The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has been handing down its decisions as the term concludes. What it decided not to decide may be more important than what it did decide. It decided not to touch any of the gerrymandering cases and sent them back to the states, which means in some states, particularly in the South, the majority is not going to rule by virtue of how the district lines are already drawn. Where this will play out this November is in the battle for control of the House of Representatives, where the Democrats need to capture 24 new seats to flip it. This SCOTUS decision makes it a little bit harder. It also upheld the Muslim ban and essentially decided the president’s comments were not relevant. It’s a bit of an ivory tower approach, but I guess it got them the answer they wanted—5-4, of course.
After this family border disaster, I also suspect we can look forward to stories about lost children between now and November, and with more than 2,000 children, it’s almost absolutely certain that some will not be found, some will be stolen and some may even die.
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Summer has arrived in Malibu with all of the usual problems we’ve come to expect with the season. There is far from enough parking to accommodate 12 million or so summer visitors in the hot season and the city’s solution seems to be to beef up traffic enforcement and write a lot of tickets. People spend an hour and a half getting here and the city ought to take some of the land it just bought to create a few temporary public parking lots during the summer season. Maybe it could even have a small beach shuttle to move people around.
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The recent murder of a camper in Malibu Creek State Park has got lots of people on edge. The victim was apparently in his tent—probably asleep—at 4 or 5 a.m., camping with his two young daughters, ages two and four, when he was shot and died at the scene. The trauma to those two little girls is almost indescribable. According to statements made in the press, sheriffs don’t appear to have any clues or even have a sense of the motive for the shooting. The victim was a prominent chemist in the pharmaceutical industry. Was the shooting random or professional? Understandably, the sheriff’s investigators have been careful about what they release, which is pretty much SOP in a homicide like this but the question remains: Is it safe to be in the state park, which is large and alongside the Malibu Canyon/Las Virgenes Road? There is some suggestion that shootings have happened before but nothing recently. See our front-page story for more details.
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The school district is slowly beginning to shift in its attitude toward Malibu. The board members appear to be willing to give us more autonomy and, in fact, are assigning us our own Malibu Pathway Director. On the fundraising side, they’re letting us raise our own money for the Malibu schools, money that will stay in Malibu. This is really important because ultimately, if we are going to have our own school district, we have to show that we are willing to support it. If the fundraising goes well for Malibu, it could be quite persuasive. With a community of our wealth and education, there is no reason we couldn’t have a national class public school system like the one in Connecticut.
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The movement to build an overpass over the 101 Freeway so that some mountain lions can get a little biological diversity feels like overkill to me since the cost of the project is going to come in at more than $100 million, as some have calculated. There are only two males in this area and I can’t believe there isn’t a cheaper solution. If the overpass is ultimately built, there is talk about people using it as well. What I can’t figure out is how you explain to a mountain lion that it is not to use the pathway set aside for people.
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The battle with Joe Edmiston, Uncle Joe to many—the maestro of the Santa Monica Mountains by virtue of his control over his twin entities, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority (MRCA)—is proceeding at full tilt. On Wednesday, there is what’s called a scoping meeting at the facility in Pacific Palisades, where Uncle Joe and his minions will lay out their plans for overnight camping and cooking in the mountains above Malibu, in the general vicinity of Puerco Canyon. As someone who lost his home in the 1993 fire, the thought of campers in the mountains at fire pits, or whatever they design, petrifies me. There are winds in the hills, drafts that come through the canyons and lots of amateurs who don’t know much about camping. That is a combustible mix and this is a bad idea.
Note: This column was written in advance of Wednesday’s scoping meeting.