Charlotte's Web Blog

Charlotte Laws, Michael Jackson and Brooke Shields

Michael Jackson died today at the age of 50. Photo taken backstage at the Grammy Awards.

Ed McMahon and Charlotte Laws

Ed McMahon has died at the age of 86. This photo was taken in the early 1980's in Las Vegas backstage at the Frontier Hotel.

Adam Lambert: Don’t worry, Elvis would have lost American Idol, too

This year’s American Idol competition was the embodiment of America's culture war. It was never a singing contest.  

Today, I was interviewed on the Sirius radio show “Across the Nation with Bob Dunning,” and I correctly predicted Kris Allen would win the American Idol (AI) title even though Adam Lambert is the true talent and will be a worldwide superstar. Allen will most likely disappear into the woodwork within a year.

Why did I predict this? Because five of the seven past winners have been Christians and all of the past AI winners have come from culturally more conservative states than their opponents. Allen is from a small town in Arkansas, and Lambert is from a big city in  California. Allen is a church leader, and Lambert has never disclosed his religious beliefs.  

The majority of Americans identify as politically right of center. During the 2008 election, polls showed them to be more in line with the values of John McCain than Barack Obama. Barack Obama was able to overcome this hurdle and win the election because he was seen as a moderate. Lambert can in no way be described as moderate on stage. His flashy stage presence and the lingering questions about his sexual orientation put him firmly in the liberal camp.

Last night I reviewed the states that supported Lambert as opposed to Allen on the “Dial Idol” website, and then compared it with the map of red vs. blue states from the 2008 election. There was tremendous similarity. Lambert won many of the same states as Obama. He carried California, Oregon, Washington, New York and all of New England except Vermont. Allen won Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Utah and Arizona.

American Idol is not a singing contest in which the most talented is crowned in the end. It is a show based on a democratic process in which callers—who tend to lean conservative--choose the performer with whom they can identify. The majority seek a winner who is wholesome as apple pie and who share their value system. Additionally, the AI demographic tends to be white, middle-aged females who are slightly more conservative than the average American.

Lambert is an iconoclast and was never the front-runner in this race. He was always the underdog.

Memorable newspaper headlines called the Allen-Lambert showdown: “Good vs. Evil” and “David vs. Goliath.” Did anyone actually believe ordinary Americans would vote for a contestant equated with “evil”?

A Kris Allen win is the expected and a continuation of the same. 

The real story would have been a Lambert win. It would have indicated a cultural shift in America, especially as same-sex marriage initiatives sweep the land.

Elvis Presley’s appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show horrified the masses who thought the singer was upsetting the morals and mores of society.

Elvis was the Adam Lambert of his time.And he would have lost American Idol as well.     

   

American Idol and Politics

I am a greenhorn in the music world. If you gifted me an Ipod, I’d probably mistake it for a remote control. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift are names I have heard, but faces I could not place. I can’t operate a CD player and have always thought of concert-going as an activity other people do.

Until now. American Idol contestant Adam Lambert seems to have awakened my long lost music gene. It happened on a Tuesday in March when I coasted by the family room TV on my way to nab cashews from the kitchen. This male Elvira had cool, black nail polish, a Clark Gable confidence, an androgynous sex appeal and the ability to emote like I’ve never seen.    

Heck, this is a concert I could attend, I thought.    

With an alluring combination of pure talent, charisma, unpredictability and eccentricity, Lambert will no doubt go down in history as a superstar, not to mention American Idol’s greatest success story.

Commentators call Lambert a polarizing figure: you love him or you hate him. Could this stem largely from the partisan divide in America?

Lambert is a blue state. He is Hollywood, glamour and bigger than life. Using struts, vocal acrobatics, and bizarre song renditions, he sticks it to “the man” and orthodoxy. He upsets society, chastising manners and mores, much the way Elvis Presley did on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956. Lambert is a comic book hero for those with an anti-establishment bent, such as 70’s children like me who learned early on to distrust government and convention.

His competitor, Kris Allen, is a red state. He is good ole boy from Arkansas who attends church and married his longtime sweetheart. On stage, he is as placid as a lake, even against the raging waterfall, Lambert. Allen is humble, casual and could live in Pleasantville. Lambert would be the Picasso of Pleasantville, upsetting the status quo.

In many cases, Lambert clearly transcends the red-blue divide, as evidenced by the statistics presented on “Dial Idol” and other websites that estimate the percentage of votes each competitor receives by state. But I have to wonder if some of his angry detractors are those with a deep-seated dislike for all things liberal and idiosyncratic. .

The controversy surrounding Lambert’s sexuality also plays into this theory. Bill O’Reilly, for example, thought it newsworthy to ask his Fox News viewers if they thought the singer was gay. Successful same-sex marriage initiatives are sweeping this country, and opponents may see Lambert as a poster boy for alternate lifestyles and as a threat to conservative values.

Could an Adam Lambert victory represent a new level of acceptance for difference? Would a Kris Allen win reinforce communitarian values and the familiar? Some may see this season’s contest as a battle of hope and change pitted against tradition and custom.

Win or lose, Lambert will be a music icon. And win or lose, I guess I’d better figure out what those shapes on the CD player mean.

Jack Kemp: One of My favorite Politicians

I had a long and delightful conversation with Jack Kemp backstage at the Poverty Conference at the University of Southern California in February 2006; we discussed tax policy and whether there should be an increase in the minimum wage. The event was hosted by Maria Shriver, and Kemp was a panelist. I found him down-to-earth, energetic and authentic. He felt comfortable asserting his own views, even when they did not fall in line with the views of the Republican Party. He died of cancer today at age 73. He will be missed.   

Bea Arthur of Golden Girls and Maude dies today at 86.

Never-before-seen photo of Bea Arthur and Charlotte Laws at a party in the 1980's.

Short Sales Take a Long Time

I always wondered about dimwits who go on holiday, then spend the entire trip a fingerbreadth from the hotel television. But there I was--fingers, breath and all--in my beachside room screaming at Nancy Pelosi and Henry Paulson on “All Bailout, All the Time” TV as they ran around like Chicken Little telling Americans that money no longer grows on trees and that the great oaks we call banks would perish if they didn’t get some greenbacks fast. The green was then plucked from our modest front yard flora and rushed to the banks, but the banks then stubbornly refused to shelter us with their pythonic branches.

Even though I was an anti-bailout girl from day one, I figured it would have been better to give the money to Americans indirectly rather than rely on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and other questionable congressional schemes. Of the $4 trillion that has been committed to the bailout (according to figures released by Congress’ oversight panel, although Bloomberg and others say it is upwards of $12 trillion), the 250 million Americans age 18 and over could have received $16,000 each. It would work like this. A person with a mortgage would receive a principal reduction of $16,000 on his bank loan. A person without a mortgage, but with credit card debt, would receive up to a $16,000 credit on this debt and any unused funds would be placed in a mutual fund for a period of no less than ten years. A person without mortgage or credit card debt would be required to take the $16,000 mutual fund option. The banks would receive the money, thus become more liquid so they could lend in the future. The stock market would get a boost, and the average person would experience greater optimism about the economy and his own financial situation. This did not happen, and it is fruitless to cry over bare bushes and toppled trees, or the verdant landscape that could have been.

Anger, however, can often move mountains, even barren ones. The average person is incensed over pyramid-king Bernie Madoff, CEO bonuses, lavish executive junkets and the diamond-studded safety nets gifted big business. This anger has prompted a lot of legal scrutiny and a few arrests, a lot of indignant political speeches and a few attempts to patch bad law, and a lot of negative press about corporate greed and a few reimbursements of bonus funds.  

But public outrage is deficient in the realm I call banking’s black hole of incompetence, a bureaucratic void which seems to suck intelligence, ability and reason from bank employees. As a Realtor, I have come face to face with this stymieing scenario in bank short sale departments. A short sale is when a lender agrees to let a property sell for less than is owed on the loan and forgives the difference in order to avoid a costly and time-consuming foreclosure. This is not real forgiveness or a favor; it is done to increase the bank’s bottom line. A short sale tends to net the bank more than a foreclosure does.  

A short sale works like this. A property is listed with a Realtor, and then offers are submitted to the bank along with documentation showing the owner of the property has a hardship. The bank reviews the documents and appraises the property, then typically two to three months later, makes a decision about whether they will take less than the amount due on the note. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, buyers are sometimes required to wait six to 11 months for a short sale department’s response, finding out later they have chased their tail and have no deal at all.     

Short sales have increased dramatically in the past two years. According to the National Association of Realtors, short sales and foreclosures account for 45 percent of the home sales nationwide.

I recently closed six short sale escrows, but grimaced each time as banks delayed for months, ordered overvalued appraisals and mismanaged files. Too few employees and low wages was the standard excuse, but there did not seem to be an attempt to increase compensation or hire enough staff to handle the workload.  

On these transactions, the banks—which were supplemented with taxpayer dollars--lost $675,000, an average of $112,500 per property, in a price range of $500,000 to $1,100,000. The losses could primarily be attributed to the bank’s extended delay, which typically resulted in a loss of the buyer with the best offer. In the end, a second or even third place bidder would close the deal. Additionally, when banks are slow to respond, properties fall into disrepair and lose value. Brown lawns, mosquito-infested pools and leaky plumbing systems are not uncommon.

Sometimes this taxpayer loss can be chalked up to inflated bank appraisals and an irrational rejection of a market-price offer. Other times, it can be attributed to foolish self-imposed time-limits, such as when a bank negotiator, who has taken three months to look at a pile of offers, tells the seller’s accountant he has only one hour to provide an updated profit and loss statement or the file will be closed, thus requiring the entire process to be started from scratch.

According to the National Association of Realtors, approximately five million homes were sold last year. If we estimate that one million were short sales, it is reasonable to assume that there may be an annual taxpayer loss of as much as $100 billion due to this sort of banking incompetence.  

A seventh short sale transaction in December did not close. As listing agent, I brought the bank an offer of $185,000, but the bank refused it, saying the townhouse was worth $205,000. A month later, the highest offer I could get was $135,000, which they rejected saying the property was worth $155,000, despite the fact that unsold listings in the same complex were priced in the $120,000’s. The townhouse went into foreclosure and is now on the market for $115,000. In addition, the homeowner association (HOA) has been fining the property at $100 per day for months: the final sum owed to the HOA will be upwards of $18,000. Since the bank refused the initial $185,000, the loss to taxpayers on this transaction will be at least $88,000.   

The oak, which is the national tree of the US, is a symbol of Zeus, the Thunder God and strength; but lately our banks have proved themselves unworthy of this distinction. They have become welfare bandits when they should be pillars of stability for the community. They have accepted taxpayer dollars without weeding out incompetence and senseless waste. They are rooted at the center of the senseless bailout efforts, and we should be angry about it all.  

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) Motion Passed by Council - Better Labeling

Dear Honorable Councilmember,

The Greater Valley Glen Council passed the following motion and hopes you will ask Sacramento legislators to put an MSG product labeling policy in place for the state of California.There are individuals, for example, who have suffered from migraine headaches for years unaware that MSG is the culprit.

Motion:

“When food companies hide the presence of MSG (or free glutamic acid) in products, consumers are misled and lose the ability to choose what they put into their bodies. It is estimated that 2% - 40% of the public are negatively affected or become quite ill by the presence of MSG. Food companies may hide MSG under 40+ names that consumers would not recognize, (i.e. gelatin, natural flavor, soy sauce, seasonings, autolyzed yeast, calcium caseinate, textured protein, yeast food, etc.). The Greater Valley Glen Council wants to see improved product labeling and suggests the following: When there is a new product on the market or a recipe change, the food manufacturer must measure for free glutamic acid and disclose it as MSG on the label with levels present in milligrams.”

___________

Additional MSG facts:

MSG is Always In:

• Autolyzed yeast

• Calcium caseinate
• Gelatin
• Glutamate
• Glutamic acid
• Hydrolyzed protein
• Monopotassium glutamate
• Monosodium glutamate
• Sodium caseinate
• Textured protein
• Yeast extract
• Yeast food
• Yeast Nutrient

MSG is Often In:

• Barley Malt

• Bouillon
• Broth
• Carrageenan
• Enzyme-modified substances
• Flavoring
• Flavors
• Malt Extract
• Malt flavoring
• Maltodextrin
• Natural flavor/flavorings
• Natural pork/beef/chicken flavoring
• Pectin
• Protein-fortified substances
• Seasonings
• Soy protein
• Soy protein isolate or concentrate
• Soy sauce
• Soy sauce extract
• Stock
• Vegetable gum
• Whey protein
• Whey protein isolate or concentrate
• Spice

MSG can be found in shampoos, soaps, cosmetics, vitamins, medicines, candy, milk, chewing gum. Even food that is labeled “organic,” can have MSG. Lettuce and vegetables are often sprayed with MSG because it gives the lettuce a renewed look, (even at restaurant salad bars). Meats can be rinsed with MSG phosphate substance (this is rarely mentioned on the meat’s label)

Thank you and feel free to contact me if you have any questions at (818) 346-5280.

Sincerely,

Charlotte

Laws, Ph.D.
Greater Valley Glen Council
Chair of the Government Relations Committee

Humanitarian Art Ordinance

The Greater Valley Glen Council voted to support a Humanitarian Art Ordinance and has forwarded letters to the Los Angeles City Council and to Sacramento legislators with hopes they will implement this ordinance. Below is a letter sent to an LA City Councilmember.

Dear Honorable Councilmember,

The Greater Valley Glen Council encourages you to create a Humanitarian Art Ordinance for the city of Los Angeles, making it illegal to abuse or kill animals for the sake of art. A sample ordinance is enclosed for your review.

The San Francisco Art Institute recently planned to display an artist’s short film which depicted horses and other animals being bludgeoned to death; protests and negative press forced them to cancel the exhibit. A Costa Rican artist starved a dog to death as “art.” A recent art project in Florida involved dipping live mice into resin, then cutting them into cubes. A domestic cat was skinned alive for a project at the Toronto Film Festival. Two years ago in Los Angeles, an elephant was spray painted to look like wallpaper for an exhibit; LA Animal Services had to go to the exhibit and order the unsafe paint to be removed.  

We are opposed to this disturbing trend in the art world and hope you will make it clear that Los Angeles’ art exhibits and projects are compassionate.   

This is the sample ordinance for the city:

The Humanitarian Art Ordinance makes the commission of animal abuse for the purposes of creating media or an exhibit illegal and punishable as a misdemeanor or felony and says The City will not Commission such Exhibits.

Resolution approving the “Humanitarian Art” Ordinance would make the commission of the crime of Animal Abuse for the purposes of creating media or a display in the City of Los Angeles illegal and punishable as a misdemeanor or felony, and the City will not Commission such Exhibits.

WHEREAS, The City of Los Angeles recognizes and approves of the American Humane Association’s “Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media” wherein the basic principles declare that:  ·  Animals are not props!  · No animal will be killed or injured for the sake of a film production and  American Humane Association will not allow any animal to be treated inhumanely to elicit a performance; and

WHEREAS, The City of Los Angeles holds that the production of media that the director or the producer of the media is the direct cause of animal abuse to be captured on media supports an unacceptable industry of animal abuse; and,

WHEREAS, “Animal Abuse” includes the violation of Los Angles Ordinances, State, Federal and international laws pertaining to animal abuse, the interest of animal welfare and animal cruelty laws specifically framed for the prevention of inhumane treatment of animals, including, but not limited to California Penal Code Sections 596, 596.5, 596.7, 597, 597.1, 597.3, 597a through x, 598, 598 a through d, 599 et al, 600, 623, 374d, 384h, 399, 399.5 and Federal laws 7 USC § 1901 – 1907,  and 7 U.S.C. §  2131 et seq; and,

WHEREAS, “Caused or created or contributed to” shall mean that the defendant was responsible for causing the animal to be abused as defined above.  A person is responsible for creating or causing the abuse of the animal if the animal would not have been abused in the way that the animal was captured on film “but for” the actions, production and direction of the defendant; and.

WHEREAS, “Exhibit” shall mean a display, presentation, show, film, media and/or screening of Animal Abuse; and.

WHEREAS, nothing in this chapter shall prohibit any person from capturing the Animal Abuse when the individual is not the cause of the death of animals and are not responsible for aiding or abetting in the crime of animal abuse that occurred; and,

WHEREAS, there is a government interest in protecting animals from unnecessary cruelty and not funding or commissioning animal cruelty to occur; and,

WHEREAS, the City of Los Angeles hereby acknowledges that this law is necessary to prevent further animal cruelty; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That this Humane Art Ordinance will make the commission of the crime of Animal Abuse for the purposes of creating media to now be illegal, punishable as a misdemeanor or felony; and, be it FURTHER RESOLVED, That the City of Los Angeles will not Commission or sponsor Exhibits wherein the creator of the media caused the crime of Animal Abuse to occur; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, That the ordinance would be drafted as a two pronged test for the actual director.  The necessary elements of the crime are (a) Animal Abuse as defined under Los Angeles local ordinances, state, federal or international law must have taken place, (b) The defendant would have caused or created or contributed to the crime of Animal Abuse to take place for the purposes of his or her creation of the media or exhibit.

Thank you. If you have any questions, I can be reached at (818) 346-5280.

Sincerely,

Charlotte Laws
Chair - Government Relations Committe
Greater Valley Glen Council

Clean Money: Better Elections

The Greater Valley Glen Council hosted a Clean Money Workshop at Kittridge Elementary School on January 17, 2009, exploring the question of whether local elections should be fully financed with public funds, and if so, what the process should entail. Robin Gilbert and Trina Ray, volunteers with the California Clean Money Campaign, supplied a video and PowerPoint presentation and asked participants to fill out a four page questionnaire.

Months ago, the Los Angeles City Council Rules and Finance Committee said they wanted feedback from neighborhood councils before entertaining the issue of publicly funded elections and before asking the LA Ethics Commission to draft legislation. Thirty-five clean money workshops have been conducted around the city, and according to Gilbert and Ray, the input from participants has been enthusiastic and illuminating.  

Arizona and Maine currently have clean money elections as do the cities of Portland, Oregon and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since the implementation of public financing, they have realized an increase in voter participation and in female and minority candidates, as well as a decline in special interest influence.

How might this process work? If a candidate opts to abide by public financing, he or she would be allowed to come up with seed money (to open a campaign office, make flyers, etc.) possibly not exceeding $10,000 for a City Council race or $25,000 for a Mayoral race. In order to qualify for the ballot and demonstrate his or her viability, the candidate would have to get a set number of five dollar donations (i.e. 750) from registered voters in his or her district. These donations would go directly to a common fund. Then all clean money candidates would be given an initial sum for their campaigns. They would be given matching funds later, if necessary, so as not to be outspent by opponents who have declined to participate in public financing. Eventually, privately financed candidates would realize it was not in their best interest to fundraise furiously because their clean money opponents would receive the same funds with no effort.

Candidates would be able to concentrate on ideas and communicate with voters, and the amount of money spent on political campaigns would naturally decrease over time. A statewide clean-money system would cost Californians $3 to $5 per person; implementation citywide would cost less.    

Voter turnout for the 2007 Los Angeles city elections was a meager 10%, and 72% of the money for city council races came from outside the district, usually from large donors. Seventy-eight percent of the time LA city council races are won by those who raise the most money. In Arizona, before public financing, 79% of the elections were won by the candidate with the most cash, yet after public funding, the individual with the most money won only two percent of the time.    

Clean money means accountability to voters, not special interests. It gives the ordinary citizen access to candidates. It levels the playing field and increases voter participation. Contact www.caclean.org to participate in an upcoming workshop.