2009_03_26_Arcadia Weekly

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THURSDAY, MARCH 26 - APRIL 1, 2009 VOLUME 14, NO.25

WHAT’S IN A NAME? INDYMAC IS NOW ONEWEST BANK

Three Candidates Vie for Two Seats in School Board Race Arcadia schools face challenges as state budget woes continue •By Bill peters•

•By Terry Miller• and •John Stephens•

Three candidates are facing off to win two seats available on the Arcadia Unified School District’s Board of Education. The election is slated for Tuesday, April 21. Three candidates have filed for the two open seats— one, an incumbent, one, an appointee who now faces her first election, and a man who is a first-time campaigner. The candidates are Joann Steinmeier, who is running for her sixth consecutive term, Janet Chew, a board appointee who filled out the term of Annie Yuen upon Yuen’s resignation in 2006, and John Davis, a newcomer who has no previous campaign experience. So far, the race has been without a great deal of rancor, the candidates say, because Arcadia schools are deemed to be well-run and the data to back up student achievement that sends a majority of graduates from the high school off to the nation’s most prestigious colleges. Behind all this good news are highly participative parents who care deeply for their kids and are dedicated to seeing that they get a good education. In fact, all three candidates for the board said they moved to Arcadia to avail their children of the fine education available here. The candidates themselves are college graduates, mirroring the high education level in the community. An average of 90% of the parents of enrolled students either attended or graduated from college, a number that is close to double that of either Los Angeles County or the state. Among those running, Steinmeier is a businesswoman who holds a B.S. in Social Science from Cal Poly University, Pomona; Chew is a pharmacist with Pharm D. degree from University of California, San Francisco; Davis received a degree in Finance from State University of California, Los Angeles and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Business. Yet although the Arcadia schools are in great shape, cutbacks from various sources of revenue for the District are proving problematic and frus-

in the air from area fires, Marathon organizers were going to run this second try no matter what happened. The day started off with a sea of cyclists splashing their way through the course in Pasadena, some at speeds above and beyond the call of duty. There was one unique cyclist who literally was above all others as his bicycle was a custom frame welded upon another bike frame …how he ever mounted the cycle for the race is

Some banking customers who lost a great deal of money during the failure of IndyMac Bank last year have a new name to lambaste as late Thursday the sale of the thrift was finalized under the new name OneWest Bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said late Thursday it had completed the sale of IndyMac Federal Bank, one of the largest casualties of the housing disaster and rash of bank closures last year. Local officials including Adam Schiff have called for an investigation into the Office of Thrift Supervision for failed oversight of the bank. Despite or perhaps in addition to the culpability of Washington regulators, many in the banking and financial services industry have long seen IndyMac’s heavy investment in an inf lated and unpredictable Southern California real estate market as unwise and unwieldy. The new brand OneWest was formed by an investor group and is to be managed by Terry Laughlin, former Chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch Bank and Trust is a division of Merrill Lynch, Inc., a brokerage bought by Bank of America at the first of the year after BofA had received some $45 billion in TARP bailout dollars. In a story reminiscent of that currently involving black hole insurance monster AIG, though with considerably less media bombast, a judge Wednesday ordered the release of materials related to bonuses paid by bailed-out BofA to Merrill executives just before the January takeover. BofA had been sparring with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as they sought to keep the documents private. The OneWest group agreed last December to purchase the failed California lender for $13.9 billion after the FDIC had to take over the bank and issue partial refunds of depositors’

Marathon on 5

Indy on 9

Candidates on 12

Beatles Pillow Fight @Harry Benson 1964 . This photo by Harry Benson was shot in a hotel room in Paris circa 1964

Renowned Scottish Photojournalist Harry Benson Visits Pasadena Benson Came to America with the Beatles in 1964 ĆBy Terry MillerĆ I wanted to meet Harry Benson for many years. My

father used to speak of Harry when they were both covering some of the most appalling news stories of the day in the mid to late 1960’s. Harry Ben-

son is a photojournalist and my late father was a writer, a Foreign Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph of London. I was familiar with Har-

ry’s photography from many years ago when I first started in the newspaper business as a young photographer. And

Benson on 3

PASADENA’S INAUGURAL MARATHON ORGANIZERS HAVE SEEN FIRE AND RAIN 9000 Plus entered the First Ever Pasadena Marathon

-Photo By Terry Miller

Despite a rather maddening male Marathon announcer who said it might

be a good time for a wet-tshirt contest, Sunday morning’s Inaugural Marathon

in Pasadena went off like clockwork in the face of the heavy downpour. Just in case you were outside in it, and hadn’t noticed the wet stuff coming down like cats and dogs, that same grating announcer also advised us that “…They’re Running in the Rain, They are running in the Rain…….” He repeated this FOX-like news flash on the minute every minute as the main event began. On the heels of a race that was doomed last year due to the excessive smoke


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