Three of our great Hollywood Churches will be giving out thousands of Dinners during the Day. Because of the Pandemic, no sit down dinners will be possible. .Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Drop Zone For Donations. Photos by Julie Webster
Special bags were made for Veteran’s Day and they were stuffed with food. The Hollywood Food Coalition has hundreds of folks donating their time to help veterans, homeless, and other poor folks through this pandemic. Delivery to the Drop Zone at the V.A. by Uncle Paulie and Miss Julie. Homeless veterans are camped around the VA and on the grass of the property sleeping in tents. Meanwhile, the V.A. has several empty buildings on the property that could be used to house veterans.
Every Thursday at about 10:00 am folks can get in line at the YMCA and pick up a box of fresh vegetables and fruit. The address is the Mid Valley YMCA at 6901 Lennox Ave. (Near cross-street of Vanowen), Van Nuys 91405. Their phone number for information is 818-989-3800. They have both a drive up line and a walk up line. Suggest you get in line around 9:30am.
Thanks to our food coordinator Judy for this tip.
by Uncle Paulie
The school kids of Los Angeles, working with the West Hollywood Food Coalition made over 3,000 sandwich bags for Memorial Weekend. We helped to distribute by taking a portion of the bags out to the Westwood Veteran’s Administration encampment. There are additional thousands of veterans living under bridges and on the streets of Los Angeles in other places. We implore the VA to provide some basic sanitary equipment here. It would be good to move them all onto the lawn, get bathrooms, showers, wash stations set up. Provide trash service and other basic necessities. Good citizens have stepped up and donated large tents for the veterans to live in until some housing becomes available. Please share this information and contact the VA and ask them to get off the dime had help these folks out.
by Uncle Paulie
by Uncle Paulie
As our last video showed, hundreds of veterans are living in tents, both on and off the VA Facility in Westwood A group of Old Veterans Guard has been collecting donations and putting up nice tents for those in need. Our trip this week, with a carload of food, was interesting as there are even more tents on the inside and outside of the property than we saw on our trip last week. Those on the outside are not allowed in to use the washing or bathroom facilities. Conditions almost rival that of some battlefield situations where you at least would get food, water and rotation out. The veterans have organized their camp on the outside, and keeping it as clean as possible, removing trash, etc. They are doing the best they can.
We picked up a load of bagged sandwiches from the West Hollywood Food Coalition and the Salvation Army. These are complete lunches made by high school students and concerned parents. The official food banks are running low on food according to our information. A group we volunteer with, Earth Harmony Foundation, has seen it’s food donations fall by about 80% from the markets that donate “expired food”. The government food chain is tottering, and hopefully will not collapse, as thousands of folks depend on it. Here’s our video below, we hope to put up an interview with the Veterans in the next few days. Video by Julie Webster.
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Video courtesy of Paul Hunt, Facebook
Things are definitely getting worse in Los Angeles as the so-called “Lock Down” continues. Food supplies at homeless shelters are running low. Despite the City claiming that homeless are being put into hotels, the number on the streets seems to have increased. As more and more layoffs occur, more folks will lose their apartments and be out on the street. The homeless camp at the V.A. pictured in the video has grown in the last few weeks, and now over 50 tents are actually on the front lawn of the property, as well as two encampments on the outside. Questions for the VA:
Can the VA provide the homeless veterans with portable bathrooms and showers?
Can the VA provide food for the homeless veterans who are sleeping around the compound?
Can the VA provide medical help to the homeless veterans?
Can the VA provide any personal protection masks, disinfectants and gloves?’
Can the VA even provide trash cans and help keep the area clean? It looks pretty bad.
They want you to fight and die for your country. Can they bring themselves to organize these facilities to take care of the veterans in the time of their need?
Snared by State Regulations
As we have seen, the collapse of California’s Recycling program has caused problems and huge losses in many sectors. The closing of Recycling giant RePlanet and many other recycling centers like the huge Santa Monica Recycling Center was the end result of gross mismanagement by various City and State Bureaucrats. The head of CalRecycle is said to be resigning at the end of the year. Meanwhile, consumers struggle to find places to redeem their bottles and cans. Stores and chains that refuse to pay back the deposits/or send a $100 per day extortion fee to the State are being fined, like the recent CVS $3.6 million.
How did we get to this point? Certainly the Federal Government bears some responsibility. The China trade war resulted in China stopping and/or slowing its massive buying of recycled products from the U.S. “We don’t want your trash” they said. Part of that problem would be the big exporters dumping too much contaminants into the loads. Part is retaliation for U.S. trade sanctions. A big slow-down of China purchases of scrap caused the prices to fall, putting pressure on our recycling industry. The big losers in all this are not just RePlanet type shops, but the cunsumers have been really screwed.
The State of California, meanwhile, continues to rake in the bucks. They make money either way. Now that hundreds of recycling centers have closed, payouts for redeeming bottles and cans go down, but income from charging consumers 5 and 10 cents per container continues to pour in to State coffers by the millions. A bigger profit for the greedy State. Plus they now can collect millions more by fining the stores for not complying with the rules. The chains and convenience stores did not see this coming, and they didn’t want to have to take back cans and bottles, it’s at times a logistical nightmare for them.
Plus, the State makes even more money by telling consumers to dump their recycled cans and bottles into the “Blue Bins” run by the cities, more money for their partners in this scam, the local cities. This big mess calls the whole program into question. Why should the State be involved at all? Why not let consumers not pay ANY deposit, and just run campaigns to push them to recycle at scrap yards for market prices? The retailers, stores and chains would be very happy with this. The consumers would be happy not to pay the deposit. The thieves who smuggle in millions of bottles to California scrap yards from other states would be out of business. More scrap yards will open up to process the bottles and cans. Low income and homeless could once again make a few bucks and get some exercise hunting for scrap.
California should shut down this program. They can do better by just being cheerleaders for recycling and helping and encouraging the recycling industry to make advancements. The bottle deposit scam should end now.
by Paul Hunt
In past posts we have shown that the State of California’s Recycling Program has cheated consumers in many ways, the latest being to destroy the network of their own sub-contractors and squeezing them until they were forced to close. Not only was RePlanet pushed out, but cities like Santa Monica also closed their entire recycling yard. We exposed their FRAUD in their own words and documents. And now another part of it has come to light.
The once bustlling Santa Monica yard is now silent. All employees have lost their jobs.
This is regarding the aluminum cans. Although the State makes you pay five cents recycling deposit for each can, they make it very hard for you to return the can to get your money back. By gutting out the RePlanet and recycling centers, there are only a few places left to recycle cans. And now it is revealed that in the last few years THE CAN MANUFACTURERS HAVE MADE THE CANS THINNER AND LIGHTER. The figure is 40% thinner and lighter! This means that if you go to a recycling yard and turn in aluminum cans you will be paid by WEIGHT, now 40% LESS than years gone by. The only way to get your money back is to go to a place that will refund the CRV deposit completely, five cents per can, not by weight. But California is SO SORRY, almost all those places have been closed. Now they are talking it up in the CORRUPT State Legislature to RAISE the CRV price per can, SO THEY CAN CHEAT YOU OUT OF EVEN MORE MONEY!
You don’t have to go to a third world country to find corruption. Mass fraud and cheating is right here in California.