, unfortunately, we can all say this is what we knew would happen. “We told you so.” Even Winnie the Pooh defends his honey jar more forcefully. So, instead of preparing data, instead of working with the School Board like city councils did when personal injury celeb Erin Brockovich tried to hold up the district and the City for millions, he said, “I will do this alone.” Well, he, Brien and Gold stand convicted all alone. By themselves. They got rolled but good. They got played but good. They have lost months of preparation time— months when they could have helped arm our School Board with facts and data and political clout. Instead, they insulted, criticized, undercut and undermined the very School Board whose official, legal job it is to defend our schools. The Courier has written for months that Yaroslavsky and Villaraigosa work for the City of Los Angeles and are promoting the business interests of their campaign contributors in Century City. It was “not personal, just business.” That’s how politics works. Heck, this writer has known Zev Yaroslavsky and his wife Barbara for years. He’s effective at what he does, but now what he’s doing is trashing Beverly Hills to benefit Los Angeles. How hard was that to figure out? We guess it was too hard for our mayor, the vice mayor and their rubber-stamp sidekick. Now the fight really begins. Beverly Hills is truly fortunate that our School Board, led by President Lisa Korbatov (whom Brucker never tires of disparaging), Vice President Brian Goldberg, with Steven Fenton and Jake Manaster (even occasionally Myra Lurie) saw reality. They saw this coming. They are prepared. Do we believe the MTA experts’ conclusions? No. Why not? Answer: they have had the data for nearly a year and refused to release it. If it truly backed up their opinions, they would have released it a long time ago. Instead, they stonewalled the BHUSD and their own board members until the last second. We believe that this was a deliberate effort to prevent anyone from challenging their conclusions by conducting their own research. If MTA’s paid consultants actually had the facts they claim, they would have shared the facts. They did not —they have done everything they could to hide them. Brucker (whom we strongly believe knew for weeks what was coming, because he told us so) continued with the fake story of “let’s wait for the EIR” as though that really mattered. We need leaders who will protect Beverly Hills, not offer honey.
This week’s “Police Blotter” will appear on The Courier’s website: www.bhcourier.com
Rabbi Jacob Pressman THOUGHT FOR FOOD I assume my educated readers are familiar with the Malthusian Theory. For the few who are not, let me introduce you to the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, an English scholar who lived from 1766 to 1834 and whose theories have been widely debated to this day. He maintained that population growth would one day exceed human capacity to feed and sustain it, and sooner or later the human population would be ravaged by famine and disease. Sounds pretty frightening, doesn’t it? However, at this moment there are whole populations starving, especially in Africa, for whom the United Nations, and especially the United States, are trying desperately to provide food. I still remember a class in economics I took at the University of Pennsylvania in which the professor pooh-poohed the theory and maintained that as the human population grows, so will its capacity to feed itself. I listened, and hesitantly raised my hand and asked: “If the population keeps growing then by simple mathematics there will come a time when we just can’t produced enough food.” “No, no,” he said, “the more people, the more food, forever.” Somehow, I wasn’t convinced. At that time the U.S. was sending shiploads to a starving Russia, and after World War II rescued Europe from starvation. Could Malthus have been wrong, and there is no end to the world’s capacity to feed itself? Or, as others suggest, will there be massive starvation, and bloody wars keeping what’s left of the population alive? At the present time every six seconds a child dies somewhere in the world. It is estimated 1 billion persons, or out of the 7 billion people in the world, 1 out of every 7 is lacking nourishment. I, for one, do not see any signs this situation can be reversed. Malthus claimed: “That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence by misery and vice.” I believe he was right. What do you think?
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Dear Mayor Brucker, Thank you for your e-mail regarding the MTA and the issues regarding the route through Beverly Hills and the articles on the subject in The Courier. Frankly, I am glad The Courier is making some sort of stand with or without errors and that you come to realize that the community at large elected all of you to serve us, and not as a dictator. We have been residents of this wonderful city for over 40 years and have seen many mayors and city councils come and go. I believe that an issue with this council and your mayorship is that you and your colleagues do not listen to the wishes of the community. You seem to do what you want and that is not why we elected you and your council. You were elected to serve us. I feel that each time I visit the council regarding a subject that is dear to me and the community, all I receive are blank stares. I don’t feel that I am connecting with any of you and you aren’t listening to what I have to say. I believe I stand for a lot of community members who do not want a subway under our high school or any school in Beverly Hills. Seismic faults aside, we simply do not want that route. It is therefore your job to inform the MTA and fight for us. How can a route on Santa Monica Boulevard be more dangerous than digging under our high school which is probably two football fields away from the route under Santa Monica Boulevard? You are constantly at odds with the school board when you should be working together. Frankly, I am not happy with your performance or the performance of Drs. Brien and Gold. I am sure that there are many other members of the community who feel the same way. You are basically running a dictatorship. By the way, perhaps two years ago we had meeting after meeting about Roxbury Park and renovations. I hope that you review those meetings and make your decisions on the renovations based on what the community wants and not what you want. Thanks for reading this and I await your response, Marcia Hollander Southwest Homeowners Board Member
****** As a urologist who has been caring for prostate cancer patients for more than 40 years and founder/president of the Tower Urology Medical Group (which represents 11 board-certified urologists with 84,000 active patients), I was deeply troubled by the recommendation of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that healthy men should no longer receive prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood tests as part of routine cancer screening. Early detection is critical to the success of prostate cancer treatments. we’ve seen a nearly 40 percent reduction in prostate cancer mortality since PSA testing became commonplace for men over 50. The new recommendation needlessly puts men in harm’s way. All men should be able to make an informed decision with their doctors about prostate cancer screening. Dudley Danoff, MD, FACS ****** This past Tuesday there was a walk of the BHHS grounds and Century City for the school board candidates and invited citizens to inform us of the issues facing the district if the Metro board chooses the more expensive, more invasive route under our high school. It’s not a pretty picture. I hope they’ll put up a video tour with the info soon–it's enlightening. The capper of the tour was walking from the BHHS to the two stops. If our group of (“ahem: past school-age residents”) can bear the trek from Santa Monica to Constellation without breaking a sweat (some of us in suits), I think commuters like me can. Certainly it's less than the walk that the people at the Century Plaza Towers take to get to lunch at the mall. As a matter of fact, it’s the same distance shoppers in Century City Mall take to go from Macy’s to the Container Store. Without any moving sidewalks, DASH buses or monorails. Tom Pease