Election Day: Cast your vote and show me the money

“Riverside’s lawsuit runs counter to California’s tradition of direct democracy. It sends a message that if you try to put an initiative on the ballot, you are likely to get sued and that the anti-SLAPP statute will not protect you, no matter how meritless the lawsuit. If the ruling is allowed to stand, initiative campaigns will be a game only the wealthy can play.”



---Peter Eliasberg, Manheim Family Attorney for First Amendment Rights at the ACLU of Southern California. The ACLU's Southern California branch is defending Ken Stansbury on the SLAPP suit.





Welcome to the newest visitor to this site, DHL Air Freight Company! Here's to hoping you give us quieter skies and a good night's sleep soon.




Just when you thought the book had been closed on what was Election 2007, the Press Enterprise has taken us all down memory lane by adding up the dollars and cents spent on political campaigns of the candidates who ran to fill four seats on the dais in Riverside.


Not surprisingly, former Councilman Dom Betro, from Ward One, spent the most money in a tough fight to try and retain his seat. He spent $264,721 while the man who defeated him, Mike Gardner, spent much less, $45,683.

The campaign chests were much more closely matched in the Ward Three contest with winner, Rusty Bailey spending $222,853 and former councilman, Art Gage checking in at $201,561.

Huge bucks were spent battling over the wide-open Ward Five seat with new councilman, Chris MacArthur having spent $193,098 and runner up Donna Doty Michalka spending $189, 976.

Steve Adams who won Ward Seven by only 16 votes, spent much more cash than his challenger, former mayor Terry Frizzel. He spent $141,614 to Frizzel's $22,519.



The financial breakdowns of who spent what in which ward race was very interesting. Obviously, campaigning for elections in Riverside costs money and so it's important to engage in aggressive fundraising, but it's still possible to launch grass-roots campaigns and perform very well as shown in the Ward One and Ward Seven elections. Right on!

If you want to run for the District One seat in the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, you can file your papers now. Councilman Frank Schiavone of the fourth ward has already done so. The candidate list for the Ward Four seat regardless of whether Schiavone wins or loses, is already beginning to fill up. Expect that seat to be competitive even if Schiavone loses his bid for county office and comes back to run again for city council. After all, a similar move by Adams didn't exactly scare off the competition for his council seat which he wound up winning by a scant 16 votes.

Campaign coffers for the county race are expected to run at about $1 million apiece. So the fundraisers have already begun in earnest for the 2008 season.





More and more young people are participating in the vote for the primary election today. It's important to use your vote because it's your voice. There are also different ballot initiatives, both at the local and state level.

In Riverside, former Councilman Ed Adkison's parting shot, otherwise known as Measure A, hits the ballots. It's all about clamping down on the epidemic of cockfighting that's going on in this city or so various heads of various departments paraded up to the podium to say when what would become Measure A came up for discussion at a city council meeting last year. In actuality, there was a single case of anything remotely related to cockfighting within city limits but that kind of gets lost in the cackling, crowing and scratching that's been going on at city council meetings in support of the measure any time anyone speaks during public comment to criticize or even question it.

So in the interest of shutting down the cockfighting industry which has had Riverside in its grip, Measure A is coming to you so that we can surrender the title, City of the Cocks ( in regards to fighting) to some other jurisdiction and move on to adopting titles which enhance the development of the tourist industry in this city.

It's interesting how the city council can vote to put an initiative on the ballot yet when community organizations try to circulate petitions to put an issue, say Eminent Domain in the wake of Kelo on the ballot, the city hires Best, Best and Krieger to file a SLAPP suit against them as happened to Ken Stansbury and the Riversiders for Property Rights. While Measure A is on the ballot, Stansbury's case is currently knocking at the door of the California State Supreme Court which will decide on the SLAPP suit.

It's interesting that ballot initiatives on Eminent Domain are apparently legal and have in fact been placed on local ballots outside of Riverside. But in Riverside, they're not legal at all. If they were, surely our city's attorney and outside attorneys wouldn't be spending the city's money to try to collect legal fees from the city residents who dared to collect signatures on a ballot initiative on Eminent Domain. Now there's a civic title: Riverside, the City that SLAPPs.

But what does Eminent Domain and roosters have in common? Ask the developers, who are no doubt interested in the proposal which will essentially urbanize the remaining rustic portions of Riverside.


Other local measures in the Inland Empire are listed here.



In Los Angeles, Police Chief William Bratton is the new utility tax for public safety which is otherwise known as Proposition S.


(excerpt)


Bratton, with his reputation as a no-nonsense cop who has overseen dramatic drops in crime since coming to Los Angeles six years ago, was the obvious choice to carry the message, political strategists said.

"From a strategic point of view, in addition to being the most credible person to talk about the potential impact of this, Bratton tells it like is," said political consultant Steve Barkan, who is running the campaign in support of the measure, Proposition S. "He's a straight-talker, and people respond to that."

For his part, Bratton has moved easily into the role. He has used flare-ups in violence to highlight the need for Proposition S. At a news conference Friday to announce arrests in a spate of recent gang shootings in South L.A., Bratton, speaking off the cuff, said that additional officers had been sent to the area to stem escalating tensions. Then, without missing a beat, he made his pitch.

"A defeat," he said, referring to the referendum, "would seriously mitigate the ability to do what we've done this past week . . . . The actions of the past week are a re-enforcement of one of the critical needs we have, which are resources to work with."



Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise spends election day providing an update of the conditions of the highway construction. Some day it will all be completed, but the congestion in the highways of Southern California is as bad as the air around it. Both top the nation's list of worst air pollution and worst traffic congestion.

It's not anticipated that any resolutions will be passed by the city council to recognize either accomplishment.



Riverside City Attorney Gregory Priamos' Bar Brigade has hit The Ville just before the television program, Girls Gone Wild was set to film there. The city's fire marshal has shut the place down citing several safety violations. Some might call Priamos and his crew, Riveside's 21st Century version of Carrie Nation but booze is bad for you and it should be regulated as much as possible. Thousands of people die every year after consuming this controlled substance called alcohol. Not as much as the carrying device for that controlled substance, nicotine, given that smoking takes out as many lives each year as would fill a city the size of Riverside but still a lot of people's livers start to resemble charcoal more than the vital organ it's supposed to be and alcohol consumption contributes to many forms of criminal behavior.

While the closure of bars in Riverside is the less publicized part of the Riverside Renaissance (which wasn't exactly a booze-free period), it will encourage the holding of block parties where the people will do the public drinking that they would have done in bars if Riverside had any, which of course will help bring entire neighborhoods together. Then we can ditch the latest title used to identify this city, which is this week, City of the Arts and become Riverside, City of the Boozy Block Parties. Intersection and block booze parties, perhaps with fencing around them an signs designating them as "booze gardens".


Any booze-fueled fights that once took place in bars will probably take place in intersections where parties are held and perhaps, even sanctioned under some official authority so that whoever wins one booze fighting title can challenge the winner of the one in another neighborhood as part of a city-wide booze fighting tournament. That might just be what's needed to put Riverside on the map, especially if it got picked up as a reality show.

While continuing the legacy of Nation may be viewed as a noteworthy endeavor, the bottom line is that booze lovers will either go to the local watering holes or they will create their own watering holes. History has shown that. You see that already with underage drinkers including those who are probably high school students heading off to meet in cul de sacs and other public places to play with booze. And then when they're finished, probably get in their own cars and drive home and hopefully, they will make it there safely. But not always.

University students who engage in the social ritual of binge drinking will continue to do so probably in the neighborhoods that already call the police over 450 times a year to come out and shut down noisy and unsightly boozefests in the University Neighborhood. In response to complaints, UCR students even the Highlander's editorial board have been unapologetic, saying or stating that because they are university students, it's their God given right to hold booze-flowing and noisy parties until the wee hours of the morning.

Bars as smelly as they are to walk by, as smoky as they used to be do serve some sort of purpose. As one local Riverside County judicial officer, Jeffrey Provost, once said in court, if you can't get drunk in a bar, where can you get drunk. If Riverside has a dearth of bars and clubs, I'm sure people looking to get boozed up will find some place to do it or make their own places. Hopefully, it won't be in your yard, or the street in front of your house or the nearest intersection or parking lots of closed businesses or whatever.

Bars should definitely be regulated and be operated legally and responsibly but if they don't exist, then they'll be replaced probably by less pleasant alternatives that are more difficult to regulate. People who drink should do so responsibly and not drink and drive, not drink and fight but many times people drink and become stupid, doing both. Left to handle it are law enforcement officers, who ironically are at an especially high risk of becoming addicted to alcohol and binge drinkers themselves. One Riverside Police Department officer crashed her vehicle one afternoon several years ago and was arrested with a blood alcohol well over .20 according to a police department representative in another city. Ironically, another city employee was driving the car that she hit, he injured his neck and was punished inhouse for not keeping quiet about it.


Interestingly enough, one bar that's been sued in Riverside County Superior Court because of a drunken brawl is Events Sports Bar and Grill. This bar along with the City of Riverside and a host of people have been sued by people allegedly injured in a bar fight that took place there in 2006 even though it's a stone's throw from one of the Riverside Police Department's field operations stations. The city's getting sued because allegedly there were police officers who while off-duty were at the bar but left while the fights were going on.

Is it on Nation's or in more modern times, Priamos' list of bars? We'll see.



Speaking of city attorneys, Rialto is getting ready to hire a replacement because it hasn't had one for a while. Actually it will be retaining a firm and the name should be familiar because it's Best, Best and Krieger. And it might be a permanent assignment.




A gang intervention program has come to Colton through the police officers' activities league.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)


I thought I was helping because I was taking a bad influence out of their home," Dominguez said recently, staring out at the after-school crowd at the Colton league's boxing gym. "But really I was seen as the bad guy, because I was taking mom or dad to jail."

The change in philosophy -- meant to improve police relationships with city youth -- is happening as officials move closer to a new teen center that will double as headquarters for the activities league.

The police department and Colton's community services department are collaborating on the $1 million project, which could break ground this summer.

It will expand an old, barely 3,000-square-foot gym inside Chavez Park into a 7,000-foot recreation center to serve hundreds of children seeking a wider variety of after-school programs.

"Their philosophy is not just, 'We book 'em when they do something wrong,' " Community Services Director Bill Smith said of police. "They legitimately want to work with us to catch the kids before that happens."



The promotion of a Cincinnati Police Department who was involved in a controversial fatal onduty shooting and used a racist slur because he was frustrated at gridlocked traffic, has continued to create an uproar.



(excerpt, Oread Daily )



Officer Caton also is alleged to have used a racial slur while responding to another officer's call for help in 2002. The slur was captured on tape by the cruiser's in-car video camera, police officials said. Caton admitted he used the epithet but blamed it on his frustration with gridlocked traffic. Caton told department officials that he did not usually use the slur.

Just sometimes?

After Caton's racist slur (that he doesn't usually use") was revealed the Rev. Damon Lynch III, president of the Cincinnati Black United Front, said the incident proved what many African-Americans had suspected about Officer Caton all along.

“It just shows the racist that he is,” said the Rev. Mr. Lynch. “Clearly the Cincinnati Police Department needs to root out people like Caton who hold these views toward African-Americans.”

Apparently the Cincinnati police department doesn't really care about racism on their force as they are proving once again with the promotion of this guy.

Did I mention that the now Sargent Caton was previously reprimanded for failing to make a report and for being in possession of a gun while driving under the influence and while off-duty?

Ever wonder why citizens living in African-American and working class neighborhoods are not so enamoured with the police department? If you are an OD reader you probably would answer that question, "no."


This is the same city that is finishing out a federal consent decree to reform its patterns and practices. Guess they still have some learning to do about the basics which is that if you promote an officer who uses racial slurs "not usually", you will be criticized and it will be justified. So much tax payers' money spent to fix its problems and they still are stumbling over a no-brainer like this one.


While on the subject of police corruption, there's an interesting book-length study of it authored by Sanja Kutnjak Ivkoic called, Fallen Blue Knights. A very interesting read and probably in the wake of scandals in police agencies from Maywood, California through Chicago and down to Atlanta, good blogging as well.

One thing the author does when presenting her thesis is challenge the separation of allegations of excessive force from allegations of internalized corruption which is most often done by special blue ribbon panels or police commissions to investigate allegations of corruption. One scandal, called Rampart which took place inside the Los Angeles Police Department intertwined the two in how it played out.