Candidate questions: What are the Attainable goals?

Candidate questions:  What are the Attainable goals?

What qualifies you as a candidate for city council? – Please elaborate

Why should we vote for you?

How do you propose to make a change to the current business as usual methods?

How do you propose to abolish the activities of entitlement by officials?

Do you think that money can & should buy you a seat in the government?

How can you prevent in being tainted and cajoled in working with the current administration without compromising your honesty and integrity?

What do you plan to do for CD12 and how do you plan to implement it? – specify

Do you have proposed staff members for your office that are experienced and capable in carrying out and implementing the needs of the community?

How do you propose to address the zoning ordinance to our community and how do you intend to control development?

Are you going to help vote and implement a more active role for the Neighborhood council in City Hall? and if yes, specify what actions you propose.

How do you propose to balance the city budget and implement fiscal responsibility? – Accountability - specify how.

Food, Housing and Jobs are crucial to our community – how are you going to address these issues? Describe in detail – especially, how do you propose to retain our current jobs and create an environment that attracts additional businesses to our community? – specify in detail your plan of action and how you plan to achieve those goals?

How do you propose to reduce government personnel and reduce spending, cut waste and redundancy and improve efficiency?

How do you plan to handle the pension crises and its budgetary load on our revenues?

How are you planning on addressing the exorbitant costs by the unions & private contractors?

Do you think you can help bring Green industry and businesses to CD12?

How do you plan to use CD12 assets? such as CSUN to promote our community and utilize assets to bring more businesses to CD12?

How do you plan to address our crumbling school system and improve education?

How do you propose to expand public transportation which is vital to our economy?

How do you plan to streamline rules and regulations and reduce bureaucracy?

There is voter apathy! How do you plan to build the public trust in government?

Implement Honesty, Integrity and transparency.

What do you think in paying base salary and commissions to our elected and appointed officials based on performance?

What is important to the community?

NC’s is the eyes and ears of the community – a true public service – heart and soul of the community.

Core services, Essential services, New vision

Graffiti. Security. Safety

Addressing Pensions, Unions, Immigration, Entitlement o No sanctuary city.

Candidate Questionnaire

Draiman officially running for mayor of Los Angeles - 2013

YJ Draiman officially running for mayor of LA - 2013

Press release – January 25, 2011

YJ Draiman officially running for mayor of Los Angeles - 2013

"I want to fight for a better future for all the people of Los Angeles, and that's why today I'm announcing my candidacy for mayor," Draiman said.

I decided to run for Mayor of Los Angeles. Before I could make that commitment, I needed to free up the time required to do the job right.  Therefore, I decided to devote full time to the job of Mayor.

I am motivated by the wish to serve the Los Angeles community and protect our quality of life.  I have the skill, experience, long time community involvement and personal commitment to lead the city.  I will work hard to preserve residents’ priorities and the city’s coffers, during the difficult financial times ahead.  Some of my more specific goals are encouraging economic vitality, preserving and improving the City infrastructure, protecting the quality of our neighborhoods, supporting our open space and bicycle trails programs, working with the Neighborhood Councils and the Chamber to encourage local, innovative green businesses, and proper Urban Planning for Los Angeles, among others.

I previously ran for City Council in District 12.

I decided that to do the job right I must run for Mayor.

I am an Energy/Utility Auditor/Consultant for over 20 years.

I am married to a darling wife, we have two grown children – my oldest son is David Draiman a famous Rock Star with a Band by the name Disturbed, my younger son is a Psychologist doing research.

I am looking forward to being elected and serving the people of the City of Los Angeles.

We must work together as a cohesive force to improve our city.

“Transparency and accountability is my motto”

YJ Draiman for Mayor – 2013

WEB:  http://www.draimanformayor.org/

Candidate questions: What are the Attainable goals?

Candidate questions:  What are the Attainable goals?

What qualifies you as a candidate for city council? – Please elaborate

Why should we vote for you?

How do you propose to make a change to the current business as usual methods?

How do you propose to abolish the activities of entitlement by officials?

Do you think that money can & should buy you a seat in the government?

How can you prevent in being tainted and cajoled in working with the current administration without compromising your honesty and integrity?

What do you plan to do for CD12 and how do you plan to implement it? – specify

Do you have proposed staff members for your office that are experienced and capable in carrying out and implementing the needs of the community?

How do you propose to address the zoning ordinance to our community and how do you intend to control development?

Are you going to help vote and implement a more active role for the Neighborhood council in City Hall? and if yes, specify what actions you propose.

How do you propose to balance the city budget and implement fiscal responsibility? – Accountability - specify how.

Food, Housing and Jobs are crucial to our community – how are you going to address these issues? Describe in detail – especially, how do you propose to retain our current jobs and create an environment that attracts additional businesses to our community? – specify in detail your plan of action and how you plan to achieve those goals?

How do you propose to reduce government personnel and reduce spending, cut waste and redundancy and improve efficiency?

How do you plan to handle the pension crises and its budgetary load on our revenues?

How are you planning on addressing the exorbitant costs by the unions & private contractors?

Do you think you can help bring Green industry and businesses to CD12?

How do you plan to use CD12 assets? such as CSUN to promote our community and utilize assets to bring more businesses to CD12?

How do you plan to address our crumbling school system and improve education?

How do you propose to expand public transportation which is vital to our economy?

How do you plan to streamline rules and regulations and reduce bureaucracy?

There is voter apathy! How do you plan to build the public trust in government?

Implement Honesty, Integrity and transparency.

What do you think in paying base salary and commissions to our elected and appointed officials based on performance?

What is important to the community?

NC’s is the eyes and ears of the community – a true public service – heart and soul of the community.

Core services, Essential services, New vision

Graffiti. Security. Safety

Addressing Pensions, Unions, Immigration, Entitlement o No sanctuary city.

Candidate Questionnaire

Rebuilding Trust in Our Government (R)

Rebuilding Trust in Our Government (R)
One of Americas statesmen stated “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” His presidency ushered in an era of disdain for government and a widespread cynicism that government could be effective in addressing our challenges.
Today, as we confront a crisis that has shaken confidence in our financial system and economy, we have an opportunity to restore public trust and confidence in the legitimate role of government. Indeed, to effectively tackle our economic challenges and to implement the reforms we need in our healthcare, education, energy, and environmental policies, our government will need to garner strong public support.
However, rebuilding public trust will not happen in the face of a pervasive perception that government is not transparent and accountable, cronyism is rampant, and public officials are more interested in helping themselves than in serving the public good.
Taking strong, swift, and decisive action to address abuses and begin to rebuild public trust should be the first priority for our city, state and federal government in the new legislative session.
Create a Task Force on Public Integrity with a mission to develop a comprehensive proposal for ethics and lobbying reform in our city and state. Which addresses reforms in three areas: (1) strengthening enforcement of ethics, campaign finance, and lobbying laws; (2) strengthening civil and criminal penalties for abuses; and (3) improving awareness and education for public officials.
Reinforce honesty, integrity and transparency by government officials as the core requirement to be and stay in office, any violations of these core tenets will cause the removal of the public official and the loss of "all benefits" retroactive. I think we should consider putting public official on a base salary plus commission based on performance.
While the many of our elected officials and government employees are honest, dedicated public servants, the actions of a few create a dark cloud over all.
Taking strong, swift, and decisive action to address these abuses and begin to rebuild public trust should be the first priority for our city, state and federal government in the new legislative session.

Compiled by: YJ Draiman

PS

We need honest government with integrity.

“Good leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion”
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.

As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.

Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job.

Action speaks louder than words.

Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.

Freedom is not an ideal; it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than the freedom to stagnate.

Action speaks louder than words.

An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics, a person with principles.

Trust in government

The ability of governments and the global community to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, ensure security, and promote adherence to basic standards of human rights depends on people's trust in their government. However, public trust in government and political institutions has been declining in both developing and developed countries in the new millennium. One of the challenges in promoting trust in government is to engage citizens, especially the marginalized groups and the poor, into the policy process to ensure that governance is truly representative, participatory, and benefits all members of society. Where governance processes are exclusionary and basic services are not accessible, intrastate conflicts and violence within the country can negatively impact national and global security and peace. Weak systems and processes of governance tend to erode trust in government. Within this context, the issue of how to build trust in government and trust between socio-economic actors has emerged as an increasingly important issue in both developed and developing economies.

Rebuilding Trust in Our Government

One of Americas statesmen stated “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” His presidency ushered in an era of disdain for government and a widespread cynicism that government could be effective in addressing our challenges.

Today, as we confront a crisis that has shaken confidence in our financial system

and economy, we have an opportunity to restore public trust and confidence in

the legitimate role of government.  Indeed, to effectively tackle our economic

challenges and to implement the reforms we need in our healthcare, education,

energy, and environmental policies, our government will need to garner strong

public support.

However, rebuilding public trust will not happen in the face of a pervasive
perception that government is not transparent and accountable, cronyism is
rampant, and public officials are more interested in helping themselves than in
serving the public good.
Taking strong, swift, and decisive action to address abuses and begin to
rebuild public trust should be the first priority for our city, state and federal government in the new legislative session.
Create a Task Force on Public Integrity with a mission to develop a comprehensive proposal for ethics and lobbying reform in our city and state. Which addresses reforms in three areas: (1) strengthening enforcement of ethics, campaign finance, and lobbying laws; (2) strengthening civil and criminal
penalties for abuses; and (3) improving awareness and education for public
officials.
Reinforce honesty, integrity and transparency by government officials as the core requirement to be and stay in office, any violations of these core tenets will cause the removal of the public official and the loss of "all benefits" retroactive.
While the many of our elected officials and government employees are honest, dedicated public servants, the actions of a few create a dark cloud over all.

Taking strong, swift, and decisive action to address these abuses and begin to
rebuild public trust should be the first priority for our city, state and federal  government in the new legislative session.
Compiled by: YJ Draiman

Happiness

Happiness

We’ve all heard that money doesn’t buy happiness, and that’s certainly true. But there is one way to get it: Give money away.
The evidence is clear that gifts to charitable organizations and other worthy causes bring sub¬stantial life satisfaction to the givers.
People who give money to charity are 44 percent more likely than non-givers to say they’re very happy. Volunteers are 41 percent more likely to be very happy than non-volunteers. It does not matter whether the gifts of money go to churches or symphony orchestras; reli¬gious giving and secular giving leave people equally happy, and far happier than people who don’t give.
The Founders listed liberty right up there with the pursuit
of happiness as an objective that merited a struggle for our na¬tional independence. In fact, freedom and happiness are inti¬mately related: People who con¬sider themselves free are a lot happier than those who don’t. In 2000 the General Social Survey revealed that people who per¬sonally feel “completely free” or “very free” were twice as likely as those who don’t to say they’re very happy about their lives.
Not all types of freedom are the same in terms of happiness, however. Researchers have shown that economic freedom brings happiness, as doe’s polit¬ical and religious freedom. On the other hand, moral freedom — a lack of constraints on behav¬ior—does not. People who feel they have unlimited moral choices in their lives when it comes to matters of sex or drugs, for example, tend to be un-happier than those who do not feel they have so many choices in life.
Americans appear to under¬stand this quite well. When poll-
sters asked voters in the 2004 Presidential election what the most important issue facing America was, the issue voters chose above all others was “moral values.” This beat out the economy, terrorism, the Iraq war, education, and health care as people’s primary concern. Pundits and politicians would certainly like us to think other¬wise, and critics scoffed at the conclusion, interpreting it as evi¬dence that ordinary Americans were out of touch. But moral val¬ues are critical to Americans. This suggests that, as a people, we do best by protecting our political and economic freedoms and guarding against a culture that sanctions licentiousness.
Job Satisfaction leads to happiness
People who say they are very happy in their lives, 96 percent are also satisfied with their jobs. Furthermore, job satisfaction would seem to be causing overall happiness, not the other way around.
Lessons for America
The data tell us that what mat¬ters most for happiness is not having a lot of things but hav¬ing healthy values. Without these values, our jobs and our economy will bring us soulless
toil and joyless riches. Our edu¬cation will teach us nothing. There will be no reason to fight—or to make peace, for that matter—to protect our way of life. Our health-care system will keep us healthier, but what’s the point of good health without a happy life to enjoy?

The facts can help remind us of what we should be paying attention to, as individuals and as families, if we want to be happy. There’s also an important message here for public policy and politics. We must hold our lead¬ers accountable for the facts on happiness and refuse to take it lightly when politicians abridge the values of faith, work, family, charity, and freedom. Candidates running for office should be grilled about happiness in debates and by the press, and their answers should determine our votes. Our happiness is sim¬ply too important to us—and to America—to do anything less. “How happy are you”

Compiled by: YJ Draiman

Life embodies friendship, compassion, happiness, sorrow, love and pleasure

Life embodies friendship, compassion, happiness, sorrow, love and pleasure
Each man has inside him a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated, but it takes courage for a man to listen to his own inner goodness and act on it. Do we dare to be ourselves? This is the question that counts.
“I am convinced that human nature is basically gentle, not aggressive. And every one of us has a responsibility to act as if all our thoughts, words, and deeds matter. For, really, they do. Our lives have both purpose and meaning.”
and:
“Compassion is what makes our lives meaningful. It is the source of all lasting happiness and joy. And it is the foundation of a good heart, the heart of one who acts out of a desire to help others. Through kindness, through affection, through honesty, through truth and justice toward all others we ensure our own benefit. This is not a matter for complicated theorizing. It is a matter of common sense.

Unauthorized Charges on Your Local Phone - Utility Bill?

Unauthorized Charges on Your Local Phone - Utility Bill?
FCC fines Verizon over 'mystery' fees $25 million and $52 million in refunds – 10/28/2010

How to Find Them, Eliminate Them & Get Your Money Back!

If your business still gets its phone service through the old "AT&T and Verizon, etc" local phone company (as opposed to one of the newer competitive phone providers) then you need to double check your phone bill each and every month for charges you did not authorize. You may not know it but the local phone company allows other companies to bill you through your local phone bill. And while the local phone company allows other businesses to bill you through your local phone bill, the local phone company does not verify that the charges being billed to you by the other company are valid. When these unauthorized charges fraudulently appear on your phone bill it's called "cramming". Unfortunately you as the business owner or manager are the only one that can spot the unauthorized charges and if you don't comb over your bill every month to spot these unauthorized charges - you'll pay for them.
Why does the local phone company allow other companies to pass charges onto your phone bill? "Third-party billing" is supposedly a great convenience in that you only have to pay one bill instead of separate bills for obvious authorized phone related charges like yellow-page advertising in the "real yellow pages", 411 information calls and long-distance calls from your chosen long distance carrier. Over the years though, some less-than-scrupulous companies have realized that most businesses rarely scrutinize their local-phone bills. To take advantage of this, these companies have come up with elaborate schemes to place
unauthorized charges on your phone bill that you'll end up paying for without even thinking. Unauthorized charges you can end up paying for include charges for unwanted (and unused) email accounts, web sites, directory information calls, directory advertising in obscure publications, voice mail accounts and other services.
In theory, before these charges can be placed on your phone bill, the company that is originating the third-party billed charges is supposed to have a verification of the order like a voice recording. In reality though, all the company needs to do to initiate the charge is submit your name and phone number to the billing entity. The verifications are only required to be produced if a complaint is filed.
To prevent these charges from appearing on you business phone bill it's helpful to understand the four parties that make unauthorized third party phone charges a costly reality. Party number one is any employee who can answer your business phones. The  unauthorized charge is rarely random and it usually happens after one of your company employees gets a telemarketing call. Employees should be instructed to document and report any overly aggressive telemarketing calls they receive. Party number two is the telemarketing company that originates the unauthorized charges by trying to get your employee to accept some service for which you'll be billed through your local phone bill. Party number three is the third-party billing company that has billing agreements with your local phone company. The name of the third-party billing is the one that is prominently displayed on your phone bill. After the third-party billing company's name is the name of the company that is originating the unwanted charges. Party number four is your "former Ma Bell" local phone company that collects the unwanted charges (keeps a share for "Ma") and then passes the rest to the third-party billing company (who keeps a big share) and then passes the balance on to the company that initiated the unwanted charge.
Following are some of the top third-party billing names and unauthorized charge originators you'll find on your phone bill. If you see these names on your phone bill you'll want to call the toll free number listed next to the charge to confirm it's a charge that's been properly authorized to be placed on your bill. Following are actual examples that we've recently found while auditing business phone bills.
We recommend customers should review any utility bills issued by deregulated utility companies. (In most instances today, consumers are paying higher charges to the deregulated gas and electric supply companies).
All Utility - Energy, gas, electric and water bills should be reviewed for proper reading and tariff.
If you suspect that you have been overcharged ask for detailed explanation and or file a complaint with your State Utility Commission.
YJ Draiman for City Council