Stimulating the economy one baby bottle at a time - Official Groundbreaking Prediction of 2009

I'm not the type to say, "I told you so." Besides, I don't really have to because events eventually end up doing it for me. If you've been reading this column, you know by now that I called the Obama presidency in April of 2007 — and was the first writer in America to do so. Hillary Clinton was still "inevitable" back then and the country wasn't ready to elect a fresh, green, black president — or so "they" said. I also correctly called the Obama inauguration as the "cultural, social, and political event of a generation; like Woodstock meets the march on Washington" in April of 2008, before the rest of the talking heads and elite opinion makers had even called the Democratic primary. If your friendly neighborhood columnist was the kind of guy who patted himself on the back, my elbows would be dislocated by now.

This year, I'm not waiting until April to make my Official Groundbreaking Prediction. My OGP of 2009 is that starting this fall, America will experience a baby boom the likes of which the country hasn't seen since the years following World War II, with the most popular baby names being Barack, Michelle, and Obama, or some variation of the three.

I make this statement with the same confidence with which I made my OGP's in 2007 and 2008 because, luckily for me, I was there on the National Mall for the Obama inauguration. I also got there a few days early and stayed in Washington, D.C. for the rest of the week; walking, talking, eating, drinking (and drinking, and drinking), and being on the ground among the people — though I never made it to Southeast.

So I can tell you the feeling that we're all in this together, which kept two million people warm as we stood outside in the bitter cold for the better part of six hours, didn't dissipate when the ceremony and the balls were relegated to memory and YouTube (by the way, I challenge anyone to watch the video of Kanye doing "Love Lockdown" at the Youth Ball and tell me with a straight face that he should be trying to sing — seriously).

The best way to describe the feeling we all felt leading up to, during, and after the event is love. Nothing else does it justice. We really loved each other and, from what I hear, it could be felt from D.C. all the way out to Santa Monica. With love in the air from coast-to-coast and a bitter cold gripping large parts of the country (where it isn't 70 degrees and sunny every day like it is here) and keeping people indoors, what do you think grown men and grown women are going to be doing? I'd draw you a picture, but I only have so much space to work with.

As I walked the streets of our nation's capital last week, I couldn't help but notice how much Obama merchandise was available for sale. And when I passed the "Everything Obama" store on U Street (which has a 310 area code for some strange reason), it hit me: if the president would just copyright his name and image and license it for sale, he could single-handedly end this Great Recession. If a couple of cents of each dollar spent on Obama stickers, posters, buttons, hats, ties, pins, water bottles, bags, jackets, sweatshirts, watches, bracelets, throw blankets, puzzles, calendars, and even action figures could go into the U.S. Treasury, we'd be in the black (no pun intended) in no time.

Even if he doesn't, he's still going to get us out of this financial pickle — whether the Republicans in Congress go along with his stimulus package or not — because of the impending baby boom. The people are going to stimulate their own packages (sorry, I couldn't resist) and consumer spending, the Great White Whale of economics will pick up significantly when all the Barack Obama Smiths and Baracka Michelle Stevensons start being born in late September. Because any parent will tell you that children (with their incessant need to eat, sleep indoors in comfortable beds, wear clothing and shoes, and carry the latest "Iron Man," "Hello Kitty," or "High School Musical" backpack to school) are expensive. Not to mention the cost of sending them somewhere while Mommy and Daddy go off to work to earn the money to pay for all that stuff.

That magical animal, "growth," that every business depends on for survival and that our ailing economy needs just to get back to zero isn't going to come from an act of government; it's going to come from an act of love. And it's that love, in the form of beautiful American babies, that will get us out of the hole we've dug for ourselves.

Remember where you read it first.

Setting an example for young people - The Obama Inauguration

Washington, D.C. - It's impossible to ignore the sheer numbers of young people around town. Kids of all ages — from high chair to high school — have come to the nation’s capital to be witnesses to history. Not the history that the punditocracy are talking about in the closedoff, climate-controlled sets that keep them removed from the public they claim to speak for, but a different history.

These young people didn’t descend on D.C. to see this black man become our 44th president. They came to see this intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, extraordinary man swear the oath of office at a time that requires brains, guts, and heart like no other point in our nation’s past.

The more the talking heads analyze the significance of a brother becoming chief executive, the more young people will continue to tune them out (I watched the inaugural address from the MSNBC set on the national mall with Earnest, a 10-year-old black kid who didn’t know the assembled talking heads and couldn’t have cared less).

Young people don’t — and shouldn’t — think of his race as being a barrier to success, so they don’t believe Barack was elected in spite of his skin color. Besides, kids don’t love him because he’s our first black president, they love him because he’s the first smart, cool, nice president they’ve ever known.

And because they think he’s smart, cool, and nice, Generation O will grow up believing that being smart, working hard, sacrificing, and serving their community is also cool. So these are the first kids in a half-century to be challenged to make a difference by the example set by their president. After talking to a number of them this week, I firmly believe they will do just that.

When John F. Kennedy took the podium at his inauguration in 1961, he said, "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country."

After that speech, a generation of young people looked to public service as a career choice. Unfortunately, too many of them spent too much time fighting with the other party and not enough time solving the country’s problems. Luckily, our 44th president is able to transcend the fundamentalist partisan politics that has crippled our government for so long and speak directly to the next generation; daring them to make the country and the world we share a better place.

So when he says, "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship," he has a credibility born from the fact that he wasn’t around to pick a side in the petty fights of the past, and from the fact that he has proven himself to be an outstanding citizen.

And when he says, "Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations," young people will be inspired to meet the challenges he has laid out for them because he refused to let his own journey end, nor did he turn back or falter, until he was standing on our national mall addressing millions and millions of my fellow Americans as their president in a speech none of us will ever forget.

The day before the inauguration, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was honored. Someone said to me, "Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Barack could run. Barack ran so our kids can fly." As yesterday’s speech ended, I was hugging everyone around me, crying my eyes out, and thinking that for my new friend, Earnest, the sky is the limit.

Market-rate housing is no anchor - In defense of rent control

I'm sure Robert Kronovet is a good guy. But based on his recent letter to my esteemed editor (printed Jan. 12), I will probably have to advocate for his defeat in the next election. Not because he’s a Republican (though that doesn’t help his case), but because he’s dangerously out of touch with the needs of renters in our fair city. This wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that he’s one of the commissioners of our Rent Control Board — for now.

In his letter, Mr. Kronovet says that he "must take issue with [the] point of view" of City Councilman Kevin McKeown, as if that point of view somehow offended Kronovet’s conscience and compelled him to write a response. What did Councilman McKeown say that was so egregious? In a letter printed on Jan. 2 he wrote, "2009 is our year to get more serious about preserving existing, occupied, affordable housing in Santa Monica. In tough times, we can work together to make sure more of our neighbors don’t suffer eviction. Let’s make sure the new Land Use and Circulation Element, likely to be adopted this year, includes meaningful protection for the stable, long-term Santa Monica renters who depend on existing apartments."

For the record, that’s "preserving existing, occupied, affordable housing" for "stable, long-term Santa Monica renters" in what are undeniably "tough times." It’s the kind of public policy no-brainer that could really only be opposed by landlords, developers, and real estate investors. Mr. Kronovet is all three, so it’s no surprise this common sense approach to land use is so problematic for him. What bothers me is that his views now hold sway on the board, making him the proverbial fox in our beachside henhouse. Kronovet writes, "When Mr. McKeown proposes we reduce new market-rate housing he is destroying the motivation of moving Americans from the rental market into home ownership. I have heard Mr. McKeown frame arguments, he is articulate, knowledgeable and purposeful, but his position opposes that of our free market society. His views of home ownership and private property rights are destructive and hurt our residents."

Again, I’m sure Mr. Kronovet is a good enough guy. If he’s looking for something that "hurt(s) our residents," he need look no further than the block after block being used to store thousands of new cars that won’t ever sell; or the hundreds of thousands of square feet of prime Santa Monica real estate that sits fallow most of the year so it can be transformed into pumpkin patches and Christmas tree lots in the fall and winter. Mr. Kronovet wants us to believe he hasn’t picked up a newspaper since September when our economy began to collapse from the weight of bad mortgages written by semi-scrupulous lenders under the guise of promoting "home ownership," securitized and bundled so investors could realize a profit in "our free market society." Or he wants us to believe he doesn’t know that despite the infusion of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the banking industry, lenders have basically stopped lending, making credit inaccessible, home ownership impossible, and forcing most people to continue renting. Mr. Kronovet thinks reducing the incentive for developers to tear down existing apartments so they can be replaced with large luxury condos "cripples tenants from moving up in our society." He says below market units are "an anchor around many of our resident’s necks," and he claims tenants in these apartments "enjoy reduced rent at a cost of their self-esteem and their pursuit of the American dream." That’s the Republican in him talking, and it’s that person I’m probably going to have to do my best to see defeated. It shouldn’t be too hard. He only won by 62 votes.

I have lived in four of America’s greatest cities. From L.A. to San Francisco to New York to Boston (the best of the bunch), I’ve rested my head in a three-bedroom floorthrough in the Mission, a studio in Brooklyn Heights, a five-bedroom loft in TriBeCa, and a one-bedroom in the South End — all rental units. Currently, I live in Mid-City where I share a nice two-bedroom. It’s a little pricey since it went to market rate, but it’s about what we’d be paying in a desirable neighborhood in any of those other places, so I’m not complaining.

Our upstairs neighbor is a nurse who walks a few short blocks to work every day, shops at the Arizona Farmers’Market on the weekends, is the very embodiment of our community, and the reason why rent control and common sense land use exists. I can assure Mr. Kronovet that despite the fact that she’s been renting for 36 years, her self-esteem is undamaged. And knowing what she pays for her two-bedroom with patio and parking, she is most certainly living the dream.

Parental non-involvement - Rick & Kathy Hilton

When it happened, I couldn't believe that a low-speed chase featuring a Ford Bronco carrying a Heisman Trophy winner was "breaking news" coast-to-coast. But after living in the "30 Mile Zone," I understand that here, the staples of local news - floods, fires, car chases, and the police blotter — sometimes involve people that the rest of the country only sees in movies or on TV shows, so they get more attention.

Seeing the spectacle the national media made of Paris Hilton being taken into custody back in 2007, I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of her house being broken into the week before Christmas when a single thief made off with about $2 million in jewelry. And I’m disappointed that her parents, Rick and Kathy, didn’t do more to prevent it.

In their defense, most parents don’t know what their kids are really up to. For decades, young people have come to think of the word "party" not as a noun, but as a verb. If parents in this town knew what goes on in VIP rooms and after-parties when the clubs close, they’d chain their kids to the kitchen sink rather than allow them to go for a night out in Hollywood.

But most moms and dads want to believe their kids are angels who would never experiment with sex and drugs and alcohol, so they’re predisposed to denial. When your daughter is pursued by a pack of paparazzi and her whereabouts are widely reported on dozens of gossip websites, however, you can’t say you don’t know what she’s doing. And you certainly can’t say you thought she was spending quiet evenings at home when you can just Google her on any given morning and find out she was at Area or Bar Delux the night before.

I take no pleasure in counting the ways Paris has embarrassed herself and her family, but let’s not forget a few things.

In 2004, Paris practically invented the concept of the celebutante porn star when she agreed to perform for Rick Solomon’s camera.

Over a six-month period in 2006 and 2007, she was arrested twice and became L.A. County’s most famous inmate. Back then, I gave Rick and Kathy credit for slapping Lee Baca and Rocky Delgadillo around until the sheriff and the city attorney made Paris-friendly statements to the press. I also advised them to move her into a new home in a gated community and get her a car with blacked-out windows and a 400-pound driver/bodyguard for protection.

They got her the house, but not the car or the bodyguard, so when she’s at home, she’s protected from the paps, but not from her peeps. That only solves half the problem.

As she put it to a reporter from E!, "I think whoever did this, definitely has been [in my home] before. We have some suspects that I’m thinking of. I would tell them to please return my things, because I know that they’re probably watching...They just have to anonymously have a taxi drop it off in my front gate in a box. They won’t get in trouble, but if all this goes on for much longer, they’re going to get in more trouble."

I wouldn’t be surprised if a few nights a week didn’t find her hosting after-parties for her "friends," and that brings me back to her parents and their denial.

Every security guard at Mulholland Estates couldn’t protect Paris from her invited party guests, and one thing Rick and Kathy knew she was going to do when she converted a room in her house into a club (complete with stripper pole) was invite some guests over to party.

Also, they might as well file the insurance claim now because she has a better chance of remaining anonymous driving around in her customized Pepto-pink Bentley "New Money Mobile" than she does of having a cab drop off millions in jewels at her front gate. A friend told me it’s only worth committing a crime if you make enough money to change your life forever. I understand $2 million is a drop in the bucket to a Hilton, but Rick and Kathy need to realize that Paris kept enough jewelry in her house to change the life of anyone willing to steal it — and she didn’t even lock the door.

This is the second time she’s been victimized in this way and as the saying goes: Once is a trend, twice is a fluke, three times is a reasonable certainty. If this happens again, it’s reasonably certain it will keep happening.

Paris needs a bodyguard, not a BFF, because next time this happens she might be at home and she might get hurt. And her parents won’t be able to say they didn’t see it coming.