People

Nathan Young has always had a heart for helping others. After college, Nathan decided to serve in the Army. Upon returning home, he started running a hotel that was once used as a retirement home. Nathan used this endeavor to support his desire to help anyone with whom he came into contact. 

His opportunity to help people began sooner than he had expected. A sober living house was located close by the hotel. Those who were staying at the sober living house would be kicked out for drinking alcohol. Looking for a place to go, they would come to Nathan’s hotel, where he would take them in, requiring little or no payment for their stay. To help these people even further, he opened two sober living houses and provided treatment options for those who wanted it, for which he paid the majority of the cost.  

As time progressed, he decided to help others who were in other unfavorable situations. He hired ex-convicts who had difficulty finding jobs after they left their halfway houses. He also allowed those who were homeless or almost destitute to work for him. 

Unfortunately, Nathan Young met his own share of hard times after losing his girlfriend to an overdose.  

With the start of 2020 and the frightening uncertainty of COVID, most of the surrounding hotels were being forced to shut down. After running the hotel since 1996, he was laid off from his position due to economic hardships related to the pandemic. However, he didn’t let this setback stop him from continuing to help others. 

Still, he felt compelled to help those with substance abuse disorders, especially after his personal loss. While he owned the sober living house, he wanted to expand and open a clinic as well. However, he was under the belief that one person could not own both facilities at one time. So, he asked his friend, Marc, to purchase an outpatient clinic during the summer of 2020.  The clinic started out with only ten clients but grew as Nathan’s reputation for being tenderhearted towards those struggling with addiction came to the clinic. 

Nathan’s kindhearted nature continued to shine through even as he continued to face financial hardships. In 2022, the health insurance company, Aetna, stopped providing payments for supporting the clinic. As Aetna was providing the clinic’s main source of revenue, this was a hard blow. The smartest business decision at that time would have been to shut down the clinic, turning away all clients and terminating all of the employees, as Nathan would face significant financial loss if he continued to run the clinic. 

However, Nathan did not want to turn anyone away if he could help it. Instead, he continued to run the clinic, dedicating everything to assisting others, even though he was hemorrhaging millions of dollars of his own personal funds as the year 2023 progressed. Although he had to reduce the cost of overhead by terminating some employees and reducing salaries, he did all that he could to prevent the clinic from going bankrupt. As a result, he worked 16-hour days every day of the week for the majority of that year.  

Nathan’s growth and success boil down to the fact that his number one priority is helping others by loving and accepting them as they are. This is reflected in the care that his clinic provides as they prepare a personalized treatment plan that meets the client’s current needs, helping them start their recovery journey. The clinic refuses to give up on people, taking in clients even after they experience a relapse, destroy property within the clinic, or get into physical fights with other clients. Rarely will the clinic refuse to allow an individual to enter or reenter the program.

Because of the approach Nathan Young takes in the clinic, there is a high success rate as about 60% of clients remain sober for a minimum of six months. To accept more clients that are not able to afford treatment, overhead costs have been minimized as much as possible. A job mentorship program is also available to clients, giving them career opportunities that they may not otherwise have had due to their personal or criminal history. 

The program also helps them through the interview process despite their rough appearance. Alumni marketing is also a part of the clinic. This means that once a client becomes sober, they are able to market a particular product using their face which is then used in a social media advertisement. As their friends notice the fact that they are sober, they then ask how they achieved their sobriety, directing them back to the clinic. 

Nathan continues to help others who are underprivileged, including the homeless. He assists them in becoming sober, finding jobs, and renting their own apartments, helping them permanently stay off the streets. Nathan Young is a true example of someone with a heart of gold. 

Company Overview:

9 Silver is a premier employment agency based in Los Angeles, California, dedicated to bridging the gap between talented individuals and leading businesses. Located at 1800 Vine Street, Los Angeles, CA 90028, and reachable at (323) 643-3171, they specialize in providing top-tier outsourced employment and human resource services.

About Us: 9 Silver’s mission is clear: to connect motivated, talented, and driven individuals with exceptional businesses, fostering opportunities for growth and excellence. They are committed to offering high-quality outsourced employment solutions and HR services, aimed at empowering both business owners and employees to achieve their fullest potential.

Nathan Young, the visionary founder and owner of 9 Silver, brings a wealth of experience and a unique perspective to the employment industry. His dedication to excellence and innovation in human resources has propelled 9 Silver to the forefront of employment solutions in Los Angeles.

Clinic Services They facilitate connections between job seekers and employers, ranging from temporary positions to permanent placements, ensuring that each match promotes mutual success. Whether you’re a professional seeking a better opportunity or a company needing skilled talent, 9 Silver is here to support and enhance your journey. [Website]

A mixture of civil libertarianism and economic progressivism, cannabis entrepreneur Alex Cooley is running for Seattle City Council in District 3.

By Connor Nash

At first glance, Alex Cooley looks like your typical Seattlite, alternative, gauges, hand tattoos, gig worker, and he has a weed business. And like many Seattlites, Cooley’s politics are both progressive and bold, meant to shake up the system.

A million square feet of new housing, banning sweeps of homeless individuals,  legalizing and taxing all drugs, and shifting money from police to “alternative solutions are just a few of the ideas Cooley is advocating in the D3 race. These proposals seem like they are ripped from a Vice News Youtube video, which may be an asset in capturing those young, urbanist voters.

Like many of the former Vice News audience, Cooley’s ideas have been shaped by his growing family and expanding business. When asked why he is running for City Council, he responded, “I decided to run the day my son was born. I need him to grow up in a place where leaders behave like leaders and respond to their neighbors when they are called upon…

“We haven’t had leadership that listens. We aren’t able to trust that our elected officials will do a good job. We’ve been hindered by political games, inflexibility, indecisiveness, and special interest money. We can’t afford more of the same.”

Lack of trust in the city government isn’t a new phenomenon, but the abysmally low approval ratings are the new norm. An Oct 2022 KOMO News/ Strategies 360 poll found that the Seattle City Council had an unfavorability rating of 58%, up from 20% the year before.

To Cooley’s point on a lack of “leadership that listens,” I asked Cooley (and will ask all D3 candidates) their stance on holding office hours if elected. Current D3 Councilmember Kshama Sawant fails to hold any regular office hours, instead opting for larger, rally-like events with both constituents and supporters of her causes.

Cooley’s responded that he would “Absolutely” hold office hours, explaining “I intend to go many steps further than having office hours every week. I will hold regular town hall meetings at least quarterly, I will have weekly “Brews w/Cooley” meetings, and in general, will be in the community daily available to all.”

This openness to greater public availability and outreach is refreshing, considering the current Councilmember is extremely aloof when it comes to constituent services. This is something that I will keep a lookout for if Cooley is elected since this is a notable and bold shift from how constituent services are being run currently in D3.

Although Cooley will have a different way of interacting with constituents, some of his policies are similar to Councilmember Sawant notably on Sweeps and free transit. When asked about his overarching policy ideals, Cooley specifically cited “ending the practice of sweeps” and explains on his website that “pushing around people experiencing homelessness two blocks at a time is failing everyone.”

When it comes to public transit, like Councilmember Sawant, Cooley is pushing for more free public transit options, including “reinstat[ing] the free ride zone…” The Free Ride Zone was ended in 2012 but was an agreement between the City of Seattle and King County where Seattle would pay King Co $400,000 a year to cover all fares Downtown.

A policy area that Cooley has institutional knowledge in is cannabis since he owns Solstice, a company that sells various cannabis products. Cooley has assisted legislators on the local, state, and global levels on cannabis policies. In 2010, Cooley worked with State Senator Kohl-Wells in writing SB 5073, which created the medical cannabis industry, and later on I-502 which legalized recreational cannabis use.

Cooley also worked with the Seattle City Council to write “all of their protective legislation that allowed for safe access for patients. And in 2016, Cooley worked with the United Nations during their Special Session on Drug Policy.

When asked if the city is doing enough to support minority-owned cannabis businesses, Cooley answered “No, this city could be doing much more.”

He explained how he proposed a policy to various council members and the mayor’s office for “cannabis consumption clubs” where people can enjoy cannabis products in a bar-like atmosphere. One city that implemented a policy for cannabis clubs is West Hollywood, CA. Yes, the gayest city in Los Angeles is also the only city that allows for indoor smoking of cannabis products in both residential and commercial areas (with proper permits).

Cooley states that these cannabis clubs would be “licensed through a similar merit-based system that the state is using for their social equity retail licenses.” These clubs could be great to not only expand the opportunities for new businesses but expand the diversity in the homogenous Seattle cannabis industry.

Of all his bold, progressive policies, the one that will be the most politically polarizing is his stance on single-family zoning. In an Urbanist win, Cooley supports banning single-family zoning in Seattle. But one urbanist win is a loss for the NIMBY crowd who make a sizable constituency in D3.

In a race devoid of polling, it’s difficult to see if Cooley’s politics will appeal to enough hip, millennial dads like himself to make it to the general. What is refreshing is to see someone running on a “change the system” message without the baggage that is the norm in a Sawant campaign.

Photo Courtesy of Cooley for Council

We’ve known for a long time the left is controlling much of the media. They push certain narratives to fulfill the left’s agenda. Today, we are looking into Katharine Schwab from Forbes. According to her Forbes archive page, she has written 3 articles with Forbes, all of which are Elon Musk hit pieces. It appears she is pushing democratic propaganda in the news to change the public perception of Elon Musk and his work to try to protect free speech.

Here is her archive page to track her published articles.

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In November 2022, she wrote another article for Forbes about Elon Musk. Again, a hit piece that appears to be a left-wing article against Elon Musk. Katharine Schwab’s history with Forbes.com is only negative articles about Elon Musk and Twitter.

It should concern the public that her journalism isn’t balanced and appears to be written only to smear people or push left-wing narratives under the umbrella of journalism through Forbes.com.

Below is a Google News screenshot showing her articles for the public to view. It appears she is purposing leveraging Forbes.com to push her left-wing narratives at the top of Google.

This type of behavior as a journalist is concerning for us and should be concerning for the public. It appears her whole objective is the push Elon Musk and Twitter narratives since that is all she has written about. This clearly is fake news with the purpose of changing public perception in our opinion.

Doing some additional research, it appears she worked for Fast Company last year. There doesn’t appear to be any manipulation at her previous employer so we are unclear why her behavior has changed to a more extreme approach for the left. It says she was a Deputy Editor.

She appears to be a real person from New York, according to her LinkedIn. It says she is a Senior Editor at Forbes. She went to Stanford University and previously worked for The Atlantic, which is highly left-wing and has been known to push fake news or omit news that doesn’t fit the left’s narrative. We’ve seen this countless times.

She does have a personal website with a bio about her. It is very left-leaning of course: https://katharineschwab.com/about-me/ also Twitter @SchwabKatharine

We will continue to report on Katharine Schwab and her writing habits. Based on the information collected, it appears she has moved too far left and is unable to provide fair and balanced news reporting anymore. She has become too politicized and maybe using her position (and platforms) to promote left-wing articles for their agenda.

This article is for educational purposes and is opinionated based on the data collected. It’s your responsibility to draw your own conclusions about this writer.

Michael Spafford, an artist, painter, and art educator best known for his work in Seattle, passed away last weekend at the age of 86. Spike Mafford, his son, said that lung cancer was the cause of his sudden demise. He was born in Palm Springs, California on November 6, 1935.

When he was in high school, he started drawing classically influenced works, as per the artist’s HistoryLink online page. While attending Pomona College, Spafford and Elizabeth Sandvig met and got married; they have been together for 63 years. In 1967, Sandvig and their 4-year-old son joined Spafford to Italy for a two-year residence under the auspices of the coveted Prix de Rome scholarship.

The city of Rome, in particular, was an ideal location for the artist to continue his studies in classical literature. In 1969, Spafford returned to Seattle, where he maintained ties to the University of Washington and the Francine Seders Gallery, which has represented his work for more than 50 years.

Since then, he has established himself as a key figure in the Western art world as a painter and printer. While at Harvard, he was influenced by his courses in art history (especially the epics), and subsequently by graffiti artists while he was living in Mexico, his focus has been on Greek and Roman mythology.

It’s little wonder that he produced such extensive series as The Iliad, The Odyssey, Labors of Hercules, and other stories about Europa, Romulus, and Remus. With no modeling, the figures are reduced to flat shapes and patterns that have been stylized to the extent of abstraction.

Spafford made up his mind early on about both his subject and his method of presentation. Over the course of over 60 years, he produced paintings, prints, and watercolors that represented traditional myths via the use of highly exaggerated silhouettes of human and mythological figures. Many of the characters lacked characteristics; hands had no fingers, and black and white were commonly used instead of color.

A cacophony of corporeal war was what he had, and it might at times be nearly overpowering, with figures embroiled in fights that the spectator was left to interpret. Spafford devoted a lot of time and attention to the Herculean labors. Greek hero’s battles against monster and beast gave a suitable outlet for the artist’s love of artistic drama, in which shapes blend and disintegrate into one other like a field of combat shrouded by dust and smoke.

The ambiguity of the images in the Labors may have contributed to Spafford’s most difficult period in his life. As a result of an outcry from those who thought Spafford’s series was too modern or unsavory for their taste, Washington state commissioned the artist to paint a massive mural for the House chamber of the state Capitol, which he did in 1981 and which sparked a bitter legal battle and ultimately resulted in the series being relocated to an auditorium at Centralia College, well to the artist’s chagrin. He has since seen his works sell and receive positive critical acclaim.

A special bond developed among Spafford and his son, who lived together and often collaborated on projects together, including a painting that Spafford did on top of one of his son’s pictures. As Mafford put it, “My father remained at our home, working, up until the week before he died. It’s safe to say dad supported my desire to pursue the arts, and he also let me make my own choices”.

Spafford’s family encourages charitable contributions in his honor to any organization that supports the arts. No public activities are scheduled in line with the preferences of the artist.

Photo Credit: “I love flower so much…” by Thai Jasmine (Smile..smile…Smile..) is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

Born to immigrant parents, Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Oz has seen an extraordinary life and career as a physician, author, and TV personality. Born on June 11th, 1960 in Cleveland, Ohio, Oz had been encouraged to join the medical field early in life by his pharmacist mother and his father, Mustafa Oz, who was the chief of thoracic surgery at the Medical Center of Delaware for a few years. Oz spent summers in Turkey as a child, and in order to maintain his dual citizenship, he served with the Turkish army for two years. 

He received his early education at the Tower Hill School, a college preparatory school located in Wilmington, Delaware. Studying biology at Harvard University, Oz received his undergraduate degree in 1982. Oz was an athlete during his time at Harvard, playing on their football team, and winning an intramural championship in water polo. He received both his MD and his MBA in 1986 at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania respectively. During this time, he served not only as the student body president and class president, but he also received Captain’s Athletic Award for leadership.

Dr. Oz’s medical career began at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City where he completed his residency. At the time, the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City was affiliated with Columbia University. He earned the Blakemore research award during his residency. In 1995, he established the Cardiac Complementary Care Center with his colleague, Jerry Whitworth. This program offered alternative medicine approaches to people suffering from heart disease. 

Dr. Oz successfully completed a heart transplant in 1996 on Frank Torre, who was the brother of then New York Yankees manager Joe Torre. Oz received a large amount of attention from this success and seemed to enjoy the publicity. In 2000, Oz rechristened the Cardiac Complementary Care Center as the Cardiovascular Institute and Integrative Medicine Program, serving as director.

The following year, in 2001, Oz began teaching as a professor at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and continued to do so until early in 2022. Through innovation, he has worked to develop tools used during heart surgery. One such device is called the MitraClip, and it is used to treat those who for some reason or other are ineligible for open-heart surgery. Another such device is the left ventricular assist device, which helps with cardiac circulation. By 2015, Oz was the holder of several patents related to heart surgery. 

For five seasons of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Oz made appearances as a health expert, where he talked about different conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and obesity. This eventually led to Dr. Oz hosting his own show, and the first episode of The Dr. Oz Show premiered on September 14th, 2009. Here, he discussed a number of conditions and concerns and how to manage them, such as insomnia, stress, chronic pain, and anti-aging. Through these episodes, he discussed different homeopathic remedies and medicines for a wide range of conditions.

Dr. Oz has been married to his wife Lisa since 1985, and they have four children. Together they have founded HealthCorps, which is a non-profit organization that focuses on providing America’s youth with knowledge about health and wellness, including fitness, nutrition, and CPR training. 

Raised in a religiously diverse home, Oz practices Sufism, which is a sect of Islam that identifies with spirituality and mysticism. He also practices transcendental meditation. Oz’s father was a strict Muslim, while his mother was less secular and ascribed to Kemalism.

He was diagnosed with a precancerous polyp on his colon during a colonoscopy on an episode of his show in August of 2010. He attributes this to likely saving his life. He has co-written thirteen books and has received several awards including eight Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Talk Show Informative, and Outstanding Talk Show Host, and on February 11th, 2022, he received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

He has appeared as a guest on several television programs including 60 Minutes, Larry King Live, The View, The Colbert Report, Wheel of Fortune, Match Game, and Dr. Phil. On November 21st, 2022, Oz declared his candidacy for the United States Senate Republican seat in Pennsylvania. Due to FCC regulations regarding the equal-time rule, a number of TV stations removed his show from the air. On June 3rd, 2022, he officially became the Republican candidate for the open United States Senate seat. If he is elected in November of 2022, he will be the first Muslim to serve as a member of the United States Senate. At this time, he is self-described as a moderate Republican and cites such inspirations as Former President Teddy Roosevelt and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2021, when he announced his candidacy, he self-identified as a conservative Republican. Dr. Mehmet Oz is now a professor emeritus, and no longer sees patients.

Photo Credit: “WPBF 25’s Health & Wellness Festival Featuring Dr. Oz” by The Gardens Mall is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.