Claremont Insider Outsources to India

Pasadena Now may still be waiting for their first stories from India (see below), but the Claremont Insider has already outsourced a hilarious post on Claremont news.

Murder Suspect Arrested In Claremont

We saw this headline some time back.

The FBI arrested a man in Claremont, California, who is wanted for a murder in Henderson, Nevada.

Derrick L. McKnight, 28, was arrested by members of the FBI's Los Angeles Fugitive Task Force at a bus station in Claremont last Thursday afternoon. McKnight and an accomplice, Timothy R. Burnside, 26, are charged with murder, robbery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery, in connection with the death of Kenneth Hardwick in Henderson, Nevada.

We thought the relationship to the FC was merely coincidental. After all, the crime was committed in Nevada. However, several readers have sent it in recently and one made an excellent point.

Anonymous said...

This news hit close to home because I take the bus every day to Claremont. Specifically, I take the 187. I'm not sure if this guy was waiting for my line when they picked him up at a bus stop, but if so, he really puts the Murder in Murder Bus.

Very true. At times like these, it makes you wonder who you've sat next to on the bus.

See also:
MTA, the Murder Bus, and Racist Subsidies
Murder Bus Correspondence
The Murder Bus and Subsidized Transportation

Of Consulting Firms and City Managers. . .

Remember our post (and, more interestingly, your comments beneath it) about Sierra Madre hiring Mathis and Associates to find their next city manager?

The Claremont Insider makes some interesting points about Mathis and Claremont's former city manager. Thoughts?

And again, will any of the city manager's in the FC ever blog?

150 lbs of Medicine for 18-yr-olds With Headaches!

Anyone able to make it to the Claremont city council meeting on the pot shop issue? We want to hear your version of what happened.

Meanwhile, in West Covina, Alison Hewitt tells us that police busted an illegally operating "medicinal" distribution center, "confiscating more than 150 pounds of [medicine] and more than $10,000 [cash, I presume]." Oddly enough, at the time of the bust police found "a dozen 18-19 year olds...all in perfect health, complaining of migraines." Afterwards, "[a] hand-written sign on the door of the dispensary Monday read 'Closed for Good.' A 20-year-old who said he had a prescription for arthritis stood at the door after reading the sign." No, really? I'm shocked! But if my memory serves, we were just talking about these issues, weren't we?

Honestly, this whole "issue" cracks me up. The emperor wears no clothes. Consider that "[the tables were also covered in a wide variety of pot-laced food, such as lollipops, brownies with multi-colored sprinkles, beribboned bon bons, peanut butter, jelly, sodas, hot sauce, chocolate syrup, peppermint patties and bottles of 'Mother's Finest Medicinal Cannabis' and 'That Time of the Month Potion.' Mint patties, lollipops and "Reefer's" peanut butter cups appeared to be the cheapest items at $10 each, while some of the larger bags of marijuana were priced at $540."

Sounds like a veritable pharmacy, doesn't it? Except, the opposite...

Claremont v. Pomona: Putting Up the Wall

UPDATE
Please drink in the Claremont Insider's sparkling, refreshing, Frosty post on the matter:
As long as we're shelling out the money, why not build a wall around our town? Something there is that doesn't like a snob.
Brilliant.
__________________________________________________________


Will Bigham recounts the various places that the city of Claremont has sought to build a much needed, much expanded police station.

1. Vacant land near Oak Park Cemetery, Sycamore Avenue.
2. Howard Johnson Inn at Indian Hill Boulevard and San Jose Avenue.
3. Former Xerox property at Towne and Bonita avenues.
4. Packing-house project land at Indian Hill and Metrolink tracks.
5. Affordable-housing project land at Base Line Road and Towne Avenue.
6. Former rock quarry at Monte Vista Avenue and Base Line Road.

Option 2 and 6 would require the city to use eminent domain powers to force private property owners to sell their land. The Affordable Housing Bunny has big, pointy PR teeth when provoked, so they'll likely stay away from option 5. The ability to implement option 4 has come and gone, as the packing-house is full up of private development now. Option 1 is also off the table, because, unbeknownst to the FC blog "An expansion of the cemetery onto the vacant land was recently authorized by the City Council."

That leaves the, ahem, nuclear option—#3—nuclear because, as we've discussed before, Claremont wants to take a small part of Pomona unto itself.

In case you don't remember, Pomona didn't react very well to this idea. And Will Bigham also reports that Claremont Police Comissioner Gary Soto recently responded by calling Pomona Mayor Norma Torres "someone who lacks political savvy and professionalism." Heh.

I can understand Pomona's eye-rolling attitude when it comes to wealthy Claremonsters wanting to take away a plot of Pomona land that could serve as the site of a tax-generating business. After all, Claremont is basically saying, "Well, putting a police station within our own borders would cause us to have to make hard choices. Hm. Hey Pomona, why don't you fork it over? What's it to you, anyhow?" As I've said before, why not just put up a wall?

On the other hand, it sure doesn't seem like businesses are lining up around the block to set up shop at this site at present. And impressions aside, it would seem that a police station at the site would only help Pomona's crime problem. Anyhow, look for Claremont to begin the Anschluss by claiming that the land was theirs to begin with while stirring up general Claremontster anger towards Poormoana.

The real upshot of all of this is that it's giving David Allen some damn fine column material:

In Pomona, city commissions aren't a steppingstone to the City Council, they're a dead end. Where's the talent pool? (For the dispiriting answer, look at the City Council.) ... Rather than extend to Pomona a neighborly helping hand, Claremont's best and brightest generally prefer to stick out their tongue.

(See also the first round of joking on the matter.)

By the way, the Claremont Courier has an online article by Tony Krickl headlined Will South Claremont Finally Get Some Respect?

Medicine-You-Can-Smoke and the FC

Claremont, San Dimas, and a whole bunch of the FC are dealing with regulating medical pot centers. See the comments on medical marijuana developing beneath this post.

Frankly, the issue bores me. If we were to treat marijuana like any other pain killer from the opiate family or otherwise, we would let scientists isolate the good properties from the bad and make medicine by putting the good into pill form the best they can. In fact, they have already done so, its perfectly legal, and the drug is called Marinol. So 1) I support continued research by scientists to develop drugs that use the THC or whatever else is in pot that can help people suffering with pain. 2) I have sympathy with those who argue that the federal government should leave this issue up to the states.

Given those two provisos, the problem is that many in our state want to smoke their "medicine" in massive amounts. As it currently stands, you can get a prescription for pot because you tell the right doctor that your feet hurt from wearing high heels. Come on, people.

I'm no fan of the feds, but I think this position paper has it largely right:

There are no FDA-approved medications that are smoked. For one thing, smoking is generally a poor way to deliver medicine. It is difficult to administer safe, regulated dosages of medicines in smoked form . . . Morphine, for example, has proven to be a medically valuable drug, but the FDA does not endorse the smoking of opium or heroin. Instead, scientists have extracted active ingredients from opium, which are sold as pharmaceutical products like morphine, codeine, hydrocodone or oxycodone. In a similar vein, the FDA has not approved smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes, but has approved the active ingredient-THC-in the form of scientifically regulated Marinol.

I'm willing to treat pot as a potential resource for medicine the same way as we treat everything else in nature. But that's not good enough for the vast majority of marijuana advocates in this state. They'd like to ignore the basic precepts of western medicine so they can smoke their pain-killer. And yes, kids, it is true that there are lots of other things that are worse for you than pot, but this doesn't change the fact that it does have some harmful side effects.

I'm not willing to play a shell game with science for the sake of an underlying legalization agenda. And that's what is really behind a lot of this politicized "medical" debate—the notion that pot is some kind of miracle drug with no harmful side effects that should be legalized. And that debate is perfectly legitimate in its own right. I don't want to get into that debate here, I just want people to be honest about where they really stand while they are posturing for the sake of the medicine they want to smoke.

In any event, I think when the FC consider whether or not they should allow such clinics, the issue should be a no-brainer. As the LAT blog said recently, our state law on the issue is being abused. And, as I obviously see it, it was a screwy law to begin with.

(Scroll through our Claremont archives for more on the issue.)

24 Year Old Arcadian Campaign Consultant Honored

Brandon Powers blogs for the Flash Report
Staff reports from the SGVT include this:

Arcadia native Brandon Powers has won a Pollie Award for his work on a campaign to defeat Measure L, a library bond that appeared on the November 2006 ballot in Diamond Bar. The award is given by the American Association of Political Consultants.

Powers . . . was honored for a mailer titled "L NO!" that was credited with helping turn the tide against the measure.

Powers also serves as the president of the conservative grass-roots group California Young Americans for Freedom and has worked on the campaigns of Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Claremont, and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

"L No!" Heh. Classic. If you go the AAPC's website and read their PDF file o' winners, you'll see he brought home a silver medal in the "Initiative/Referendum/Constitutional Amendment: Local/Municipal" category.

San Dimas Temporary Medi-juana Ban Rules?

San Dimas joined the ranks of other San Gabriel Valley cities last week and placed a temporary ban on medical marijuana dispensaries. --Allison Hewitt, SGVT

No surprise there. Given the ludicrous way in which the law currently works, as we've pointed out before, no city in their right mind is going to allow such joints to open. One wonders if this too is part of some bizarre behind-the-scenes soap opera, as in Claremont, where two friends in the marijuana biz are literally crying over their lost friendship even as they both claim, in not so many words, that the other is a greedy drug dealer. (See Will Bigham's in-depth DB article.)

Anyhow, go here for the video of the San Dimas city council meeting on the matter, starting at about 31 minutes and 50 seconds into the video:


Also, I've gotten a few emails and seen the many articles concerning the sad saga of over-officious government regulation (and perhaps a touch of malice) which led to the close of the San Dimas Wine Shop and Tasting Room. I promise I'll get around to posting something soon.

Route66 Living

Claremont's got a new blog—Tisza Major-Posner is a real estate agent in Claremont and La Verne, and she's got a blog called Route66 Living which essentially advertises herself and the cities she sells in.

Interesting concept: apparently there are a few others doing something similar throughout SoCal.

Paranoia Strikes Deep. . .

. . .Into your life it will creep. . .

Thus far, Mr. and Mrs. Wakka's efforts regarding medical mary-juh-wanna in Claremont have been unsuccessful, despite getting an advertisement on the Poorman's Bikini Show:

[Claremont Mayor Peter] Yao said the ad, which he viewed on YouTube, "has been totally ineffective." He said he sometimes gets calls or e-mails about the marijuana issue and always asks whether the ad prompted the contact.

"I have not received a single e-mail, nor have I received a phone call as a result" of the ad, he said. --Will Bigham, DB

Maybe because, as the intrepid Claremont Insider muses, "nobody wants to cop to watching the show"? Anyhow, I wish that Snoop Dog still lived here.

My post on the Wakkas has some interesting comments beneath it, including a bizarre one from someone claiming that I am putting the Wakkas in danger and another from Mrs. Wakka herself. I assure her that I don't think bringing cookies and flowers to Claremont city council meetings is a "monstrous act." In fact, I have encouraged Claremont city council members to partake of some medicine with the Wakkas.For the record, she is right that in my post I made an egregious error: when I referred to "Fonzie" Bear I actually meant to refer to the Muppet character, not the cool leather-jacketed fellow from Happy Days. However, Mrs. Wakka is wrong in her rendition as well. It's not "Fozz E. Bear," but Fozzie Bear. For the record.

Claremont v. Pomona, Again

Pomona City Councilman Stephen Atchley was none to pleased by all the youngsters joking around about Claremont's proposed Anschluss of Pomona land for the sake of a new Claremont police station. I feel his anger, but...

Let me moderate this debate.

Is Claremont laughably arrogant? Yes.

Is Pomona embarrassingly insecure? Yes.

There. Everyone happy?

I'm surprised that no one has paid much attention to the fact that we caught some Claremont gadflies planning their next move on the homegrownbud online forums:

it wont be hard to put a damper on them with our big sign outside as they walk in. plus, when you wave and say high with a big smile, really tweaks the straights. our plan is to make them so uncomfortable, it drives them nuts. it is a very rich college town, and they don't like anything that disturbs their perfect order.

And by the way, despite the fact that the city quickly filters out our emails as spam, it does appear that we get some visitors from Pomona City Hall regardless. Go figure.

Wakka, Wakka, Wakka. . .

Fonzie's growing the green buds. If you've been to a recent Claremont city council meeting, or read Will Bigham's recent reports of them in the DB, you've heard of Dave and Darleen and their pot-related antics. Earlier, I posted a video of an advertisement they bought featuring Mayor Yao's email:



This ad was posted on You Tube by a "mrswakka." Googling "mrs wakka" and Claremont turns over a few stone[r]s.

It is clear from, say, this discussion on the Home Grown Bud online forums that Mr. and Mrs. Wakka are, in fact, Dave and Darleen:

"we found a new and not too(!) expensive way to get our point across. heh. If you live in southern california, you are probably pretty familiar with the poorman. he's been on t v and radio for the longest time around here. he has a show on saturday and sunday nights. it's called the poormans bikini beach.

"he was nice enough to cut us a deal on a thirty second commercial, featuring the phone number of a local city council, and the email of it's mayor. he's going to urge everyone watching to call and email to their hearts content to show disapproval of them shutting down a medical marijuana dispensary...what a wonderful way to say hi mr mayor!"

"if we get fifty people to call or email, I would be more than pleased. if we get a hundred, I'm gonna pop a chubby and put it to use!"

"to the mayor, medical marijuana is low on the priority list. I think between the commercial with his email address and a picture of me smoking a joint and holding up that sign in his local paper, I think he might start thinking it's a little more important."

"some lady walked by and asked me where I was going to get my meds now that they had closed the dispensary. I told her."the same place I used to get it, claremont high school parking lot". reporter said, "o k, I got my quote".

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA hiya mr mayor! how you like me and mrs wakka now dude?"

"their centennial celebrations start in a few weeks. sure was thoughtful to give us a calendar with all the dates and locations, now wasn't it?

it wont be hard to put a damper on them with our big sign outside as they walk in. plus, when you wave and say high with a big smile, really tweaks the straights. our plan is to make them so uncomfortable, it drives them nuts. it is a very rich college town, and they don't like anything that disturbs their perfect order.

like me and mrs wakka."

Indeed.

There's plenty more fun to be had reading about the Wakkas if you just do some googling. Listen to them brag about the pot-cookie incident! Did Mrs. Wakka really walk "down the aisle to supertramp"? Learn the finer points of pot growing by taking the wakka family's technical advice!

If Claremont Became Pomona . . .

Suddenly Claremont would have actual problems to solve, instead of all the fake ones the community invents to occupy its time.

Hah! So says David Allen of the DB in another excellent column that follows up on a DB op-ed suggesting Pomona demand a few things from Claremont in return for giving the city of trees and PhDs land for a new police station.

Also in regards to the proposed Claremont Anschluss, the Claremont Insider brilliantly suggested that the two towns switch city councils: "...Something along the lines of ABC's 'Wife Swap.'" Now that would be something I'd pay to see.

See also these two posts by the Insider on the water situation over there.

Reefer Sadness in Claremont

Local politics are really just plain weird. Tony Krickl's story in the Claremont Courier is a classic example. The guy who was trying to open a pot shop in Claremont now admits he was doing it on purpose in order to get the city council to ban such establishments in Claremont. Why? So that he and his partner running the pot shop in Pomona wouldn't have any competition, that's why. After their relationship fell apart, he felt bad and confessed to the city council. There are many angles of interest here, from Mr. Kruse's repentance to the ridiculous current system of selling marijuana as "the medicine you can smoke."

As the LA Times' Political Muscle blog said recently, "the unspoken truth is many others are using the 10-year-old, randomly enforced California law to grow pot for sale to people who aren't sick. Just say it."Don't take the LAT' word for it: watch the video of a recent CBS2/KCAL9 undercover investigation which revealed that if you are over 18 and have $175, you can get a marijuana prescription no matter what. Undercover operatives who said they were suffering from dry skin, hair loss, and sore feet from high-heeled shoes were all given prescriptions. And check out the kid gleefully sharing his medicine on the street with all his—no doubt sick—friends.

Many of these doctors are simply pro-marijuana activists using the medical marijuana issue in order to advance the greater cause of legalization. For instance, one doctor/activist who handed out over 1,000 marijuana prescriptions also "grew pot in his backyard and distributed it for free." People are free to argue about legalization, but to my mind, hiding behind the medical marijuana issue is disingenuous.

There are undeniably lots of people out there in pain, some of whom use marijuana with self-reported success. Yet I do find it odd that on the occasions that I have been to medical marijuana centers, the vast majority of sick people going to buy weed looked like stereotypical potheads, mostly male, between the ages of 20-50.

Anyways, you have to feel for Mayor Yao and all the spam he must be getting these days. Never heard of the Poor Man's Bikini Beach Show on the independent KJLA? Funny, neither had I. The website for the show says that "$50 gets your ad on TV or the web," so someone shelled out the big bucks for this ad featuring Mayor Yao's email address:



No doubt this was to reach all the sick people—er, certain sort of male in the 20-50 year old range—watching the Poor Man's Bikini Show.

Commence the Anschluss!

Claremont v. Pomona, again. Will Bigham is on the case in the IVDB:

City officials believe they've found an ideal location for the new Claremont police station: Pomona ...a 10-acre lot...that Claremont police believe would perfectly suit the department's needs.

I commented on the proposed Anschluss the other day; as I said then, the plan would annex the property to Claremont, where the station would fly the sovereign Claremont tree flag, and guard. our. borders. Why not just start building a wall? I feel for the council on this one, though, as the "style" of the current (tiny) building is lost in the uglier, older, era of rancid bong-water. And Claremont's crime problems are often related to Pomona spill over. But maybe this isn't the best way to go about things.

Not suprisingly:

[Pomona Mayor Norma] Torres says there is no way the city would sell the land to Claremont, much less allow it to annex the land, which Claremont officials want to do before building the station.

"We can talk about annexing the city of Claremont into Pomona, but not any part of Pomona into Claremont," Torres said wryly. "That sounds like as good an idea as them trying to build a police station in my city.

"This is the first I've heard about this. They've not had an official conversation about this with our staff or any city officials. ... I think the whole idea is a bit laughable."

Well, Norma, it might actually help the crime problem in your city. But I can understand your frustration with the Claremonster attitude the plan projects to the world.

Claremont Loses More Celebrity Power

Man, Claremont can't catch a break.

First, they lose Becks and Posh to Downtown and the Westside. Now, Snoop Dogg, just days after being hauled into a Pasadena court (or, um, coming of his own volition), has put his house up for sale (it's the second listing).

One can only assume that Snoop couldn't handle any more of the reefer madness in this town.

[via Luxist]

UPDATE: Snoop must have called Publius before he sent me his text message.

Claremont Too Kind: Snoop Leaves

About that whole water thing in Claremont: the Claremont Insider weighs the options and says it might be a good thing for the city to buy its own water company.

I dunno.

Also, I wanted to specifically point out CI's post on the $17.5 million Palmer Canyon fire settlement, which begins and ends with the Doors' LA Woman. Excellent.
In other news, Snoop Dog is selling his Claremont crib. No joke (click on the Blaisdell Ranch Mediterranean estate).See, word on the street is that Snoop is trying to lay off the weed these days due to some legal problems, so he's trying to get away from the smoke-filled streets of Claremont.

List! Publius' Top 4 Claremont Issues

Yes, it turned into Claremont day; just go with it. You've heard their list. Now hear mine:

1) Make sure that there aren't any more skeletons in the closet that are going to cost a lot of money to bury properly. First, the city had to pay out millions for the Palmer Canyon fire fiasco (scroll through the Claremont Insider files). Now there is the increasing bill resulting from a curiously stupid plan to build utilities before developers submitted their plans (if we build it, they will come?!?) for the city's large Village Expansion project (see Will Bigham's article, plus the intrepid Claremont Insider's commentary). What the hell's next?

2) Don't allow the place to buy your medicine-you-get-to-smoke, legal high to open; do start openly smoking out with Dave and Darleen at city council meetings. This will not only endear you to the students (well, who are we kidding—its mostly the faculty these days) at the 5 Colleges, but it will also allow ordinary Claremonsters to rest at ease knowing you aren't likely making any major decisions.

3) What is the parking ticket rule now—you can only overnight park on Claremont's wide, uncrowded, streets if you call in with 5 forms of ID and then only non-Hummer, non-American, over $40,000 vehicles are allowed 3 and 4 times alternately every full moon cycle? I forget exactly, but let's end the reign of the overnight parking Nazi, people.

4) And that reminds me of the city's over-officious, 80-some page tree policy. (Plenty of which is online here). Bring the vaporizer, let's have a bonfire.

Away from the trees, of course.

List! Claremont City Council's Top 4 Issues

Pot use aside, the Claremont Courier ran an article by Tony Krickl detailing how the city council recently met and "offered its vision of the most pressing issues affecting Claremont:"

1)Acquisition of water company
Hmmm...a measly $100 million in costs to the city, the use of shady eminent domain laws, and no reduction in water bills for 20-30 years? d00d! Sign me up!

[Um, why can't we just switch to another company instead of reinventing the wheel? Or is the water supply biz a free-market free zone?]

2)New police station
The plus here is the use of eminent domain again, or, even better, the opportunity to purchase a property in Pomona and commence the Anschluss. Yes, that's right, the plan would annex the property to Claremont, where the station would fly the sovereign Claremont tree flag, and guard. our. borders.
I mean, why not just start building a wall? I do feel for the council on this one, though, as the "style" of the current (tiny) building is lost in the uglier, older, era of rancid bong-water.

3) Johnson’s Pasture negotiations
Let's get this one behind us. We're all sick of hearing about it; Claremont voted to buy the damn property, now lets enjoy it. Late at night. While smoking medicine.

4) Other priorities
These include "monitoring the activities of the [nefarious] Pomona Valley Protection Association" (for more info, scroll through our Pomona and Claremont categories and check out the Insider). Of course, an "ordinance on mansionization and incorporating green building design" ranked above "addressing the city tree policy" or "south Claremont beautification." Cuz' really, who cares about south Claremont? Maybe we could let Pomona annex that area unto itself.

Thankfully for all of you at home, ole' Publius has his own list.

Reefer Madness in Claremont UPDATED

You know, Claremont Insider has it all wrong. Word on the street is that David Beckham and Posh were going to live in Claremont, but then they read the Claremont Insider blog and decided that they couldn't live in a place with such incompetent leadership. And they are all into being healthy and stuff, so they want to stay away from a city with a rampant drug problem.

Will Bigham doles out another priceless nugget in the DB:

The assault by local marijuana activists on Claremont City Council members' sensibilities continued at Tuesday night's council meeting.

Two weeks after treating council members to pot-leaf-shaped cookies, marijuana activists Dave and Darlene Matteson returned with heavier equipment.


During the public comment segment of the meeting, after urging the city to accommodate a medical marijuana dispensary, the couple took out a vaporizer - used to smoke marijuana - and began making preparations to demonstrate its use to the council.

This pending demonstration shocked the audience, and Mayor Peter Yao urged the Mattesons to stick to verbal comments. They complied.

Afterwards, Pedroza and Ellen were seen . . . just kidding.

I almost forgot that Bill Clinton is coming to Claremont this weekend. He could speak anywhere he wanted—why here? You don't think he heard how kind it is in Claremont?