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Beachcombing
by Jay Beeler
Les Robbins’ Jan. 15 column about “Republicans Party of No” achieved the anticipated reaction and brought a flood of letters. Go to our website to see them all because we ran out of space here.
As a conservative I think saying “no” to healthcare proposals (or anything similar) that mandates a burden on employers is the appropriate response. That’s why we like to run Chamber of Commerce President Randy Gordon’s pontifications – just to balance out Les’ point of view.
I chuckle every time someone criticizes our paper … attacking the messenger instead of the message … when Les goes off on a tangent. That tends to identify the clowns of the world who don’t have the intelligence to see that our role in society is to stimulate dialog on a wide variety of topics. This time I’d say we were very successful.
My role in these matters is that of sandbox monitor. As parents the best policy in dealing with children is to criticize inappropriate actions but never the individual, e.g., “I love you but throwing sand on your sister is wrong.”
Ditto that for the city prosecutor: “You are marginally okay as a person but your pattern of wasteful spending, malicious and selective prosecution, abuse of authority, judge and jury tampering, putting on false testimony and failure to perform the duties you were elected to do are wrong.”
The appropriate punishment is to make sure that co-criminals Tom Reeves and Tim O’Reilly never again see public office in the April elections.
The Bixby Hill Community Association has voted for new leadership in 2010, thereby closing an acrimonious decade that involved an unsuccessful lawsuit against Rancho Los Alamitos’ plans to upgrade its facilities and contention in recent years over a board president who continued to serve despite being a non-resident.
Former BHCA president Gary Frahm received only 21-1/2 votes and was effectively removed from the board at the Jan. 20 proceedings, which brought Ryan Choura, Lou Lapthorne, V.R. Venkataram, Ron Antimario and Randy Randolph onto the board in the aftermath of a Nov. 10 vote (148-58) to recall the entire seven-member board.
Continuing board members are Cecil Cook and Claude Friedmann.
Following the association’s voting for new board members, Lapthorne was elected president, Choura vice president, Friedmann secretary and Cook treasurer.
Choura said the elections held over the past several months have cost the association in excess of $20,000 but that he’s received no complaints. “The neighborhood is very happy that this has happened and that things are getting back to normal.”
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