In reference to the recent council discussion and future decision regarding the $4,000/month retainer paid to city lobbyist Jim Dantona, I would like to voice my opposition to this expense.

I feel confident that I am one of the few Malibu taxpayers who have had contact with Mr. Dantona. Due to my personal experience with him and his representation of the issues affecting the City of Malibu in Sacramento, I vehemently oppose the taxpayers’ money being spent on him under his current arrangement. His record speaks for itself. He was very ineffective representing the Malibu needs during the year 2000. This may be deemed my opinion, but it is substantiated by evidence. Malibu lost on two major bills last year.

The California Association of Realtors has full-time lobbyists in Sacramento lobbying for property-rights issues on behalf of its members and the clients we serve. We budget large dollars for this political action and we generally obtain positive results. I worked closely with our real estate lobbyist last year opposing AB885. Our lobbyist worked very hard and in the end, the only entity that was actively opposing this issue was CAR. Although they contacted Dantona, he made little effort to work in partnership with CAR in opposing this issue.

Without going into extensive detail, I must tell you that our lobbyist deemed Jim Dantona highly ineffective in bringing the Malibu message in regards to AB885 to the legislators. In fact, I was advised that he was rarely present at the important meetings and he was not present at the Senate hearing on AB885. There was no voice from Malibu on record as opposing this bill to the senators.

Perhaps Dantona was not managed properly by our former city manager, Harry Peacock. However, I don’t remember hearing reports or updates on his activities at the council meetings last year.

After all, business persons are results-oriented. Why shouldn’t the city be results-oriented as well? If you are allocating $60,000 per year, the taxpayers should know that there are results for this type of budgetary line item. If a list of positive results cannot be generated, the expense should be reduced in the budget. His expenses should definitely be in direct correlation to the results he achieves for the City of Malibu and the citizens it serves.

Beverly Taki

The good old USA is an empire. We stand atop the world like a giant colossus. We rank with other empires long gone: Rome, Greece, Persia, Macedonia and more recently, Spain, the Netherlands, France and England. Our last great challenger was the USSR and they’re now gone, beaten, demolished.

There are many would-be contenders, but most are not even close, probably decades before they catch up to the U.S.

We are affluent as a country well beyond the dreams of previous generations. We are personally affluent, I’m sure for many of us, well beyond our grandparents’ dreams.

So why are we so miserable?

Why are we so angry?

Why are our children running to school with guns to kill each other?

Why, in the midst of plenty, don’t we feel better about ourselves?

Someone suggested to me today that one reason we feel bad might be that we have a culture that glorifies bad guys. In our movies and on TV, bad guys frequently win. Not only do they win, but they’re also beloved and they often ride off into the sunset with the girls and the goodies.

Take a look at Tony Soprano, who is practically evil incarnate. But he doesn’t appear to be so bad. He loves his children and his marinara sauce and he’s sensitive enough to tell his shrink his troubles. So the lines between good and evil seem less solid.

Some would have us reinstate a code that says only good guys win.

And that’s all we can show in hopes it would solve the problem and make us feel better. But it would be roundly rejected, because the reality of life is that bad guys do win. Not always, but often enough to make you wonder.

I think we have deep cultural problems with accepting that everything comes with a price and that life doesn’t just go one way — up. Reality requires that we accept there are rhythms to life and things do change. Of course, ups are preferred, but there are always some downs.

Tony Soprano pays a price all the time, which is one of the reasons we like to watch him. But since we’re good people, we personally believe we should be exempt from that price.

If you could have told that kid in Santee who shot up his fellow students that the price he was going to pay for his vengeance was enormous and forever, maybe he would have stopped. If you could have said to him, this too would pass, and he believed it, maybe he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger — “Believe me, kid, 20 years from now high school will be nothing more than a memory, a distant, and for many like you, unpleasant memory.” If, in the future, he’d gone to his 10-year high school reunion, he would have found that life wasn’t always so kind to the most popular or best-looking kid, or the star athlete. No one gets a permanent pass on bad times. Then there is always the kid everyone admired who went home and put a bullet into his head and it leaves you wondering why.

This inability to accept that everything comes with a price isn’t just a disease of adolescence. It’s a much larger cultural disease we all share. Look at the stock market. Yesterday was practically Black Thursday. What happened?

Suddenly, many of us decided that there really is a business cycle. If it can go up, it also can go down, so we’d better get out. Is this any great revelation? Should we be miserable, depressed, jumping out of windows because there is a business cycle and there really are two directions?

What is the business reality? The reality is, the last couple of years were great years and the next few probably aren’t going to be as great. But for most companies, this means they’ll be off 10 or 20 percent, and in time, if they’re sound, as most of them are, they’ll come back.

“Not good enough,” say most people. This is really the hub of the problem. We want a painless world. All ups, no downs — don’t bother me with the details. In our instant culture this has come to mean not only no downs but also no discomfort, no delays, no uncomfortable experiences, and everything should be even and smooth and fair, as long as we win, of course.

This is not reality and we are paying a very heavy price for expecting this unreality. We appear to be chronically unhappy and discontent. We live in a place that our grandparents would think was heaven, yet we’re constantly miserable. We’ve lost our sense of proportion. Many equate a momentary loss of cable service with the same weight as we would the arrival of the Cossacks in the old days.

If we are to get happy, we’re going to have to get real and teach our children to also get real and maybe they’ll stop killing each other.

Two miles upstream from Malibu Colony lies 1 million cubic yards of saturated sediments precariously perched behind an old 100-foot-high concrete wall that averages 6 feet thick. The concrete is almost 80 years old. It has numerous cracks and leaks, and its steel reinforcements are beginning to rust and corrode. There is no possible way this obsolete structure can survive large earthquakes that are certain to occur here sooner or later, which will shake the area much stronger than the 1971 Sylmar quake or the 1994 Northridge quake. Sediments behind the dam contain a large percentage of silt and fine sand, which, when saturated, tend to liquefy during earthquake shaking.

The Rindge Dam is a colossal public safety menace and should be removed as soon as possible. The benefits to Malibu Creek’s steelhead population are simply an added bonus of this urgent project.

Matthew Horns

Geology graduate student

The applause for your editorial “So what’s a good steelhead worth?” (March 1) comes from mostly silent taxpayers who are not “activists” as a group. The true cost of trying to bring steelhead trout back to Malibu Creek by destroying the Rindge Dam is surely more than the $4,200 per trout you hypothetically compute. This Rindge Dam/steelhead matter has been studied off and on more than 30 years, with the pace of activity and reports quickening in 1989 to this day. Now yet another Rindge Dam study is proposed costing the taxpayers another $1.5 million in the hope that steelhead will come back.

These studies have consumed millions of taxpayer dollars represented by reports, field tests and staff time of federal, state and local governments and many environmental groups funded totally or partially by government (taxpayers’ dollars). These agencies and groups usually rally around the “politically correct” stance rather than delve into a “cost-benefit” analysis suggested by your editorial. It is important for all Malibuites to understand that the “tear down the Rindge Dam” movement is coming from government agencies and lock-step environmental groups, not the taxpayer.

The scary part of this movement to “save the steelhead” is that it is but a microcosm of many such dubious “PC” actions throughout the land, where cost-benefit analysis to determine priorities and relativity to the health and welfare needs of the human species is usually the last concern, if at all. Your editorial on “costs” and “worth of a steelhead” should be a basis for discussion in economic, environmental and social circles across the land. Let us hope reason and reality will become more dominant in our society than strictly “politically correct” massive movements funded by overtaxed citizens through their elected and unelected government representatives.

Ronald L. Rindge

Arnold G. York seems to have difficulties understanding why kids today are killing each other. I believe there are several reasons contributing to this factor. We have a lack of parental guidance and communication. We have an easy access to guns in our family homes. We do not teach our children acceptance of ourselves and others who may be different. We do not support self-expression and individuality; instead we urge kids to toss aside their own true character to follow into everyone else’s footsteps. We have been desensitizing our world through video games, movies, television and music.

Eminem may seek notoriety through lyrics of hate, pretending it’s all a joke, but susceptible teenagers do not perceive those messages the same way. Many kids are sorry victims of our society and do not understand the consequences of their actions. Like a video game, they view horrifying actions as something that will disappear at the end, where life will continue as before. As disturbing as it may sound, if changes are not enforced very soon in our world of rapid technical and scientific development, it may be inevitable that we are heading towards a world where human relationship and touch as we now know it will cease to exist.

Andre Landzaat

California’s $60 billion tourism and recreation industry is the state’s biggest business. Fishing contributes 20 percent of that, or $12 billion. A day of fishing contributes about $70 to our economy; fishing days have increased 54 percent since 199l.

One hundred seventy-three million Americans participate in outdoor recreation each month involving themselves in an average of four different pursuits. Eighty-three percent of this recreation is done for fun, 80 percent to relax, 79 percent for exercise, 74 percent for family togetherness, 73 percent to experience nature, etc.

Fishing is the fifth most popular activity, behind walking, swimming, driving and picnicking. Fishing comes out ahead of cycling, visiting campgrounds, visiting cultural sites, hiking, golfing, skiing, etc. It is in everyone’s interest to preserve and restore stable natural ecosystems for both economic and recreational reasons. California’s rivers are second only to its beaches as recreational sites. Fishing is the No. 1 activity on our rivers.

Last, we should consider the future of these magnificent fish, the steelhead. They are fast approaching an endangered status. Your Ann Salisbury needs to give us the full picture of steelheads’ plight, as well as a picture of fisheries managers’ view of how our Southern California steelhead may contribute to the preservation of all steelhead trout.

For an idea of who’s interested, the last meeting of the Steelhead Task Force included representatives from Brad Sherman’s office, Zev Yaroslavsky’s office, the National Park Service, California State Parks, UCLA, the Sierra Club, Corps of Engineers, Mountains Restoration Trust, Heal the Bay, Southern California Watershed Alliance, Wilderness Fly Fishers, Sespe Fly Fishers, Federation of Fly Fishers, Cal Trout, and more.

This fish is important, Arnold. We’d appreciate your support.

Bo Meyer, president

Wilderness Fly Fishers

A great big thank-you goes to both Wallace Theaters, a.k.a. David Lyons, and Ed Harris for a stimulating evening Friday night, March 9, after the 7 p.m. showing of “Pollack.”

Longtime Malibu resident Ed Harris, an Academy Award nominee for his portrayal of Pollock, was invited to participate in a “question and answer.”

The film, “Pollack,” is a very real portrayal of a brilliant artist and his passion and pain.

Ed was so gracious, honest and interesting as he spoke of the process of receiving the book from his dad, many years ago, and the many roads he traveled to bring this brilliant film to the screen. He explained how he seriously took up painting to feel the emotions of what it was like to be with Pollack. He inhabited the character of Pollack with truth and simplicity as the director of the film, as well as the central character. He presented a well-documented and beautifully crafted film.

Every actor in this film is outstanding, especially Marcia Gay Harden and Ed’s very talented wife, Amy Madigan.

As I sat and listened to this knowledgeable and articulate artist Friday night I wished that this kind of forum could become a regular part of our community which is rich with talented people: directors, actors, musicians, artists, poets, etc. I realized how stimulating it would be to have more of these evenings on a regular basis.

Up until last year, the Godmother of Malibu Cafe & Catering Company was offering poetry readings on the last Wednesday of the month. These evenings were well received. Unfortunately, our poet laureate left town and left a tremendous void for cultural events. We need someone to take up this baton again and develop a program on a monthly basis, which would cover a wide range of artistic endeavors.

I bet I am not alone when I say, I want to know how the road was traveled to reach the goal of many of these talented artists and to participate in their creations. Who cares how much they earn, or who they are dating, what they are eating or what recovery program they are entering? I want to know what possessed them to climb the many rocky hills to their goals, whether it be acting, writing, directing, painting, singing, designing, photography or whatever God-given talents they possess.

Until then, my sincere appreciation to Ed Harris and David Lyons.

Incidentally, Wallace Theaters is celebrating 10 years in Malibu and David Lyons has done an outstanding job of participating in all community events. This company is committed to bringing this best entertainment into our town. They deserve a huge thank-you and congratulations from each of us. If you want to know how to do that, buy a ticket and go to the movies.

Dolores Rivellino Walsh

The Godmother of Malibu