ABC’s ‘Modern Family’ house in L.A. sells for $2.15 million

Exterior shots of the home, found in Cheviot Hills, were used to portray the family residence of Phil and Claire Dunphy. (Media Carrot Photography | Inset: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

The Cheviot Hills (West Los Angeles area of upper middle class families) home is used as the fictional family residence of Phil and Claire Dunphy on the sitcom. And no, Phil was not the listing agent. Only the exteriors of the house are used to depict the Dunphy residence on the show. Interiors scenes are shot on soundstages.

Cheviot Hills is located about between Sony Studios and Fox studios. Median household income of $103,165. Close enough to the beach to feel a cool ocean breeze without too much morning fog. There is a nice pitch and putt 9 hole golf course nearby. When single, I lived nearby. Lots of memories.

More pictures of this house here

NO to more California Water Bonds

40,000 people watch water spilling into the San Fernando Valley — LA Aqueduct opens Nov 5, 1913

40,000 people observed the opening of the aqueduct into the San Fernando Valley

The latest water bond proposal calls for $7.5 billion that would allocate $2 billion for surface and groundwater storage projects, $850 million for Delta levees and habitat restoration, and $1 billion for groundwater cleanup. If this sounds familiar you are not mistaken. We have spent billions of dollars doing the very same thing. None of those projects has resulted in more available water.

On December 9, 2012 George Skelton, Los Angeles Times commentator/reporter, wrote “The truth is that no matter what the size of the bond issue no additional water will come to Los Angeles nor will there be any additional water for agriculture. The reality is that Californians will have to face water rationing. However, construction companies will benefit from this giant expenditure. I wonder how much money will be donated to campaign re-elections.”

I conducted my own on line research on California water bonds and found the following bonds approved.

Proposition 13. In March 2000, California voters approved Proposition 13 (2000 Water Bond), which authorizes the State of California to sell $1.97 billion in general obligation bonds to support safe drinking, water quality, flood protection and water reliability projects throughout the State.

Proposition 40.In March 2002, California voters approved Proposition 40, a $2.6 billion state bond measure for conservation, neighbourhood parks, and coastline and watershed protection. Proposition 40 was the largest conservation bond measure ever approved in California.

Proposition 50.In November 2002, the $3.4 billion water bond measure, the largest in California history, was approved by voters. It provides $825 million in funding for CALFED for a variety of programs, including surface water storage studies, water conveyance facilities, levee improvements, water supply reliability projects, ecosystem restoration, watershed programs, conservation and water recycling. More on Proposition 50 is available at http://www.water.ca.gov/grants- loans.

Proposition 84. In November 2006 California voters approved this measure that will fund water, flood control, natural resources, park and conservation projects by authorizing $5,388,000,000 in general obligation bonds. The bonds will be used to fund various projects aimed at (1) improving drinking and agricultural water quality and management; (2) preserving, restoring and increasing public access to rivers and beaches; (3) improving flood control. See details of the law at http://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/1008/files/prop 84 text.pdf.

My calculator says these propositions spent more than $13 billion. The cost to pay back those bonds with interest will most likely be double that amount.

California is up to its neck in commitments and needs. The recent claims that the state government has a surplus is incorrect. The surplus is only in terms of money needed to pay this year’s bills. We are drowning in future debt owed to retired teachers, retired state employees, and other bond commitments. Our infrastructure is falling apart.

Unless I hear some startling reason for this waste of tax dollars we should all vote NO to this give away.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Here are short biographies of all 56 signers of the Declaration. The first, largest, and most famous signature is that of John Hancock. Most were well educated. All were well off.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CANADA

Canada day was yesterday but this is worth playing. Before Americans or anyone else laughs think about your own national anthem, Could you sing it without mistakes and in tune to get a beer.

8 Other Laws That Could Be Ignored Now That Religions Get To Pick And Choose

From AOL.com

NUDITY LAWS Entire colonies of people are dedicated to the belief that being compelled to wear clothes is wrong. Others don’t believe they should be compelled to make love only indoors.

TAXES Most religions profess a deep affinity for peace (while drenching history in blood in the name of religion, but whatever). Why should religious pacifists be compelled to pay taxes that subsidize war?

LSD There isn’t much more religious of an experience than talking directly with God. Hell, Huston Smith included a section on acid in his definitive book The World’s Religions.

GROWING HEMP If you’ve ever talked to a hemp evangelist, you know belief in the crop borders on the religious.

STONING The Bible is packed with tales of impure women meeting a just end under a pile of stones. Today, in certain countries, they’re known as honor killings. Will the court make an exception to murder for the deeply religious?

GENITAL MUTILATION Female circumcision — more commonly and accurately known as genital mutilation — is central to the practice of some religions, according to some people who have strong beliefs. What is a democracy to tell people otherwise? In fact, the same could go for domestic violence, polygamy and whatever else.

PASTEURIZED MILK For some Amish folk, following a strict religious interpretation of “Do unto others what you would have others do unto you” means selling raw, unpasteurized milk, a practice banned under U.S. law for its potential to carry dangerous bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE To hell with the Violence Against Women Act, when the Quran authorizes you to strike a disobedient wife, as illustrated in Chapter 4, Verse 34. And we don’t have to limit the freedom to Muslim men. As Deuteronomy 25:11-12 testifies, “If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.”

Where is the accountability on Iraq?

I just finished watching Face The Nation. Peggy Noonan and Michael Gerson for the GOP. Dee Dee Myers and Todd Purdum for the Dems.

-No one on that program could offer a coherent reason for more troops in Iraq or any troops in Syria.

-No one could explain how $500 million aid to Syrian rebels would end that civil war.

-No one could explain the fact that the Assad Syrian government was bombing ISIS (our presumed enemy?)

-No one could or would say whose side we are on.

-No one explained how civil wars in the Middle East would impact the United States.

Actually Bob Schieffer did not ask the questions that might provide the answers to these questions. The discussion of these commentators told the viewer they have no answers.

Where is the accountability on Iraq?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL

June 17,2014

Can someone explain to me why the media still solicit advice about the crisis in Iraq from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)? Or Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)? How many times does the Beltway hawk caucus get to be wrong before we recognize that maybe, just maybe, its members don’t know what they’re talking about?

Certainly Politico could have found someone with more credibility than Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy in the George W. Bush administration and one of the architects of the Iraq war, to comment on how the White House might react to the Iraq war, to the rapidly deteriorating political situation in Iraq today. Certainly New York Times columnist David Brooks knows what folly it is to equate President Obama’s 2011 troop removal with Bush’s 2003 invasion, as he did during a discussion with me last Friday on NPR?

Just a reminder of what that 2003 invasion led to: Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes authoritatively priced Bush’s war at more than $3 trillion. About 320,000 U.S. veterans suffer from brain injury as a result of their service. Between 500,000 and 655,000 Iraqis died, as well as more than 4,000 U.S. military members.

Yet as Brooks’s words reveal, the prevailing mindset in today’s media is to treat the 2003 invasion as if its prosecution were an act of God — like Hurricane Katrina, an inevitability that could not have been avoided. Seen this way, policymakers can ignore the idiocy of the decision to invade in the first place and can instead direct all of their critical attention to how to deal with the aftermath. It’s almost as though the mainstream media have demoted themselves from a corps of physicians, eager and able to diagnose, prognosticate and prescribe, to one of EMTs, charged instead with triaging, cleaning and cauterizing a catastrophe without investigating its underlying cause.

Since so many liberal hawks reached the same conclusion as did Bush et al., this notion of the 2003 invasion’s inevitability can falsely seem to have some credence (which is, perhaps why, as Frank Rich points out in New York magazine, so many erstwhile hawks, especially so-called liberal ones, feel no need to acknowledge their erroneous judgments of a decade ago).

But if so many were wrong about Iraq in 2003, why are they still being invited (and trotting themselves out) on Sunday morning talk shows and op-ed pages as authorities on U.S.-Iraq policy? Where is the accountability for the politicians’ and pundits’ warmongering of 11 years ago? James Fallows — who was “right” on Iraq in a 2002 Atlantic cover story — tweeted Friday, “Working hypothesis: no one who stumped for original Iraq invasion gets to give ‘advice’ about disaster now. Or should get listened to.” Amen.

In the current cacophony of Washington, we must remember that there is no equivalence to be drawn between Bush’s 2003 decision to invade Iraq and Obama’s 2011 decision to withdraw U.S. troops. Bush’s invasion, after all, was not just a mistake. At best a fool’s errand, at worst a criminal act, this great blunder helped set the stage for Iraq’s chaos today. The increased sectarian violence stems not from the 2011 withdrawal; rather, it is the fruit of the 2003 invasion, subsequent occupation and much-vaunted “surge” of 2007–08.

McCain and Graham insist that airstrikes are the only way forward in today’s Iraq. But what we need now are not armchair warriors calling for military strikes or sending weapons. (As an aside, I will say that, should members of the neoconservative movement feel so motivated, we would wholeheartedly respect their decision to enlist in the Iraqi army.) Obama, himself “right” on Iraq during the war’s run-up, is also right today to resist calls for direct U.S. military action — including airstrikes — in Iraq. The U.S. misadventure in Iraq ended in 2011; we do not need another. Experience and history have (clearly) taught us that there is no military solution in Iraq. Only a political reconciliation can quell the unrest, and this requires more than bellicose calls for violence from 5,000 miles away. To find a solution, we must commit to regional and international diplomacy.

We learned in 2003 that when we move in with guns blazing, we tend to spark a lot more fires than we extinguish. In 2014, we cannot afford to learn this same lesson. Regardless of how many are too blind (or proud or foolish) to realize it, we need to write a new scenario for 2014, so that 11 years from now, we can look back and ponder how, this time, we did things right.

Why the Rich get much Richer

On My 28 I posted a commentary titled “Goodbye Middle Class.” On June 26 David Lazarus posted this column in the Los Angeles Times.

His column abridged, (underlined and bold not part of the Times editing) At CVS Caremark, it doesn’t pay to be really good at your job. The nation’s second-largest drugstore chain adjusts its annual raises to how much an employee makes. The higher your salary, the lower your raise. The top workers at CVS stores — those earning the highest hourly wage for their job classification — are “red lined” by the company and receive no raises at all. CVS, which gave its chief executive a 26% raise last year to almost $23 million in total compensation, isn’t alone in making sure its rank-and-file workers don’t make too much money.

And this is why, in any discussion of income inequality, we keep reaching the same point — the rich get richer, while everyone else gets table scraps. “It’s not personal. It’s business,” said Mike Lipis, a Los Angeles compensation consultant. “You’re trying to make the most of your limited compensation dollars.”

I wrote recently about a report showing that the head of CVS, Larry Merlo, enjoyed the widest gap in the country between a CEO’s salary and that of his less-worthy underlings. According to compensation researcher PayScale, Merlo’s $12.1-million salary last year was 422 times the size of the median CVS wage of $28,700.

A top-performing CVS pharmacy technician earning a base wage of $9.30 an hour will similarly merit a 4.75% raise. But a red-lined pharmacy technician earning $15.67 an hour will see no raise.

Politicians have an excellent issue for the coming elections. It’s a good bet that none of them will even address the pay discrepancy. The reason? The source of the contributions for their campaigns.

Don’t look for the media to emphasize the salary discrepancies. Those heading the media companies are some of the highest paid people.

Leslie Moonves, CEO of CBS Corp. $62,157,026 in 2012

Philippe P. Dauman, CEO of Vaicom Inc.$37,165,750 in 2013

Marissa A. Mayer, CEO of Yahoo Inc. $36,615,404 in 2012

Robert A. Iger, CEO of Disney Co. $34,321,055 in 2013

David M. Zaslav, CEO of Discover Communications $33,349,798 in 2013

THEY ARE CHILDREN

503me's Blog

There is an ongoing humanitarian disaster happening at our border with Mexico. There are massive numbers of ‘children’ some as young as toddlers with older brothers and sisters crossing over the border. They have fled violence and poverty and many have no parents, and they have been not allowed to stop in any of the countries coming up toward our border. I would point out again that these are CHILDREN.

What kind of people and what kind of government would not take care of these children and offer them security and place to be? Well, that appears to be our country. They call them illegal and they say they have no business here- so they house them in squalid conditions and then they plan to send those without any family here, right back to where they came from. That is shameful. The comments of many people on the different sites…

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It Wasn’t a Hard Choice for Hillary Clinton

Despite my contention that Hillary Clinton is the wrong person to become the next president I am still interested in the attention she receives. One hour with Diane Sawyer on ABC and two hours with Christiane Amanpour on CNN is a great way to sell books and an even greater way to prepare for a run for the presidency without announcing she is a candidate.

Naturally Los Angeles would be a great place to start a book signing tour for Mrs. Clinton. This is a Democratic stronghold. Even better was the Barnes and Noble bookstore in The Grove shopping center. This is the heart of West Los Angeles and home of liberal Congressman Henry Waxman.

Los Angeles is a very spread out city. It took 50 minutes for me to reach this high priced and very popular shopping center. 22 miles of stop and go traffic. Despite the crowd that awaited me the parking was easy.

The back end of the line. Two blocks from the Barnes & Noble store

I expected the crowd to be significant and it was. Security in and around the mall was very prominent. The line was about two city blocks in length. I overheard a security person say that people were lining up at 4:30 in the morning. The book signing started at 11:30. First you waited in line to buy the book and then returned to the line to obtain her (Clinton’s) autograph. The total time for the entire process was reported to be eight hours. The book flap cover says the price for this masterpiece is $35.00 but on a visit to Costco I found the un-autographed hard cover copy for $20.00.

Hillary Clinton entering Barnes & Noble Bookstore at The Grove in Los Angeles

I did obtain a circular stick on badge that reads “I’m Ready for Hillary.” There is no rain in Los Angeles in June. It was a medium warm sunny day. That waiting line held many future campaign workers. If nothing else the turn out brought more visitors and business to The Grove, the adjoining Farmers Market and Canter’s Deli just up the street.