Taking a stand against second-hand smoke - Banning butts in Santa Monica apartments

By the time I was 10, I had seen enough "60 Minutes" segments on the dangers of tobacco — and the lengths that R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris would go to in order to hide that danger from the general public — to take a principled stand against cigarettes. I decided to never smoke them myself and to never buy them for anyone else, despite the fact that my job as the youngest boy in a big family was to go to the store whenever anyone needed anything and I usually got to keep the change when I went.

Eliminating the cigarette runs really cut into my Mike and Ike money, but I didn't care. I wasn't going to help someone I love pay a giant tobacco-dealing corporation for the privilege of using their product to slowly commit suicide. Even as a kid, I understood that cigarette smoke causes people to get sick and die — and I didn't want to have anything to do with it.

Readers of this column should know that I've had some differences of opinion with Rent Control Board Member (and good guy) Robert Kronovet. I'm progressive, so I believe we should use the power of the state to make progress toward a more perfect union; he's conservative, so he thinks the power of the state should only be used when absolutely necessary.

But there is one thing that we agree on and that's the idea that one person's rights end where another person's rights begin. And at next week's Rent Control Board meeting, Kronovet will be introducing a proposal to improve the lives of non-smoking tenants in Santa Monica that the board and the City Council should unanimously support.

The thing I like most about his plan is its simplicity. It would protect the health of tenants by banning smoking in apartments that share either a floor or ceiling with another apartment — and do so without infringing on property owners' or smokers' rights. Landlords would still be able to rent to smokers and would be able to designate smoking areas for them, provided that they are at least 20 feet away from doors and windows that people use. Smokers would still be able to smoke inside their apartments, provided that they take responsibility for their second-hand smoke. It's an almost perfect solution.

The only problem with Kronovet's proposal is the cost to smokers who want to smoke in their apartments. A city ordinance passed earlier this year expanded the ban on smoking in Santa Monica to include the common areas of apartment buildings and provided a means by which residents can seek damages in the amount of $100, $200, and $500 respectively for first, second, and third violations within a calendar year. The proposal would basically apply those same fines to violations of the shared ceiling or floor ban, meaning a smoker who lives between two non-smokers could be paying $1,000 per cigarette smoked indoors. I don't care how much pleasure you get from a pack of smokes, for $20,000 I recommend you seriously consider a concierge doctor and designer pharmaceuticals.

Some opponents of this ban will try to argue the science. They'll claim that second-hand smoke is no more dangerous than many of the toxic household products we use every day. They are wrong. For every chemical or substance sold or used in the U.S., standards are established based on a "safe" level of exposure as defined by medical/health professionals. No scientist anywhere in the world has been able to determine a "safe" level of exposure to second-hand smoke (and they've been trying for decades), which means inhaling any amount of second-hand smoke is a health hazard that should be avoided. That's a conclusion shared by every medical/health professional on the planet without exception. There is some doubt as to whether or not second-hand smoke can kill you, but there is no question that it's not good for you. The science is unequivocal.

Some have said that this ban is just another example of liberals using the power of big government to impose their worldview on freedom-loving "real Americans." That cracks me up because these are people who have clearly never met Robert Kronovet or had a conversation with him. Believe me when I tell you, that's not his motivation.

Those smokers who complain that they already can't smoke in bars, restaurants, or parks, at bus stops, on the Third Street Promenade, or on much of our iconic Santa Monica Pier can cry me a river — then build a bridge and get over it. They still have the right to smoke, of course, because this is a free country and it's not a crime to be self-destructive (thank God); but those of us who choose not to smoke also have a right to breathe smoke-free air. While that doesn't mean we have a right to never be exposed to second-hand smoke, it does mean that it's the smoker's responsibility to keep his or her smoke away from the rest of us. Kronovet's proposal simply makes that responsibility a legal obligation in a city known for its ocean breezes and jasmine-scented streets.

Good riddance, Giuliani - The end of Rudy's political career

In 1957, Stanford University psychologist Leon Festinger came up with a theory which says that the anxiety or inner conflict between a person's beliefs and their behavior will cause that person to change their beliefs to fit their behavior, rather than change their behavior to match what they believe. He called it "cognitive dissonance," but there are a lot of different metaphors for it. Talking the talk without walking the walk, faking the funk, kidding yourself, being a hypocrite, selling out — take your pick, they all work. It's a condition everyone suffers from on occasion; but for politicians, artists, and entertainers, it can be terminal. It tells the voters who support you or the fans who appreciate your work that you don't actually believe in anything any more — and then you're dunzo.

Last week, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's political career suffered a fatal bout of cognitive dissonance when he spoke out against the decision to try the man who masterminded the hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in federal court in lower Manhattan; despite the fact that Giuliani himself used to prosecute cases in that same court. It's hard to say what was more horrifying: the events of that day or Rudy's exploiting those events as his personal political springboard, but the fact that he went there (and stayed there for eight years) means I have no problem rejoicing in the demise of his delusional aspirations of ascending within the ranks of the Republican Party.

In his first campaign for New York City mayor in 1989, he won the Republican primary, but not the support of the Conservative Party, and lost to David Dinkins. His next two campaigns for mayor prove the point that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man can be king. Running as a liberal and a Republican for a second and third time, Giuliani was elected on a promise to clean up the city — then re-elected because he kind of did. In fairness, he could have handed out surgical masks and campaigned as the guy who got rid of the urine smell in the subway and it would have worked.

He was a few months away from political obscurity when those planes were hijacked, thrusting the potential for greatness upon him in the form of the opportunity to take the helm of New York City's disaster response infrastructure and lead his city in a time of crisis. Unfortunately, he made the decision to locate the city's Office of Emergency Management headquarters into the World Trade Center complex four years earlier — and four years after the first WTC bombing — so it was inaccessible. The director of Emergency Management suggested a site in Brooklyn and was overruled by Mayor Giuliani.

Despite that disastrous decision (among many others he made in the weeks that followed), Giuliani cast himself as an expert on terrorism response. He was considered for secretary of Homeland Security in 2004, but dropped when it became clear the scandal surrounding his three marriages might make Senate confirmation difficult. Rudy recommended his former driver, Bernie Kerik, who has since pled guilty to lying to White House officials while being vetted for the job.

Along the way he blew off doing actual work with the Iraq study group so he could make $11 million on the speaking tour (because nothing shows leadership like helping yourself when you could be helping your country), and ran the most inept presidential campaign anyone had seen until John and Sarah's wild ride last fall.

His legal career began when he worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and ended with him as the U.S. Attorney for that District. It's poetically ironic that his political career ends with him going on three talk shows this past Sunday to say that as long as an alternative exists, the prosecution of the mastermind of the worst crime to take place in the history of New York City should not be handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

When the "20th hijacker" was sentenced to life in prison in 2006, Giuliani said it "demonstrate(s) that we can give people a fair trial, that we are exactly what we say we are. We are a nation of law." Now he says it's a "mistake" to try KSM in the exact same way. The big difference between 2006 and 2009 is a Democratic administration is in power now, and Rudy has shown he's a hypocrite willing to change his beliefs to fit his behavior.

I hope Rudy's career can rest in peace with the knowledge that as the pro-choice, pro-gun control, anti-school prayer, liberal, Italian former mayor of New York who cheated on his first wife with his second wife, then cheated on his second wife with his third wife, lived with a gay couple while finalizing his second divorce — and once performed in drag as Marilyn Monroe — he was never going to win another election anyway.

Studying the mind of a killer - Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter

In 2003, then Secretary of Defense (and current un-indicted war criminal) Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memo in which he asked if "extreme radical madrassas," the Islamic learning centers that pass for public schools in large parts of the Muslim world, were producing more terrorists every week or month than we were able to capture or kill. The premise of the question is revealing because it demonstrates the basic problem with America's policies toward the world's Muslims. We seem to think of all Islamic schools as "extreme" and we regard the graduates of those schools as "terrorists" who were radicalized and taught to hate the U.S., but we never examine the role we play in inspiring that hatred in the first place (like reducing our options to "capture" or "kill").

One of the biggest problems with attempting to figure out where, exactly, the schism lies is that they don't talk to us and we don't talk to them. That's why I was relieved to learn that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, wasn't killed at the scene and is conscious and able to speak. I sincerely hope that law enforcement isn't allowed anywhere near this man and that he stays out of our civilian courts because his open-and-shut legal case won't be nearly as valuable to our criminal justice system as his psychological case study will be to our military.

There is no mystery about what will happen to Maj. Hasan if he becomes a criminal defendant in a civilian court. Since the killings were clearly premeditated and obviously committed with reckless disregard for human life, he will face at least 13 counts of murder in the first degree (among others). He'll be convicted on all counts and, because this is Texas we're talking about, he will be sentenced to die by lethal injection. Then comes the mandatory trip through the Court of Criminal Appeals, a likely appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court, and finally an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. As this process works its way through to completion, Maj. Hasan wouldn't be talking to anyone, and would be experiencing the horror that is our prison system. It's safe to say the treatment he'd receive would be unlikely to make him more (as opposed to less) willing to cooperate and might cause the already suicidal Hasan to shut down completely.

The problem with that is our military's need to understand exactly what happened to him in the past several months and why he did what he did. There is some serious psychological heavy lifting to be done, and that cannot happen in prison. Luckily, Maj. Hasan is also a psychiatrist, so he speaks the language of the brain and understands the nature and purpose of the counseling setting. Two summers ago, Hasan described his personal inner conflict when he told a group of supervisors and mental health professionals at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, "It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims," essentially crystallizing one of our country's biggest challenges.

In the age of the jihadi who "loves death more than you love life," that same conflict is dividing Muslim communities all over the world and illogically hardening anti-Islamic feelings in countries that are targeted for attack. That turns an obviously disturbed person like Hasan (who was unable to wrangle his personal beasts) into a "self-radicalized, home-grown terrorist who had turned to Islamic extremism while under personal stress," according to Sen. Joe Lieberman. But simply labeling his actions "terrorism" is dismissive, and it ignores the warning signs that came from Maj. Hasan and that come from the Islamic world every day.

About his infamous 2003 memo, Sec. Rumsfeld once said, "what I was trying to point out to the people in the Department of Defense was that there's a tendency when you call this a global war on terror to think of it as a war of big militaries — armies, navies, and air forces — against armies, navies and air forces, and it is not. It is a totally different thing …. It's a struggle basically within the Muslim faith of a small minority of violent extremists against the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are not violent extremists, and we need to find ways to empower and strengthen those moderates who are determined to not have their faith hijacked by these violent extremists."

If anyone can help our military to understand the way those moderates think and what drives a Muslim to kill or die for his religion, it's the Palestinian-American Army Psychologist Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan. I just hope we keep him in a hospital where he can be studied, and not in a prison where he will be put to death. We know he has expertise on the human brain, the Islamic faith, and the U.S. military. As long as we keep him alive, he can still be of some service by helping us figure out how those things can all work together.

Don't pitch the dog - The decision maker at St. John's

Anyone who does in-home sales work will tell you it’s a waste of time to make presentations to people who aren’t decision makers. Make all the small talk you have to, but wait until both husband and wife are sitting at the kitchen table before you start selling. The point is that only a decision maker can say yes when you ask for the sale, so anybody who doesn’t have the ability to cut a check becomes the dog by default – and you don’t pitch the dog.

The Mid-City community has been dealing with the problems associated with having an active construction site at St. John’s Health Center for 15 years – including parking scarcity and rivers of sewage running through the streets, into our storm drains, and onto Will Rogers State Beach (which closed for a day-and-a-half because of a sewage spill on the same day the hospital’s sewage system had a “mechanical failure”). The nurses who provide care at the hospital have also experienced health problems from sewage like nausea, vomiting, and headaches caused by the perfume used to mask the smell. Recently, the City of Santa Monica received an application to change the Development Agreement with St. John’s so the hospital can “defer” constructing 422 underground parking spaces it committed to building when the DA was drafted. Unfortunately for the neighbors, the nurses, and the city, none of them are negotiating with the decision maker because that person never comes to Santa Monica; though the city doesn’t seem to care and is ready to give up the parking spaces.

St. John’s is only one of fifteen hospitals (they bought two this year for $300 million) and clinics in four states that make up the much larger Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System – and I do mean much larger. According to their June 2009 Operating Information and Management Discussion, in the first six months of this year Gross Patient Service Revenue for SCLHS and Affiliates was over $2.5 billion. As the global economy was melting down, SCLHS earned almost $30 million in profits; yet in spite of the sound financial health of its parent corporation, St. John’s claims they don’t have the money to fix their sewage problem or to construct the promised parking spaces.

The local hospital can cry poverty because none of the fifteen facilities has the power to spend SCLHS money. Since it was re-organized in 1994, even the Board of Directors at the SCLHS doesn’t have much actual authority. In terms of the “acquisition, lease, sale, or mortgage of assets,” the Board is only charged with “recommending” a course of action to SCLHS Members; the Members are the ones with the power to approve a significant expenditure, though the Board may spend “up to an amount determined by the SCLHS Members.” SCLHS Spokesperson Christine Woolsey was unwilling to disclose that number.

These “Members” are the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas – as represented by the Community Director and the Community Council. They belong to an order of nuns with roots in 17th century France who came to Kansas from Nashville in the mid-1800’s to do typical nun stuff like educate children, care for the sick, and provide homes for orphans. Fast-forward about 150 years and the number of hospitals and clinics in their healthcare ministry grew as the number of sisters in the order shrank. The nuns needed help and re-organized so that the SCLHS President (William Murray) handles day-to-day operations, though the SCL Community Council “remains the Corporate Member with specific reserved powers.”

Those powers mainly reside in the person of Sister Joan Sue Miller, Community Director (known as Sister Sue). She sits on the SCLHS Board and has been on the Community Council since 1986. I called her office at 913-682-7500 and asked for her help with the sewage coming from her hospital. She was aware of the problem – she even stuck to the line that it comes from the construction of the new building – but directed me to call Bill Murray at 913-895-2932 because she doesn’t handle “specifics.” She expected me to believe she doesn’t how much money Murray is allowed to spend without the Council’s authorization. When I followed up by asking if she’d been on the Council for 25 years she said, “Please don’t do this.”

Last week community members and RN’s got together with Gleam Davis and Kevin McKeown from our City Council and Jason Perry and Jim Ries from our Planning Commission to discuss sewage, parking, and abatement of hazardous materials (reps from St. John’s were invited, but had more important things to do). Four things came out at that meeting: the D.A. is a city ordinance so not building those parking spaces could be a violation of the law, Planning Commission Director Eileen Fogarty (310-458-8341) is the person who would have to approve the hospital’s application to break that law, our City Council would then have to grant permission to break that law, and the Council literally has no idea who it’s negotiating with at St. John’s Heath Center.

For future reference, it’s Sister Sue from the Sisters of Charity in Leavenworth, Kansas. She’s the decision maker and everyone else is the dog. But will our City Council roll over and play dead for her and her giant hospital corporation disguised as a Catholic ministry?