Ignoring the violence in a violent world HB Wins $22.4 Million Case

Me and some other guys stabbed another guy to death. At that same spot, a girl died of poisoning.

That was a a “few” years ago during a sixth grade Shakespeare Festival at a local public school. I was Marcus Brutus and my associates – using plastic swords – fatally ventilated Julius Caesar in a scaled-down version of the play by the same name.

Marilyn, playing Queen Gertrude in “Hamlet,” drank of a vial of some lethal concoction and expired right there on stage.

Retorts

Jim Tortolano

All that “violence” took place, of course, on stage in front of students and parents a long time ago. We got applauded.

In Fullerton there’s a controversy about a youth staging of “A Sound of Music,” a story made famous by the film starring Julie Andrews. In the original proposed version, pupils portraying Nazis wear the swastika and shout “Heil Hitler.” A controversy has ensued, as you might expect.

While a more circumspect educational operation might have said ixnay on the swastikanay, let’s face it. Kids are exposed to a ton of violence and prejudice every day.

Toy sections in stores are filled with Nerf guns, which – while not too dangerous – represent the shooting of one person by another. Video games and TV shows depict many evil characters threatening innocents.

A more-than-cursory reading of religious texts from just about all faiths includes gory sequences of man’s inhumanity to man. Recent research about the impact of social media suggests there is

City triumphs in lawsuit filed back in 2008

A payment of $22.4 million –plus interest – is coming to the City of Huntington Beach after the city’s court victory in a case about a loan made to developers back in the era of redevelopment agencies.

It’s a final victory in the case of City of Huntington Beach vs. State of California, a case first filed in 2008. In a letter to the city, the state finance agency wrote it “no longer denies this item … [and] in compliance with the judgment, the agreement for purchase and sale of property … is considered an enforceable obligation.”

Many cities – including Huntington Beach and Garden Grove – took out loans or made other financial arrangements – to spur development under then-existing redevelopment law.

When the state dissolved all such agencies, cities that were in the process of developing projects needed the approval of the state finance department to proceed.

Huntington Beach used the redevelopment process to develop three hotels in a resort district