A new program in Beverly Hills aims to attract more people to famed shopping streets such as Rodeo Drive and compete against other area entertainment.
BOLD, which stands for Beverly Hills Open Later Days, is a temporary initiative kicking off Thursday that keeps nearly 90 retailers in the city open until 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays in August. Businesses in the area are typically open until about 6 p.m. BOLD will also bring in-store events and sidewalk art. Participating restaurants will provide shoppers who have made purchases after 6 p.m. with, for example, free appetizers or a glass of wine.
BOLD marks the first time a citywide program is being rolled out to lengthen guest stays in the area with retailers such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana and Burberry among the businesses that have agreed to keep their doors open later. City officials will test the program to see how it works with the hope of potentially making extended hours more permanent if successful.
“One of the main things that our organization has really been actively looking at is how do we keep Beverly Hills relevant,” said Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau chief executive Julie Wagner. “We don’t want

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Tried and tested by professional athletes, this board is the ride of a lifetime.

From Panama to Los Angeles, here’s what $100 million can get you.

The new ultra-luxe Hotel Talisa has us looking forward to subzero temps.

In a speech delivered July 20, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten characterized the school choice movement as merely an outgrowth of segregationist policies.

Across the country, students, parents and teachers have seen the benefits of school choice. Underprivileged students who might’ve otherwise been condemned to underperforming traditional public schools have been given the chance to attend schools that will actually educate them. Parents have been empowered to choose the best school for their child. And teachers have been given more flexibility in teaching.

Somewhere in this, Weingarten sees the product of “an intentional, decades-long campaign to protect the economic and political power of the few against the rights of the many.”

Framing the fight over education policy as a David versus Goliath battle, in which the AFT is David and school choice proponents are Goliath, Weingarten sought to make the case that school choice is merely a means for wealthy privatizers to undermine public schools.

Arguing “the term ‘choice’ was used to cloak overt racism by segregationist politicians,” Weingarten seemingly wanted conference attendees to tie the word “choice” to “racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia and homophobia” which, she claims, are all forms of division created by the same forces behind school choice.

Such conspiratorial and convoluted rhetoric is nothing new from the teachers unions. The United Teachers Los Angeles recently attempted to peg two candidates for school board as puppets of billionaire privatizers intent on dismantling public schools. Voters didn’t buy the scare tactics and elected Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez to the Los Angeles Unified school board in May, giving the nation’s second-largest district a pro-charter school majority for the first time.

While teachers unions have yet to build momentum off the billionaire-conspiracy angle, Weingarten has unfortunately chosen to go down the route of drawing dubious links between racism and school choice. It’s a rhetorical tactic wrought with irony, considering school choice programs have demonstrated great potential in helping especially underprivileged black and Latino students succeed.

The Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University has found that black students in California charter schools perform significantly better on reading and math than black students in traditional public schools. Additionally, both black and Latino students in poverty have been found to make more learning gains than their counterparts in traditional public schools.

While voucher programs across the country have yielded mixed results, the idea of vouchers remains popular. In April, the Public Policy Institute of California found 73 percent of blacks and 69 percent of Latinos in the state backed the vouchers for use at the school of a parents choice.

There’s a reason for the enduring popularity of school choice: parents actually want the freedom to choose, however inconvenient that might be for teachers unions desperate to retain their political stranglehold over education policy.

Parents, students and teachers deserve better than the warped thinking of teachers unions like AFT which put political power before choice and results.

SIGNED, COMMITTED WATER POLO PLAYERS, SWIMMERS

Class of 2018

BOYS WATER POLO

Name, School, Position/Specialty, College

Wyatt Benson, Mater Dei, center, Princeton

Jake Cavano, Huntington Beach, defender/utility, UCLA

Hannes Daube, Orange Lutheran, attacker, USC

Noah Hodge, Santa Margarita, GK, Harvard

Matt Kacura, Orange Lutheran, attacker, UCLA

Ash Molthen, Orange Lutheran, left-handed attacker, UCLA

AJ Rossman, Santa Margarita, attacker, Stanford

Jackson Seybold, Mater Dei, attacker, Stanford

GIRLS WATER POLO

Grace Thawley, Mater Dei, left-handed attacker/center, Harvard

BOYS SWIMMING

Michael Brinegar, Tesoro, freestyle, Indiana

GIRLS SWIMMING

Elise Garcia, Crean Lutheran, butterfly/sprint freestyle, Cal

Samantha Shelton, Santa Margarita, freestyle/backstroke, Harvard

Any future health care legislation must include provisions that require all employees in the three branches of the federal government to be subject to the same rules as those of us out here in the trenches. You know, the people that pay their salaries. No waivers!

— Bruce Major, Newport Beach

No GOP for me

In my 75 years on this earth and over 50 years of voting, I have never voted for a Republican. To me, the choice is an easy one. I watch both the Democratic and Republican conventions, and their platforms, and see not one issue that I agree on with the GOP.

I am pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, pro-immigration, pro-taxation of churches, pro-union, pro-environment and so on. I am anti-bloated defense, anti-war mongering draft dodgers (yes, I am an Army veteran) and anti-corporate welfare. After six months of the Trump debacle, it absolutely reinforces why I would never vote Republican.

I am also so glad I live in the most liberal state in the union.

— Ed Pyle, Laguna Niguel

The same old politics

The White House administration is in deep disarray. Who’s next to go? Priebus is gone. Scaramucci, an attack dog who with his public profanity professes a limited use of the English language, is out. This Trump administration has not delivered on much of its campaign-promised legislative agenda and is almost non-existent to date. Governing by fiat occurred during Obama’s tenure and continues today.

The Senate denial of the overturn of Obamacare is evidence the majority party is getting more and more frustrated with Trump’s seemingly autocratic style of governance. They continue to talk the talk, but are not walking the walk. The goal would seem to be one of confusion and redirection of any and all negative opposition to current issues. Deny and delay is the salient tactic.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona is to be applauded for his historic nay vote on the referendum along with fellow Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.

Trump is bringing in more high-ranking career military individuals. I view it as an attempt to consolidate command and control over his administration and other offices under his dominion. Caveat, Eisenhower cautioned about the Military Industrial Complex back in the 1950s as president.

— William Lewis, Irvine

Los Angeles officials are declaring Olympic victory — with several laps to go in the race to make the 2028 Olympic Games a popular and financial success.

While it certainly appears the L.A. area has succeeded in its efforts to bring the Summer Olympic Games here for the third time, leaders of the bid have work to do to assure residents that this will be good for the region.

Monday, Mayor Eric Garcetti and L.A. bid chairman Casey Wasserman announced an agreement with the International Olympic Committee to host the 2028 Games. Judging by the financial terms they released, Garcetti and Wasserman have taken advantage of the negotiating leverage they enjoyed with only Paris and L.A. vying to host upcoming games. (Paris will get 2024.) The deal would have the IOC pay L.A. at least $1.8 billion and more than the usual percentage of any profits, one reason the region could make out financially.

L.A. City Council President Herb Wesson said he hopes the deal gets the required approval from the council’s ad hoc committee on the Olympic bid and then the full council in the next week.

But if they move to approve that quickly, city officials risk leaving many Southern Californians wondering who asked them if their concerns have been addressed. It’s still more than a month before the IOC is scheduled to certify the 2024 site selection, and now is scheduled to certify 2028 too. It’s 11 years until the 2028 Games.

It’s worth remembering that in the run-up to 1984, the last time L.A. hosted the Games, pressure from San Fernando Valley-based opponents of public financing forced organizers to rely on unprecedented corporate funding and existing venues, fundamentally changing the way the Olympics are done. You never know what good ideas the public might have unless you ask.

A Loyola Marymount University poll of 600 Angelenos — funded partly by the LA24 Committee — found 83 percent want L.A. to host the ’28 Olympics. The top reason supporters cited was “a perceived economic boost to the region.”

Such confidence could be undermined if L.A. officials aren’t seen to be weighing all of the risks that the next decade-plus could bring. The way to win this race is to slow down.

During his political campaign, President Donald Trump famously said that he wanted to “drain the swamp” and root out waste and corruption in Washington, D.C. Now he is no doubt finding that the swamp is even deeper and muckier than he imagined.

There certainly is no shortage of targets for eliminating the now-cliché “waste, fraud and abuse,” which has, unfortunately, become more of a political slogan than a legitimate call to action. If the administration is serious about addressing this substantial issue, however, improper payments would be a good place to start.

During the last fiscal year, the federal government made more than $144 billion in improper payments — a whopping 243 percent increase just since 2007. The bulk of this comes from the Medicare Fee-for-Service ($41.1 billion), Medicaid ($36.3 billion), Medicare Advantage (Part C) ($16.2 billion) and Earned Income Tax Credit ($16.8 billion) programs.

Congress attempted to get somewhat of a handle on the problem when it passed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010, which requires affected agencies to identify improper payments, devise and implement a corrective action plan, meet reduction targets and report on progress in reducing error rates. But in May, a U.S. Government Accountability Office analysis of reports from agencies’ inspector generals found that 15 of the 24 agencies reviewed — which together accounted for 96 percent of all improper payments in FY 2015 — were not in compliance with these requirements. Even this may be an optimistic analysis, since some IGs considered an agency to be in compliance if it merely filed the proper paperwork, without attempting to determine whether the information was actually accurate.

Among other head-scratching examples of government agencies’ derelict management of taxpayers’ money, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction revealed in June that the Pentagon had wasted $28 million purchasing the wrong kind of camouflage for the Afghan National Army over the previous eight-plus years. Not only was the green, woodland camouflage pattern unsuitable for the predominantly tan Afghan landscape — defeating the purpose of the uniforms by making the soldiers actually stand out — but the Defense Department also overpaid for a proprietary pattern that had a “significantly higher” cost than similar nonproprietary alternatives.

“My concern is what if the [Afghan] minister of defense liked purple, or liked pink?” John Sopko, the special inspector general, told USA Today. “Are we going to buy pink uniforms for soldiers and not ask questions? That’s insane.”

Perhaps those uniforms would be better suited for the government’s surplus military equipment program, also known as the 1033 program, that has serve to militarize local police departments. Speaking of which, another GAO report issued two weeks ago explained how the agency was able to obtain more than 100 items of military gear, valued at approximately $1.2 million, by setting up a fictitious federal law enforcement agency with a fake website and address. The equipment included “night-vision goggles, simulated rifles and simulated pipe bombs, which could be potentially lethal items if modified with commercially available items.”

And while we’re on the subject of nonexistent entities receiving government benefits, an audit released about a month ago found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued more than $800,000 in fraudulent Section 8 housing subsidies to a single apartment complex in Texas, including approximately $575,000 to nonexistent tenants.

But, despite the numerous frustrating and odious examples with which the administration must contend, it is not without success stories. The Trump administration announced in June that it was eliminating seven paperwork requirements related to preparations for the Y2K bug — 17 years after the event came and went (largely without incident).

“Many agencies have forgotten how to deregulate,” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters. “It’s been so long since somebody asked them to look backward.”

It’s a minor victory, to be sure, but if the Trump administration can apply some common-sense deregulation on a larger scale, it will have performed a valuable — and long overdue — service for taxpayers.

Adam B. Summers is a columnist with the Southern California News Group.

Stella McCartney’s is officially becoming an uptown girl. This week, she’s opening a new New York City flagship at 929 Madison Avenue between 73rd and 74th Streets. This is the brand’s second store in New York City, the other on Greene Street in SoHo. Previously, McCartney had a store in the Meatpacking District.
Frederick Lukoff, chief executive officer of Stella McCartney, said it has been a lifelong dream of the designer’s to have a store on Madison, on the Upper East Side. “Obviously, Stella has a big New York connection to her family and so she always wanted to open there. I think for any fashion luxury brand it is a milestone and Madison, it’s one of those iconic addresses.”
The unit is housed in a former antiques store, and Lukoff said the brand went for an “uptown feel, more refined and sophisticated. It’s our new concept, we introduced it in Paris and it worked well with the space we’ve got on Madison and for the clients there. We wanted a different feel from the SoHo store, which is still doing great. We definitely felt like New York could get two Stella McCartney stores.”
In terms of decor, the new design focuses on handmade and

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