Worm Turns In Westchester
Mayor Sam has been on the record in the past as opposing the boondoggle of a Master Plan Former Mayor Poopy came up with for LAX. (This is only one example.)Key to opposing this mess has been the work of the Neighborhood Council in Westchester, primarily the leadership of local businessman and longtime resident Robert Acherman. The Sister City came to know Mr. Acherman through material he contributed to us on the airport and has made himself available several times when we needed LAX related material. The man is a walking encyclopedia on LAX specifically and aviation generally.
Recently, Mr. Acherman's business has taken him overseas for the next few months. So what do the geniuses at the Westchester NC do? They bounce him because he can't be at their "meetings" even though he says he has been able to participate by conference call, speakerphone and email. Do these Neighborhood Council bozos think his knowledge and expertise was left at customs when headed out of the country? Amazing.
But it gets worse for those concerned about the airport. In Acherman's place was not appointed a similarly anti-Master Plan advocate like Acherman, but a Hahn era pro-master plan stooge and former Airport commissioner, David Voss. What the hell was the Council thinking?
If the City wants folks to participate in leadership in this city, then they are going to have to accomodate people like Mr. Acherman who have things going on in their lives. In the past, perhaps someone leaving the country could be an issue, but with modern technology, its not a problem. Its a shame they will lose Mr. Acherman's expertise and passion, particularly when is back home in a few months.
These are exactly the kind of tinhorns Mayor Sam is out to send to the freeway.
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 8/11/2005 11:28:00 AM
45 Comments:
Send them out to the freeway since I have no idea who these people are.
Mayor Sam, I agree with you that with today's technology, neighborhood council's should be able to accomodate board members. In fact, this should also apply to City Councilmembers who avoid taking votes on controversial issues by getting excused from Council.
But back to the neighborhood council. If it's their neighborhood council, shouldn't they have the right to have their own rules and appoint their own reps to replace outgoing members? Some may not like the idea, but it's democracy.
12:02 p.m.
They had every right to do this, my take is it was a dumb move. Here you have a bright young guy (I think Acherman is not much more than 30) who has produced in the past. Now, he gets a business opportunity that takes him away for a short time. So instead of working with him, they probably alienated him. Its hard to get young folks involved, hard enough to get anyone involved. Why send them packing?
If I was that NC President, I would have appointed a co-chair or vice chair to handle stuff here and keep Acherman on. That way I get to keep him when he comes back.
Also have to question the wisdom of appointing a guy to a key position who opposes the view of the council and community as a whole to lead that issue.
But then again no one ever said the NCs had any wisdom.
Mayor Sam,
One suggestion: Can you start a different thread on City of LA issues, CD14/10 race and MTA. This way, the people getting annoyed by OUR posts do not get bothered and we can post separately?
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Rosendahl is on five City Council committees and chairs the Education and Neighborhoods committee. He and Mayor Villaraigosa want to investigate how to bring public education under the City's umbrella, investigating what works, including charter schools, after-school programs and more parental involvement.
When asked about traffic lights and street repaving, Rosendahl explained that projects slated to be implemented this year were approved during predecessor Cindy Miscowski's term. His office staff is currently reviewing the approved projects. Norman Kulla, district director for Rosendahl, said, "Modest changes will be made because a lot of work was already put into the studies and recommendations."
The last time Mayor Sam use to post all these articles at once was when Antonio was getting blasted. I'm sure Antonio has strongly urged you to start DISTRACTING FROM JOSE BEING SUCH AN IDIOT!
LAX NEEDS TO BE EXPANDED. It's the 3rd busiest airport in the WORLD and these bozos want it to remain in the dark ages. Get a clue! We are far behind.
Mayor Sam, I don't know which is more outrageous: bouncing out Mr. Acherman or repacing him with Voss the Bozo or is it the "Vozo"?
Rosendahl can't be amused. He was not happy with the NC as it is the way the NC aligned itself or used by Playa Vista during the campaign. Let's see what he may do.
Listen here moron, Mayor Sam ENDORSED Pacheco you clown! I ain't doing a DAMN THING for Huizy or AV. Now stick to the freakin' topic!
I understand that Acherman was a big supporter of Rosendahl and worked on his campaign. I am sure he will be pissed.
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Cyberlady do you know the identities of the Mayor?
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years ago, Huizar was kissing Pacheco's Ass. In 2005 Huizar is licking Villaraigosa's Ass.
Huizar = #1 Leading Ass Kisser in the White World.
Huizar = #1 Leading Ass Licker in the Brown World.
Huizar = #1 Leading Loser in the Black World.
Huizar = #1 Leading Idiot in the Yellow World.
Huizar = Not Allowed in the Red World.
Do not expect to receive any $$$ from the gaming community fool.
Call Vignali since you want to spend 50 million $$$ on a LAUSD parking lot for administrative fools like yourself.
Mayor Sam:
I note that you have many, many readers who comment completely off-topic or post long rambling passages cut from other sources. May I suggest that you offer up some open threads, a la Eschaton or other sites, to provide forums for these people and maybe keep commenting in your posts to the topic(s) at hand? Just a thought!
Cheers,
CE
Are presently at the rotunda cyberlady
"desperate lies from a desperate man"
Who hired Ace Smith?
Michael Jackson
Antonio Villaraigosa
Howard Dean
Gray Davis
I vomit with this list, read on:
Example:
"We had always assumed the abortion thing was something we would use as a flip-flop in the general. And I was on the phone one day with Ace Smith, and Ace said, 'You know, we could kick him on abortion,' because we were thinking about just snapping the numbers back. And that caused me to start thinking about using the abortion thing. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a perfect trap, because he can't get out of it. If he publicly says he's pro-choice, it puts him at odds with the Republican base. If he sits back and lets us paint him as right to life, which would help in the Republican Primary, it will kill him for the general. Remember when you were a kid and you had these Chinese handcuffs you put on your fingers and the harder you pull, the tighter it got? That's sort of the way I thought it was.
But the second piece of it, which was very important, was not using the tape first. Our strategy was to lay out the first attack, to accuse him of being pro-life, and then to save the tape as the counter-punch. We thought he'd come back with an ad that would say, 'No, no, I'm pro-choice.'"
Ace Supreme
I was interested to read in Lloyd Grove that Howard Dean has hired Ace Smith to do oppo research on his opponents. Those of us who follow California politics are familiar with Ace, an operative associated with the famous puke politics of Gray Davis. According to that linked transcript, it was Ace himself who came up with idea of distorting Dick Riordon's abortion record for the supposedly unforgivable ads they ran to "interfere" with the Republican primary. (The phrase was coined, by the way, not by Arnold Schwarzenegger but by fellow Democrat Bill Lockyer who put the handcuffs and muzzle on Davis during the recall when he told him, "No more puke politics.")
Personally, I don't have a big problem with hardball politics in this day and age. I think it's probably smart to be as rough and tumble as you have to be. Certainly, the Republicans aren't going to hold back, so we'd better be prepared to hit back.
I do wonder, however, how sadly betrayed many of Dean's supporters must be to learn that he would hire such a low-life, dirt digging, mud slinging political bad boy as old Ace. I feel their pain. Considering the fact that the Clark campaign's hiring of the deplorable Chris Lehane's wife was considered to be a total capitulation to the reprehensible tactics of cynical DLC nasty campaigning, I can only imagine how hurt they must be to find that the lowlife Ace has been brought on board.
Garry South, the talented campaign manager hired by Davis, has hired op research whiz Ace Smith (I'm not kidding about that name) who operates in the Bay Area. Sragow, the inspired campaign manager hired by Checchi, has hired the Berkeley and Houston firm of Rice and Veroga.
Garry South, the talented campaign manager hired by Davis, has hired op research whiz Ace Smith (I'm not kidding about that name) who operates in the Bay Area. Sragow, the inspired campaign manager hired by Checchi, has hired the Berkeley and Houston firm of Rice and Veroga.
Is this just general laziness, or a lack of regard for the rules? Either way, it's reflective of the willingness to cut ethical corners that has pervaded the Hahn administration.
Seem petty? Well, more generally, Villaraigosa is still whipping Hahn in the poll numbers. Though it has gotten a bit tighter, Antonio leads by 11 points, 51 to 40. Also, the LA Times had an 'political warrior' piece up on 4 of the Mayoral Battle Generals for the Villaraigosa & Hahn campaigns-- Ace Smith will hopefully get to aim at Arnold next.
http://www.dailybreeze.com/hottopics/articles/1516267.html
Why did Floridians give $179,000 to Villaraigosa?
ACE SMITH SAID,
Villaraigosa campaign spokesman Ace Smith had no information either on Travel Traders or a related company, S.E. Florida Investments, but argued that there is nothing improper about out-of-state donations. Furthermore, he argued, it is not unusual that contributors would want to remain close-mouthed about their political activities.
"I think private individuals are allowed to have a sense of privacy," he said. "I don't think there's any law against that."
Villaraigosa campaign manager Ace Smith scoffed at the notion of a Hahn turnaround. If Hahn thinks he can win, Smith said, "then he believes up is down, and black is white."
Campaign 2004: Looking for Skeletons
The attack season has begun. The oppo squads are busy scrubbing their files—to figure out what’s in Howard Dean’s closet
“It would be impossible to anticipate how opponents might misuse even the most innocuous of documents.” This summer Dean tried to do just that by hiring Ace Smith, one of the best oppo researchers in the business, to search for potential pitfalls before his rivals find them. Smith scoured Dean’s academic, financial, family and political records as part of a “vulnerability study”—the same kind of scrub he did for Clinton in 1990.
Oppo Solution
More evidence that this year's mayoral race will be a nasty one: Pat Dando has hired the San Francisco-based oppo firm owned by Ace Smith to dig up information on her opponent Ron Gonzales. Smith, the son of former S.F. District Attorney Arlo Smith, is reputed to be one of the best dirt-diggers in the state. "The name Ace Smith strikes fear into the heart of opposing political consultants," one local campaign adviser reveals. What's bugging insiders, though, isn't that Dando hired an oppo guy--that's expected in a campaign like this, and Gonzales also plans to hire his own political detective--but that Smith is working for a Republican. He usually only works for Democrats. Smith is the famed gumshoe hired by the Clinton campaign in 1992 to investigate Slick Willie's own transgressions.
Going Negative
In 2001, the turning point came when Hahn ran TV ads linking his opponent to imprisoned drug dealer Carlos Vignali, the son of a campaign donor. On one level it was true. Before he became Assembly speaker, Villaraigosa had written a letter urging President Clinton to grant clemency. What people remembered, though, was the crack pipe juxtaposed with a grainy photo of Villaraigosa, and the question, Can we trust him? Villaraigosa didn’t have a ready comeback. This time he promises to give as tough as he gets. He blames Hahn for the ethics cloud hanging over city government and says he treats his job like a part-time gig. On the morning after the primary, Villaraigosa’s campaign manager, Ace Smith, stood outside Hahn’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters pushing flyers on reporters. With this new game plan, expect attacks from both sides (and from their surrogates via so-called independent expenditures) that could leave lasting scars on the local political culture.
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LIKE FATHER LIKE SON
ARLO SMITH & ACE SMITH
__________________________________
Violations charged at S.F. drug program
Ex-prosecutor says DA ignored financial abuses
San Francisco Examiner
May 19, 1996
Walden House, The City's leading private drug rehabilitation program, broke the law dozens of times while collecting welfare and food stamps for housing and treating convicted drug users, according to law enforcement sources and a confidential district attorney's report.
About $240,000 was believed lost, sources said, and a grand jury investigation and possible felony charges against Walden House - including grand theft and unlawfully obtaining public aid - were urged by district attorney's office staff, The Examiner learned.
But neither former District Attorney Arlo Smith nor his successor, Terence Hallinan, allowed prosecutors to take the case to the grand jury, sources said.
Joan Bennett, a former prosecutor who originally handled the case, called it a "coverup." Bennett was one of 14 prosecutors fired by Hallinan in a staff shake-up.
"If some little old lady in Hunters Point did that," Bennett said, "we'd be on them in a heartbeat. It's like someone in the DA's office is saying, "It's OK to be corrupt because we like drug programs.' "
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you REALLY need to get a life dude.
Wow didn't know that some minor Neighborhood Council politics ranked up there for comment on the blog. Whooppee.
Westchester
Westchester/PdR: Neighborhood Council president replaces airport committee chairman with Voss
BY VINCE ECHAVARIA
David Voss — former member of the City of Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners — has been appointed chair of the Neighborhood Council of Westchester-Playa del Rey Airport Relations Committee.
The Neighborhood Council voted 18-6 Tuesday, August 2nd, to approve council president Gwen Vuchsas's appointment of Voss as airport relations chair.
The Airport Relations Committee is composed of eight Neighborhood Council members and five community members.
Voss succeeds Robert Achermann, who had served in the position since 2003. Voss also serves on the Neighborhood Council Planning and Land Use Committee and is chair of the Bylaws Committee.
"I'm looking forward to be able to try to move things forward to constructively promote a regional aviation plan," said Voss, a Marina del Rey attorney. "I will do what I can to protect the community and I'm hopeful that with my experience on the airport commission I can bring some thinking to the table."
Voss was appointed to the city Board of Airport Commissioners by former Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn and was confirmed by the City Council in July 2004.
But when Antonio Villaraigosa became mayor July 1st, Villaraigosa nominated new members to the airport commission.
Achermann said he was "not surprised" at the Neighborhood Council's decision to replace him as chair, because he has been on an overseas assignment for three months with a new job.
But Achermann acknowledged that he was disappointed at the decision because he had discussed his job situation with Vuchsas.
"Gwen was concerned that I didn't notify her of my employment situation, but I had done so in person and in writing," Achermann said.
Vuchsas, who reappointed Achermann as airport relations chair in June, said Achermann never informed her of the overseas position and said that she wouldn't have made the reappointment, had she known.
"I wouldn't reappoint anyone who was going away for months," Vuchsas said. "It's not personal to Rob.
"I would have made the change to anyone on the council because I have a responsibility as president to make sure that the committees are run properly."
Achermann's local job also had affected his ability to be on time for Neighborhood Council and committee meetings, she said.
But Achermann said that when he was unable to physically be at meetings, he would participate through a speakerphone.
"I have been a pretty strong chairman," he said. "I put my heart and soul into the (Airport Relations) Committee."
Denny Schneider, a Neighborhood Council Airport Relations Committee member, said Achermann would always try to attend meetings either in person or by phone.
"Robert has been doing an exceptional job and has been advocating for the community all this time," Schneider said.
While no one on the Neighborhood Council questioned Achermann's commitment to the community, council members felt the proper thing to do was to make a change, Vuchsas said.
"The (council) felt Voss would be an outstanding chair because he has a lot of respect at the airport and he had a very effective term on the airport commission," Vuchsas said.
The Neighborhood Council earlier voted to oppose Hahn's master plan for Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), but Voss supports the plan.
Achermann said Voss's support of the LAX master plan may have an effect in his role as airport relations chair.
"It's about power and Voss having some say on LAX matters on the Neighborhood Council," Achermann said.
Although Voss supports the LAX master plan, he said it will not be an issue for the council, which is united in its effort to promote a regional solution for the airport.
I am going to start deleting all off topic posts on this article. Go talk about AV and CD14 on one of the 12 million articles on those subjects we have.
You MUST be kidding. First, let's be very clear - Acherman knows NOTHING about LAX other than his attempt at "regionalization" (read: personal interest) due to his desire to start his own airlines called Air Palmdale. THIS is the root of his "detailed knowledge" of the airport - NOTHING! He carries around a model airplane with him in a cardboard box and asks locals to fund his little airline. Good luck, Robert. Would YOU contribute money to a boy with a plane in a cardboard box who still lives in his parents' house in a racecar bed? I think not.
David Voss, on the other hand, has read the Master Plan through and through, knows what he's talking about, and speaks articulately on many issues, and without fiduciary conflict... no model airplane for him!
Robert, try playing with the grown ups and then you can return to the neighborhood council...
Mayor Sam says: "If I was that NC President, I would have appointed a co-chair or vice chair to handle stuff here and keep Acherman on. That way I get to keep him when he comes back. "
Mayor Sam, I know its tough to get the proper perspective from 6 feet under..
Just to let you know.. they still get to keep him. He's still on the committee, he's just not the committee chairman.
Mayor Sam says: "Also have to question the wisdom of appointing a guy to a key position who opposes the view of the council and community as a whole to lead that issue. "
What's the problem Sam? Their NC was unanimous in not supporting all of the airport expansion plans. Do you think that the all powerful Voss will be able to change 30 board members votes?
Maybe they want him because he knows the details of the airport very well.
I know, your too buried in your thoughts to be thinking clearly.
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