Reflections on GHWB

Reflections of Navy JAG lawyer and General Counsel of a State Department agency who had the honor of serving and spending time with him, his family and friends, when GHWB was Vice President and President:

His biggest “problem” was not being as mean spirited as those who put their own interests before the national interest, which he refused to do. That is a “problem” we want and need our President to have...every time.

Lura and I are in Kona and woke to this sad news. Comforted by thinking about how unsurpassed his life was in every respect. Also reflecting that his faith sustained his resolve in all he did to the very end.

So glad my daughter Natalie and son-in-law Jonathan joined his granddaughter Marshall for the 2018 Bush family celebrity golf invitational at Kennebunkport, and got to visit with the President at Walker’s Point this summer. Natalie and Marshall were flower girls at Scott and Lindsay Bush’s wedding in the White House years. 

We all were inspired to serve and he made being conscientious a higher value than being recognized for success. We wanted to be part of something that mattered and made a difference, something bigger than just us. 

He had the big shoulders, he was all the big man we needed, big enough he did not need to act big, and that made us want all the more to serve and be part of his cause. He modeled competence with compassion, strength with restraint. 

He taught us all how to handle success and failure with grace and character. What a gift, enabling his people to go our own ways and succeed in post-public service careers and life.

Howard Hills

Laguna Beach

Gadfly responds to previous letter writer

I am the “local political gadfly” Howard Hills referred to in his recent letter to the editor. Clearly, he and I have a difference of opinion when it comes to interpreting “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and the impact Bob Dylan’s iconic song had on turning Orange County bright blue last month. 

One definition of a gadfly is, “An annoying person who provokes others into action.” If that is true, then I am flattered by Howard’s description. During the course of my career, countless people have thanked me for inspiring them to become involved in both national and local politics. I’d like to think that’s because my political radar is pretty darn good. Consider the following:

I first crossed paths with Jimmy Carter’s campaign in 1974. That is when Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s political eyes and ears, used to visit the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington. I was a fundraiser for the DNC at the time and remember telling friends to watch Carter.

After Gary Hart made a campaign stop in Newport in 1983, I told the event organizers, David Stein, Bernie Schneider and the late Stuart Karl, I did not share their enthusiasm for the Colorado lawmaker. They were sure the young senator had a chance of defeating Ronald Reagan the following year, but I said no.   

Like a lot of people in 1990, I wondered which Democrat would capture my party’s 1992 nomination. When Bill Clinton convinced Orange County Republican heavyweights like Kathryn Thompson, Roger Johnson and Harriett Wieder to cross party lines and join his campaign, I remember telling friends to watch Clinton.

In 2007, I was picked to be Barack Obama’s wing man during a stop in Newport Coast. After spending an hour introducing him one-on-one to a room full of VIPs, I was convinced he was the candidate to watch in ‘08. Over many objections, some from my own family, I decided to support Obama a year before he made history. 

And then there was Hillary Clinton in 2016. I spent most of the year promoting her efforts to become America’s first female president. That is until mid-September, six weeks before the general election, when I wrote a piece in the Register urging Clinton to fire her inner circle of advisors. I was attacked by Democrats near and far for being a “know-nothing” but guess what? It turns out this gadfly’s radar was more right than wrong.

Which brings me to the 2020 presidential candidates today.

If you believe the pundits, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vt., Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Mass., former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris of Calif. are the early front-runners. 

Almost everyone else who is mentioned – Sen. Cory Booker of N.J., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of N.Y., former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Va. and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg – hails from the East Coast. Three other possible contenders, Sen. Sharrod Brown of Ohio, Beto O’Rourke of Texas and entertainer Oprah Winfrey, also deserve mentioning. 

Having been a student of politics since the late 1960s, I know most of these wannabe candidates will come and go long before the Iowa caucus in 2020. 

One person that has staying power beyond the borders of the Hawkeye State is Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minn. She has all the credentials necessary to win the presidency two years from now. First, she already has a 12-year track record as a senator; second, she is from the Midwest; and, third, she is, well, a woman. 

Klobuchar’s impressive win November 6th proved she not only did well in urban areas of Minnesota, but she also knew how to rack up votes in rural parts of the state as well. That is a quality many, if not most, of her Democratic rivals would envy during the primaries and/or have a problem duplicating in the 2020 general election.

As mentioned, I have watched dark horse candidates Carter, Clinton and Obama win the presidency. No pundit I know gave any of them much of a chance of winning two years before the general election. The thing I like most about Amy Klobuchar is she is hiding in plain sight. According to Business Insider, she could “bury” Donald Trump. 

That said, senator, if you decide to run for president count this local political gadfly in. My political radar says you are the one to watch.

Denny Freidenrich

Laguna Beach

Ooooh, oooh, that smell: Noxious sewage odors along PCH unabated

Over three years ago, the city agreed in federal Judge David O. Carter’s court to begin a 10-year rehabilitation schedule for our sanitary sewer system, funding $3.5 million per year for 10 years, $35 million total. That was codified, i.e. formally agreed to contractually as a result of litigation initiated by California River Watch in October 2014.

My NGO, Clean Water Now (CWN), was the sole protectionist group to formally sign on to the lawsuit.

CWN joined because after 15 years of pro bono work on this issue as watchdogs, little rehabilitation or improvement had taken place.

For us it was unfinished business, our previous efforts around 2000 on the same topic were being ignored, the city not fulfilling its promises to both California and the Federal Environmental Protection Agencies. Fined substantially by Cal-EPA, a harsh warning by USEPA and a promised “Zero Tolerance” policy ratified, the city is a classic backslider. 

One of the burning issues was (and still is) the city’s archaic, dilapidated sanitary sewer system, the specter of larger overflows/spills looming plus one of the major defect symptoms: The buildup of H2S (hydrogen sulfide gases, that obnoxious odor of human waste) in several key neighborhood zones. (www.osha.gov/Publications/hydrogen_sulfide.html) 

It really hit home for myself and my neighbors here in Victoria Beach and just south along Coast Highway near Ruby’s and the Montage, as proven in court. Complaining letters about noxious odors had been written previously to the city over the course of nearly a decade, demanding redress and relief.

The city acknowledged the more pungent, problematic and objectionably smelly, deficient lift station gas reductions during the proceedings. Relatively inexpensive oxygen scrubbers were to be installed in all of our pump stations. So they said.

We along South Coast Highway were assured that we’d be a high priority being chronically affected: The lift station near Nyes Place by Dizz’s and the one on the stairs leading down to Victoria Beach near Sunset were mentioned as prime candidates. That rancid stench of H2S along PCH from Bluebird to the Montage Resort has never been abated, at its worst early mornings due to stagnant flows.

Don’t believe us? Get up early and walk, bike or commute this stretch in the wee hours of the morning: It’s what we wake up to, and like most here we like to leave our windows open – so leave your car windows open if you drive through as suggested, take a whiff and see if you’d like that to begin your day. 

It has been with great curiosity and sad depression that we’ve tracked the subsequent budgets since that compact was mutually agreed upon by all parties. I guess not having any council members or high echelon staff residing in this most impacted zone becomes “out of City official smell radius, out of mind?”

Now the litigation expenses regarding the Coastal Treatment Plant dispute with Moulton Niguel Water District in Aliso Creek Canyon has resulted in the City delaying indefinitely the rehab of the Victoria Beach lift/pump stations, using Laguna’s plaintiff role and attorney expenses as an excuse to continue to do nothing it seems. City Hall keeps alleging surpluses yet avoids compliance with mandated legal cures, it seems…meanwhile our already antiquated storm water and sewer systems continue to degrade.

LB taxpayers and fiscal watchdogs, self-described community eco-activists, media columnists plus council candidates petitioning at city budget hearings seem to be unaware of that compact with the court system, the plaintiffs demands and concerns about sewage spills and noxious gas emissions, which are unsafe, create hazardous air quality and beach conditions that trigger closures and decimate fragile marine eco-systems.

Viewing budgets subsequent to the settlement agreement, I can’t find any earmarked funds that confirm or sustain the city’s broken promises. Nor am I reassured by the lack of specificity regarding prioritization.

Myself and my alarmed letter-writing neighbors are justifiably wondering: Are we in Victoria Beach being punished for being whistleblowers, for exercising our rights to acquire a redress of legitimate grievances?

Obviously, no good deed goes unpunished here.

Roger E. Bütow

Laguna Beach

Let us support the ESA as a community

News coverage of “endangered species” often prompts one to think of Africa, and places beyond, where some of nature’s most iconic species are on the brink of extinction. We don’t always remember that right here in California we have plenty of threatened wildlife populations, and especially so in Laguna Beach, which borders the Pacific Ocean that is home to even more imperiled species.

In 1973, President Nixon established the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to protect threatened species, and to help struggling populations recover to healthy levels. 

With existential threats to so many plants and animals, it seems like an odd time to hamper the ability of the ESA to do its job, but that is exactly what the current administration is doing.   

In summary, these proposals make it more difficult to protect species, to add new species to the list, easier to remove species currently on the list, to reduce protections for imperiled species, to make it more difficult to protect critical habitat, and to bias listing decisions based on unreliable economic analyses rather than on scientific data.  Instead of protecting wildlife, these changes will have just the opposite effect. 

The ESA needs to be supported, in every way, and I hope readers will consider making plenty of noise for the ESA through social media outlets, conservation organizations, political connections, etc. At the end of the day, we simply can’t expect the planet to function properly when too many of its residents disappear. 

Verna Rollinger

Laguna Beach

Triumphalism trivializes peaceful democratic change

There’s no question Orange County was where the much-heralded blue wave made landfall. Voters of all political party affiliations and unaffiliated electors alike who voted for winning candidates earned the right to celebrate. Of course, divided government means Democrats no longer have the luxury of being the opposition party rallying resistance to Republican one party rule. We all hope leaders of both parties can do better than what we have seen the last decade. 

So it only served to trivialize democratic values when a local political gadfly recently misappropriated a 1964 civil rights anthem for utterly gratuitous political party sloganeering. To preserve integrity in literary historicity, let’s deconstruct the absurd assertion lyrics in Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’Changin’” were  “prophetic” in a narrow partisan sense realized by 2018 midterm election results in Orange County.

Those of us who took social and even physical risks demonstrating for Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the 1960s know better. Indeed, those of us who saw Dylan perform that song also know he loathes hearing wannabes who obviously missed the point interpret his songs. A later song, “Day of the Locusts,” was about Ivy League elitists similarly hijacking his literary legacy.

Next generation Americans should know Dylan’s songs stirred the national conscience in the 1960s when Democratic Party leaders controlled the White House and both Houses of Congress. Intoxicated by decades of one party rule, Democrats presided over military conscription laws discriminating against the poor and racial minorities. 

Democratic leaders were caught red-handed in official lies denying U.S. national security policy was failing in Vietnam, a war the majority of Americans eventually opposed. Under two Democratic presidents (JFK and LBJ) the U.S. pursued a no-win military strategy, ultimately costing over 58,000 American lives, most under the age of 21, tens times more than the War on Terrorism.   

Democratic one party rule in 1964 was unwilling to overcome internal opposition within the party caucus to civil rights legislation ending institutionalized racial segregation. President Johnson acknowledged the historic 1965 Civil Rights Act was made possible with the support of Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen.    

So it’s historical revisionism to even imply 2018 midterm results mean only one political party has stood on the right side of national values going back to 1964. Indeed, Clinton and Obama lost far more Democratic seats in 1994 and 2010 midterms, respectively, than Republicans in 2018. OC and California may well have fallen under San Francisco-based one party rule in 2018, but clearly the nation has not yet embraced the new California paradigm.   

Dylan’s song in 1964 recognized the times are always changing in America, because the Constitution empowers the people to reward success and punish failure. That’s how what government does right is sustained and what government does wrong is corrected. If anyone thinks one party has a monopoly on right or wrong, good or evil, here’s a few other Dylan songs about perils of democracy, starting with “Idiot Wind,” “Slow Train Coming” and “As I Went Out One Morning.”

Howard Hills

Laguna Beach