Friday Hotsheet at 3 a.m.
JM, Alley, Echo Park, 12.13.07
Joseph Mailander • recent • email
Send in the Feds: The Writers go to the NLRB. The post-Valenti studios call the move "baseless, desperate." Hello, this is our town calling---things are getting ugly---where is the Mayor?
° ° ° ° °
It's about time the folks at Blue Shield took a little heat, and maybe they will, the Daily News says. "Blue Shield committed serious violations that completely undermine the public trust in our healthcare delivery system," [Callifornia Insurance Commissioner Steve] Poizner said. "Let this be a message to all health insurers that we will not tolerate irresponsible rescissions and shoddy claims handling. We will target this behavior on an industry-wide basis and continue to take appropriate action as needed, " he said.
It sounds like a lot, but it's not much of a message: a $12.6 million fine is a payout equivalent to about 120 patients on chemo. Across the whole state. Wrist. Slap.
And hey: won't they just turn around, plug that fine into some actuarial table, and bill us for it? When an insurance company gets fined, don't the policy holders pay? What they should do is make them restructure in a way that gets rid of $12.6 million worth of managers.
How much do they get out of you each month? Hah. Wait 'til you turn 50. You'll pay that fine yourself.
° ° ° ° °
The Dodgers: juiced from stem to stern, and the Times has a great special report on the Big Blue Wrecked Crew. The South Bay produces a lot of good baseball players, and the Daily Breeze has the local angle and concludes that steroid abuse does not start in high school. Palos Verdes High coach Evan Fuginaga is sensible: "It's better to look forward rather than backward," Fuginaga said. "The focus needs to be on the way we test, not on who needs to be punished. These are guys that a lot of people look up to. In some ways, it makes you ask where we are as a society."
° ° ° ° °
Last night, the LA Press Club bid Matt Welch and Emmanuelle Richard adieu as they prepare for an even tighter real estate market. Spotted: new Times blog go-to guru Tony Pierce, Steve Smith, Luke Ford, Amy Alkon, Brady Westwater, some of the thorny Reason types, and the world's most dangerous fishwrap band. And even with the big crowd on hand, it seemed like about a dozen people were missing, but in truth there was only one.
Labels: a guy in la, Hollywood writers, los angeles dodgers, los angeles politics
Posted by Joseph F. Mailander @ 12/14/2007 04:35:00 AM
44 Comments:
Fabian Nunez for LA City Council,
CD1 CD1 CD1 CD1 CD1 baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nunez? No thank you. There's someone WAY better than Fabian Nunez out there and we'd rather have him ANY DAY! We're just wild about Henry.....Cisneros. GO HENRY!!!
If they have a Hispanic name, they shouldnt even try. We know what they are and we dont want no more!
Nunez may be an American but his condescension, arrogance, greed, indulgence and bullshit rhetoric have no place in American government.
HENRY CISNEROS FOR CD 1! HENRY CISNEROS FOR CD 1! HENRY CISNEROS FOR CD 1! HENRY CISNEROS FOR CD 1! HENRY CISNEROS FOR CD 1! HENRY CISNEROS FOR CD 1! HENRY CISNEROS FOR CD 1! HENRY CISNEROS FOR CD 1!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZBPMKyyaBA
Funny Hillary spot.
Hmmm...
In March 1995, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno secured the appointment of an Independent Counsel, David Barrett to investigate allegations that Cisneros had lied to FBI investigators during background checks prior to being named Secretary of HUD. He had been asked about payments that he had made to former mistress Linda Medlar, also known as Linda Jones. The affair had been 'public knowledge' for a number of years - during the 1992 presidential campaign, U.S. Treasurer Catalina Vasquez Villalpando publicly referred to Cisneros and candidate Clinton as "two skirt-chasers" - but Cisneros lied about the amount of money he had paid to Medlar. The investigation continued for three and a half years.
In December, 1997, Cisneros was indicted on 18 counts of conspiracy, giving false statements and obstruction of Justice. Medlar used some of the Cisneros hush money to purchase a house and entered into a bank fraud scheme with her sister and brother-in-law to conceal the source of the money. In January, 1998, Medlar pleaded guilty to 28 charges of bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and obstruction of justice.
In September, 1999, Cisneros negotiated a plea agreement, under which he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI, and was fined $10,000. He did not receive jail-time or probation. He was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in January 2001.
.....Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is teetering on the brink, no matter what the meaningless national horserace numbers say. The notion that she has a post-Iowa “firewall” in New Hampshire is a fantasy, and she is in danger of losing all four early contests, including Nevada and South Carolina – probably to Sen. Barack Obama, who is now, in momentum terms, the Democratic frontrunner.
No Latinos anymore on council
Things that make you go hmmm..
One man's creativity is...
From today's Sacramento Bee:
Núñez said the state cannot fix its structural budget imbalance only by cutting services.
"The fact of the matter is we've been cutting our way out of this budget mess for the last four years," Núñez said. "I think it's time we show a little bit of creativity."
From the Legislative Analyst's web site:
Year General Fund Spending
03-04 $76.3 billion
04-05 $79.8 billion
05-06 $91.6 billion
06-07 $101.9 billion
07-08 $104.2 billion
Growth in general fund past four years: $27.9 billion
Percentage growth in general fund past four years: 36.6%
Average percentage growth in general fund past four years: 9.1%
Average population growth past four years: 1.35%
Average inflation past four years: 3.3%
This may or may not be true about Cisneros. But at least he's one that Mirthala hasn't had!
"Creativity"
WHY CAN'T THESE WORTHLESS WEENIE SOCIALIST SACKS OF SHIT JUST SAY "TAX INCREASE"??????
NUNEZ SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS
The Term EXTENSION and NO Legislative Reform.
NO on Proposition 93.
NO on MECHA Speaker for CD1.
10:19 Could not agree with you more.
10:04 Wonder which campaign did that Hillary spot.
No on Measure S!! Why?....
City salaries rising faster than revenues
From CITY NEWS SERVICE 22.NOV.07
Payroll costs are expected to help push city budget deficit to $300 million next year.
LOS ANGELES — Salaries and other costs associated with the city’s massive workforce are rising faster than revenues.
Since 2000, the cost of workers surged 53 percent to about $4 billion a year, rising an average 7.5 percent every year, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. During the same period, general fund revenues rose an average 5.7 percent a year, the newspaper reported.
Due in part to the imbalance, the city anticipates a budget shortfall of $300 million next year, the Daily News reported.
“It’s almost like we’re working for them; they aren’t there to serve us. The situation has gotten badly out of whack,” Jack Kyser, chief economist for the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., told the newspaper.
Public employee unions get politicians elected, and the politicians pay them back in the form of lucrative contracts, according to Alice Rivlin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now a senior fellow at Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, D.C.
“It’s very hard politically for mayors or city councils to go against [unions],” she said. “They can turn out the votes and turn out the lights.”
One example of the clout wielded by city unions is the recently negotiated contract covering most city workers, except police and firefighters, who usually do as well as or better than other municipal workers.
"One of the key problems today is that POLITICS is such a DISGRACE, good people don't go into government."
- Donald Trump
More Nunez.
SACRAMENTO—The state Democratic Party bought $3,238 worth of French wine from Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez’s political fund after extensive media criticism of the Los Angeles Democrat’s lavish spending.
Party officials said the wine was for use at a Democratic fundraiser. But nearly half of the 36 bottles, valued at about $90 each, are in a Sacramento wine locker kept by Nuñez’s sometime roommate in Los Angeles who is a fundraiser for both the speaker and the state party.
The rest of the wine was consumed at other functions, a party spokesman said, such as a fundraiser this month with Nuñez as the main attraction.
Nunez cont....
The economic worries are reflected in the top three issues that residents listed: immigration, jobs and the economy, and health care.
"This combination of concern about immigration and escalating economic anxieties makes for a highly charged and unpredictable political atmosphere," Baldassare said, "especially as we head into an election year."
Put another way, voters won't be going to the Feb. 5 polls in a cheery mood, which could make for a hard sell for proponents of Prop. 93, the ballot initiative to loosen term limits. A plurality — 47 percent to 41 percent — supports the measure, though its margin of support continues to shrink. In a Field Poll earlier this year, the initiative was supported by 59 percent of the voters.
"I'd say there is a constant trend," said Kevin Spillane, spokesman for the No on 93 campaign. "The more people know about 93, the less they like about it."
But, voters like the idea of shortening legislators' potential stay from 14 years to 12, and allowing lawmakers to stay in a single chamber because, Baldassare said, they would be required to make "more efficient use of their time in office" rather than always focusing on the next election.
"There is a significant appetite for reforming California's term limits laws," said Richard Stapler, spokesman for the Prop. 93 campaign. "We want to put an emphasis on experience to make the Legislature more effective. Voters will understand that."
SHAME ON YOU FABIAN!
SHAME ON YOU!!!!!!!!!!
Spin from Steve "Moo Boy" Maviglio.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black: yesterday the California Republican Party sent out two press releases attacking the California Democratic Party for purchasing wine for fundraisers. Too bad it didn't look in the mirror first: according to records filed at the FPPC, the CRP has racked up nearly $18,000 in wine purchases this year.
The California Republicans dropped $3,249.74 in "wine tasting fees" at the Staglin Family Vineyard in Yountville (organic grapes, at that), another $4,200 at Gargiulo Vineyard in Napa (perhaps its Money Road Ranch cab?), some $4,189.32 at Cakebread Cellars in Napa, and $5,180 at Sacramento wine purveyor David Berkley. Insiders also tell us that top GOP contributors received bottles of Silver Oak Cabernet last Christmas, though there's no sign of that in the CRP's FPPC report.
So let's raise our glass to the California Republican Party, drunk with hypocrisy for spending more than four times as much as the CDP did on wine in the last few months alone and having the chutzpah to issue two press releases in one day criticizing the Democrats!
Is Tony Pierce as rude in person as he is / was on LAist? How's he going to manage at the old school Times? Bets are he'll be fired in 2 months.
Is Luke Ford really a perv? Does he really think he could be looking for a "nice Jewish girl" where bragging about banging anything that moves? Is realizing that really why he quit his porn blog, or did it just fail?
Is Brady Westwater really as bland as his name and how he comes off in writing? (He did get the "scoop" on Georgia Jeffs being not only fired but begged to leave her Ill. job by the Gov. of that lovely state herself...)
Ok I'm not usually a big supporter of Weiss but I have to give him credit for this one. Pathetic the city couldn't come up with the money to solve these cases so Weiss stepped to the plate and delivered. If he can do this what the hell are the rest of the morons doing?
....COUNCILMEMBER WEISS DONATES $100,000 FOR DNA TESTING
At a news conference this afternoon, Councilmember Jack Weiss presented the Department (LAPD) with a check for $100,000, specifically earmarked for DNA testing on rape kits. The funds are being transferred from Councilmember Weiss' office budget and will enable the Department to test approximately 100 of the kits from the City's backlog of approximately 6,700.
Meat,
Go away. No one cares about Jack Weiss besides you. You should at least wait until Jack makes the announcement on TV 35 during the council meeting. Otherwise, it looks like someone is using Mayor Sam for Jack Weiss press releases. But I see you say you are not usually a Jack Weiss supporter, so I guess you don't work for his campaign manager.
I'm not 12:56 or Meat, whoever that is, but I too congratulate Jack Weiss for taking initiatives to get things done instead of sitting back watching the machinery of government do nothing forever.
You're the one who needs to go away -- your fatty boy Hertzberg is a goner never to return to city politics in a major way and he'll never have a chance for City Attorney. Maybe he can be Matt's attorney, with all the positive press and fees that will generate.
Or he can stick to eating fatty pastrami sandwiches at his favorite Studio City deli where I interviewed him once, and could barely get any words out of him except that he means to go on a diet but meanwhile, boy, those fatty fat sandwiches sure are good.
Actually, I think 1:15 is with Eveloff gang, who are still fighting Weiss on everything they can, the ones who don't have the guts to say peep to Zev for proposing the One-Way Pico plan but attacked Weiss like the spiteful losers they are for studying Zev's plan, working for months with city groups to get input, then doing something about traffic abatement.
They and the Beverly Wilshire HOA written up in City Watch last week as doing the same, attack Weiss "because that's who they are," said the writer of that piece, a guy who's fed up with these people who oppose every constructive solution because they'd rather be Councilmen themselves but either don't have the guts or money to run, can't take the heat if they did, or tried and lost.
I know you can't help your kneejerk attacks against Weiss and you'll pop up again and again "because that's who you are," but your bunch does nothing but obstruct and criticize while he keeps improving traffic and public safety of the city.
In the midst of a drought, Los Angeles officials announced today that 600 million gallons of water must be dumped from two reservoirs that supply a large swath of the city because an unexpected chemical reaction heightened by sunlight rendered it undrinkable.
The Department of Water and Power must drain the Silver Lake and Elysian reservoirs, which together provide drinking water to residents in portions of central Los Angeles, the Eastside and South Los Angeles.
Officials believe that intense sunlight, bromide in ground water and chlorine combined to produce bromate, a carcinogen that is dangerous through long-term exposure.
DWP General Manager H. David Nahai said the utility was acting out of an abundance of caution. He said the DWP became aware of the problem in October when an outside lab identified high levels of the compound.
The agency notified the state Department of Public Health and immediately removed the two reservoirs from service. Nahai said the DWP was notifying the public now at the direction of the state agency.
The loss of the water comes amid a prolonged dry spell that has prompted Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to call for voluntary conservation. Nahai downplayed the impact of the water loss, saying the two reservoirs account for less than 1% of the city's annual water needs.
"At a time of water shortages, we are loath to [drain the reservoirs]," he said. "Every drop is precious. But we want to make sure that ... the public continues to retain a high level of confidence in the quality of the water."
DWP officials said they tested the city's four other open-air reservoirs and determined that the water was safe to drink.
The utility is using other water sources to replace the two reservoirs, including the Ivanhoe reservoir, which abuts the Silver Lake site but did not show the same traces of bromate.
Nahai said water from the Elysian reservoir could be used to irrigate nearby hillsides. But officials were trying to determine whether they could use the Silver Lake water, which contains the bulk of the supply at issue. If not, it will simply be dumped into the Los Angeles River and carried to the ocean.
Typical LA Slimes giving space to a domestic violence abuser like Jim Brown to discuss the gang problem. He has the nerve to criticize gang injunctions and say things that aren't true. Jim needs to go to anger management classes and stop beating his dumb wife who had him arrested for beating her then recanted. Dumb ass LA Slimes
....From gridiron to gangs
NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown visits The Times to discuss easing L.A.'s gang problem....
The neighbors around Jim Brown's house sure have appreciated him holding gang summits, inviting people to his hillside home who've never been there or would have found the area. Since then there have been strange people ringing bells selling to raise money, graffiti signs appearing -- thanks fool Jim.
He used to have parties where naked women were found wandering the street spaced out, drunken fights, even the cops were afraid to shut his parties down.
I for one am most certain it is MEAT as he yet again brings up Hertzberg. Mayor Sam has pointed out many times that MEAT is obsessed with Hertzberg. He used to work for him and got fired until Antonio made him his butt boy along with fellow fired mayor sam AWOL blogger Brian "Mayor Frank" Hay
For some of you who don't know, this blog is far better off with the new crew of Mailander, Zuma, even Wet Spot compared to the ramblings of Brian Hay and Michael Trujillo back in the early days. Higby fucked up letting those two hacks use MS for their personal political vendettas. But he was smart to fire them.
From "Deconstructing Antonio",
Weiss, by the way, does get rewarded for his blind support of the mayor. During the news conference on Olympic, KNBC’s Laurel Erickson asked if the neighborhood critics of the plan were correct to say that he had sold them out. The mayor took the microphone and defended Weiss, a vocal opponent of the traffic plan when it bore Yaroslavsky’s name.
C'mon you gotta give Weiss credit for finding $100,000 out of his own budget to help LAPD with backlog of DNA cases. I don't see other council members doing anything at that level. Huizar thought it was better to have an ice show named after him then putting the money to better use. How arrogant and cocky to name a community event after yourself. Someone make a man out of him and kick his butt. Sure hope that wife of his finally has a boy. He already has 3 girls and desperately wants a boy. Let's see if he can man up this time.
LOL
Meat, whoever that is, but ... your fatty boy Hertzberg.
LOL
An official for the WGA states "We are in the midst of the holiday season, with thousands of our members and the membership of other unions out of work."
Gee Guys. Maybe you should have thought about that before you put a lump of coal in your industry's union brothers and sisters stockings.
Simple. Just write a different story ending. You live in a fantasy world anyway.
I hate all the mexican politicans and especially the midget mechista mexican mayor.
I love KKKFI, Mayor Sam, George Bush,Zuma Dogg and Matt Dowd.
4:24pm,
I know. Meat always gives himself away. I mean, who says, "I'm not 12:56 or Meat, whoever that is."
Like there is a huge contingency of people who are pro-Weiss to the point of posting his press releases in advance of the city council meeting broadcast. And, happens to be someone who feels compelled to attack Bob Hertzberg at such a personal level. And not only doesn't know who "Meat" is, but deems it necessary to let you know that he doesn't know who this Meat fellow is. And we know, you are not usually a Jack Weiss supporter and don't know who Meat is.
Wet Spot at 2:47: You're so wet behind the -- you couldn't get dried in the Sahara. Everyone was a "vocal opponent of the plan when it bore Zev's name" because that was a very different and drastic plan which was just lobbed out there with no thought or consultation from DOT, anybody.
Only thing is, the usual nasty crew who'd blame Weiss for saying the Pope is Catholic, put Weiss's name to Zev's plan so they could attack him with it.
It's Weiss who put in the sweat and thankless job of holding meetings for these misanthropes to air their grievances about why Zev's plan would never work, but they want traffic relief NOW since weiss is to blame for the last 20 years of it. Ever since Zev was the CM and approved malls and plans while working with Waxman to VETO any fed funds for the mass transit we now so desperately need.
Another case of Zev jumping off the end of the parade to race to the front and "lead" it: he's now "leading a people's revolution" to reduce traffic and get the mass transit he'd so arduously opposed.
As for Weiss's "blind support" of the Mayor, or v.v.: Loyalty isn't a bad thing, since Weiss's other best friend Zev hasn't shown any in public anyway, and you sure as heck don't see a whole lot of it going around government.
So all the CM's but 3 praising the Mayor you all love to hate is actually a good thing: they can try to work together and get something done for once.
Wet Spot, do you have a job or do ANAYTHING you're actually qualified for, because being a blind fool who can't even spell or use proper grammar, leading the blind on this blog, isn't one of those things.
There is only one person who thinks zuma dogg is a waste of air space.
This person keeps blogging under different names and talks to himself.
Everyone else things zuma and his matt are brilliant, highly evolved beings who add greatly to the discourse of this blog, the city and any institution or media they touch.
There is only one person who can see through the idiotic rantings of this blog against the Mayor and his homie Jack Weiss. And that person is someone called Meat, because he alone knows that Herzberg is fat and eats lots of pastrami sandwiches.
And that is why this blog is great. It not only imparts and "news before it happens," but figures out who the one person is who thinks the pro-Wet Spot and zuma posters on this blog are fools.
Yes, I'm Meat, and I'm getting paid handsomely to be on this blog to argue with idiots, instead of working on issues with the average normal person and "movers and shakers" who make this city rock.
Your ESP has worked again.
So you know Jim Alger?
No one, except another fat boy, Higby, wants fatty boy Hertzberg to run for City Attorney.
Hertzberg is yesterday's news; all the money he raisd to try to beat Antonio will dry up when he runs, or tries to run against Weiss.
HERTZBERG IS TOO FAT TO RUN FOR ANYTHING.
If Hertzberg does have any money left after his failure to beat Antonio, he can't use it to run against Weiss even if he chose to try. You can't use campaign monies raised for one race for another one. Does he have money left from that years ago race?
He's made some money on greenhouse stuff, but unless he tries to totally fund himself he's dead in the water. Baca is "also" backing one other no-name deputy CA and backing Weiss (like he backed Lloyd Levine AND his opponent in that race), but that guy's a pro-gun conservative who's only making Baca look stupid for his "endorsement."
Has anyone but Baca actively endorsed two people at once, and maybe three or four more? It's one thing to say you might, then pick one later...
Baca must be pretty desperate for all the friends he can get, but he hasn't learned that when you pick both opponents in the boxing ring, you just might be the one to lose.
6:51 PM sure is trying to convince people that he is not Meat. Would anyone really sit there and type response after response trying to prove how there is not way he could be this person, Meat, that he has never heard of.
Alright already. Fine, you are not Meat, Meat. And nice job on the Clinton hit job on Obama. I hope Hillary has gotten over it. I know she is so upset that this information was released. Maybe you should get her some Mighty Putty for Christmas so she can plug the leak.
ok, ok..............You made your point. Fabian Nunez for CD9? He's gotta b better than Perry!!!
I hate to break it to you, but I don't think Trujillo is here posting right now. Call me crazy, but he's kind of busy.
I'm a Michael lover and a Hertzberg HATER. I don't dislike Bob. I hate him. I hate his politics. I hate his looks. I hate his hugs. I hate his cocky attitude. His policies suck. I never want Hertzberg to win another seat in L.A. Ever. The thought repulses me.
Hertzberg - take your millions and go take lots of vacations with your wife or something.
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