The West Ranch Beacon – News & Commentary for the Santa Clarita Valley

For the period of Friday, April 27^th through Sunday, April 29^th Santa Clarita Sheriff Personnel issued approximately 111 citations and warnings for traffic, parking and other related traffic offenses including misdemeanors and infractions. Deputies responded to 22 traffic collisions or related incidents.

Station personnel arrested and booked, or field released, 30 adults and detained 6 juveniles on 20 felony, 14 misdemeanor and 2 infraction primary charges as summarized below:

Friday -April 27, 2007 -9:13 a.m.-Unincorporated L. A. County – Stevenson Ranch: Armed bank (more…)

A female freelance writer who blogged about the pornography industry was threatened with rape writes Ellen Nakashima for the Washington Post. A single mother who blogged about “the daily ins and outs of being a mom” was threatened by a cyber-stalker who claimed that she beat her son and that he had her under surveillance. Kathy Sierra, who won a large following by blogging about designing software that makes people happy, became a target of anonymous online attacks that included photos of her with a noose around her neck and a muzzle over her mouth.

Read it here:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901555.html?hpid=topnews

For the new Democratic bosses in the House, power has quickly translated into money, as many big companies have shifted more of their campaign contributions to the new congressional majority, and away from longtime Republican allies reports the Wall Street Journal. (more…)

Creating a new tax in order to purchase land in and around the City is a non-creative and awful way to preserve open space. It will cost the City $92,500 just for the “establishment process of the District and the design, production, and mailing of notices, ballots, and educational materials to all City property owners.” This is on top of the money already spent by the City during the last go-round when City residents voted the proposal down. (more…)

Alex and Sara Sifford, who live here on the Oregon coast, want to do the right thing to save a warming world reports the Washington Post. To that end, Alex Sifford, 51, has been buying compact fluorescent light bulbs, which use about 75 percent less power than incandescent bulbs. He sneaks them into sockets all over the house. This has been driving his wife nuts.

 

Read it here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901500.html?hpid=topnews

Two years after rejecting a similar measure, property owners soon will vote on whether Santa Clarita should buy open space in and around the city reports the Daily News. City Council members say it’s time to give the measure a second chance, after making changes to the proposal. “The intent is to acquire parcels where we possibly can, to create a buffer around this valley into perpetuity,” Councilman Bob Kellar said.

The council voted 5-0 last week to put the open space measure to a public vote. If approved, the measure would tax property owners $25 a year for the next 30 years.

Read it here: http://www.dailynews.com/santaclarita/ci_5780939

A gasoline tanker truck crashed and exploded into a tower of flames early Sunday, causing a 170-foot stretch of a major Bay Area freeway interchange to warp and collapse on the freeway below, authorities said.

The accident forced the closure of two damaged sections of the heavily traveled maze east of the Bay Bridge, which carries 270,000 vehicles to and from San Francisco each day. Repairs are expected to disrupt traffic for weeks and, some say, months reports the Los Angeles Times.

Read it here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tanker30apr30,0,3337688.story?coll=la-home-local

US-led coalition troops killed more than 130 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan over the past several days, the coalition said on Monday, but thousands of Afghans staged a protest saying the victims were civilians reports Reuters in the Financial Times.

Backed by air support, the Taliban were killed in two separate battles in the western province of Herat, the US military said in a statement. The deaths triggered an angry protest – the second in the country in two days – over what local villagers say was the killing of civilians.

Read it here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e0056bce-f70b-11db-86b0-000b5df10621.html

Senator Joe Lieberman today addressed the Iraq withdrawal provision in the supplemental appropriations bill on the floor of the U.S. Senate reports the Weekly Standard. Below is the full text of Senator Lieberman’s speech, as prepared for delivery:  (more…)

The rush to go on a carbon diet, even if by proxy, is in overdrive. John Edwards on Reducing Carbon (From JohnEdwards.com) Hillary Rodham Clinton on “Carbon Neutral” (From HillaryClinton.com)

 

 In addition to the celebrities — Leo, Brad, George — politicians like John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are now running, at least part of the time, carbon-neutral campaigns. A lengthening list of big businesses — international banks, London’s taxi fleet, luxury airlines — also claim “carbon neutrality.” Silverjet, a plush new trans-Atlantic carrier, bills itself as the first fully carbon-neutral airline. It puts about $28 of each round-trip ticket into a fund for global projects that, in theory, squelch as much carbon dioxide as the airline generates — about 1.2 tons per passenger, the airline says.

 

Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/weekinreview/29revkin.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Coverage isn’t cheap. But Southern California is overdue for the Big One. Consider what you’ve got to lose and then decide. Few know the risk of living in earthquake country quite like Susan Hough.

 

The 46-year-old seismologist heads the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pasadena office, which monitors earthquakes statewide. She also has written a book about Charles Richter, who invented the scale for measuring the magnitude of quakes.

 

She’s lived through a few big ones too, including the 1992 Landers quake and the catastrophic 1994 Northridge quake. And yet, Hough doesn’t carry quake insurance on her vintage 1926 South Pasadena bungalow.

 

Read it here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-quake29apr29,0,3318144.story?coll=la-home-business

Falling home prices and rising property-tax assessments are fueling a grass-roots tax rebellion reports the Wall Street Journal. From coastal Florida to the shores of Hawaii, homeowners are lodging record numbers of appeals, fighting against rising assessments that are, in many cases, pushing up annual tax payments significantly.

 

Residents of Lee County, Fla., filed nearly 2,900 appeals for the 2006 tax year, more than triple the previous year, after assessments increased by an average of 39%. In Erie County, Ohio, 732 property owners appealed their recent assessments, where typically there are fewer than 200 appeals.

 

Read it here: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117771393238485395-VS0_iKrXJq_pkp_vgjUjKdrcjBY_20080427.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

The fallow deer of Point Reyes National Seashore are regal animals, tall and muscular with spotted fur and antlers like moose. They’re easy to spot on the meadows and hillsides of the park, grazing in large herds. But they don’t belong there.

 

They are invaders from central Asia, introduced three generations ago for the benefit of hunters. Scientists fear they are driving out native black-tailed deer that have been there for centuries but could vanish within our lifetime.

 

Read it here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/29/MNGI3PHO3U1.DTL

The biography of a man who believed that uproar was the music of capitalism. Much honored as an economic prophet, Joseph Schumpeter has had to wait half a century after his death for this splendid full-dress biography covering his ideas, life and times. In 1983 Forbes pronounced him a better guide to the tumultuous world economy than John Maynard Keynes. In 1986 J.K. Galbraith described him as “the most sophisticated conservative of this century”. In 2000 Business Week ran an article about him to which it gave the title “America’s hottest economist died fifty years ago”. There are Schumpeter lectures, Schumpeter societies and Schumpeter prizes.

 

Read it here: http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9070610

Even before nine Republican presidential candidates agreed to meet for their first debate Thursday at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., they were competing for who best fits the mantle of the iconic late president. But expect the Reaganesque preening to be laid on thick with next week’s gathering.

Read it here: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117772309669185595-sHzBIbqTSSMIysedJEFq8psRiHQ_20080427.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

“Boston is still in the pits…in Florida it’s like death takes a holiday…Las Vegas is now terrible…Michigan may be a situation where it doesn’t come back.”

 

Robert Toll, chief executive of Toll Brothers, one of America’s biggest builder of luxury homes, has a droll style. But his comments at this week’s Milken Institute Global Conference, a gathering of 3,000 financiers and businesspeople in Beverly Hills, left little doubt about his view of the state of the housing market. True, there were one or two bright spots—the New York market was “phenomenal”; Connecticut had “got a lot better”; Texas was “good”—but Mr. Toll’s overall tour was pretty bleak.

 

Read it here: http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9090220

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich joined Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Southland air quality officials to discuss reducing the  impact of air pollution on children with asthma at the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s “Asthma Is a Small World” international conference at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim. (more…)

For 90 minutes Friday, James Stichter knew two suspected bank robbers were holed up inside his detached garage, but couldn’t reach police to tell them reports the Daily News.

Shortly after 9 a.m., the gunmen had hit a Washington Mutual Bank in Stevenson Ranch. After a 13-mile high-speed chase, they ditched their car and ended up in the 50-year-old’s backyard.

Read it here: http://www.dailynews.com/santaclarita/ci_5771315