Wednesday Hotsheet at 3 a.m.
JM, Reservoir Street, Echo Park, 12.4.07
Surf's Up. Way up, says the Daily News. Epic. But the Lowriders at MayorSam demand equal time.
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Thieves steal copper from the City; it translates into a million dollar loss and also streetlight outages. "Among the hardest hit areas are Boyle Heights, the east San Fernando Valley and Wilmington, as well as a three-mile stretch of the Los Angeles River Bike Path between Los Feliz Boulevard and the L.A. Zoo."
Public Works Commish Cynthia Ruiz's attitude is that the problem is with the thieves, which of course it is, but not so much with the City securing the boxes or managing its assets better. "If I had an extra million dollars I could put 10 graffiti crews on the streets." We weren't aware that a Commisioner could act on her own to spend an "extra" million in a way she personally deemed fit.
Copper prices climbed in the summer, increasing the appeal of pinching copper wire.
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Council District 13 and No2HomeDepot.com have announced that Agent Orange has indeed backed off of the Glassell Park site for good. The language of the CD letter was surprisingly rosy, expressing unrestrained delight with the outcome and confidence that a good, more neighborhoody development would be found for the site. The Sunland Tujunga site on Foothill, however, still features a bashful "coming soon" sign.
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His Eminence didn't report a crime (don't go there), but the LAPD is investigating the summer assault on him anyway, just in case the Cardinal is, you know, lying. But it's Asst. Commanding Officer Andrew Smith's quote that doesn't quite ring true: "Whether it's the cardinal or a homeless guy, we take it personal when someone does something to one of our folks downtown."
It would be nice if the fishwraps also covered Mahony's Christmas Day mass at County Jail some year---he's only given up eightteen or so Christmas mornings now to celebrate mass with our most dispossessed of all.
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Southern rapper Pimp C ends up dead at the Mondrian. It could be natural causes. He was 33. He had played House of Blues Dec. 1.Labels: cardinal roger mahoney, echo park, lapd, los angeles politics, public works
Posted by Joseph F. Mailander @ 12/05/2007 05:17:00 AM
26 Comments:
Could it be Cardinal Phoney's pr firm he pays a fortune to may have told him this would be a good publicity stunt to get sympathy because of his failure to disclose all the priests who were transferred and protected who molested children? Why wasn't MaPhoney ever compelled to testify in court and why did he for years hide documents that would have helped victims of his priests?????
As a taxpayer I want to know who increased Nahai's salary? He's going to be paid more then Deaton over $300,000. Hey, but the city is in a state of emergency and once again have no clue where all the money is being spent.
L.A. squanders millions in mishandling of grants
By Kerry Cavanaugh...The city of Los Angeles is losing millions of dollars each year by mismanaging state and federal grants, according to an audit released Tuesday. While the city receives about $450 million in grants each year, there is little central oversight and coordination of which grants the city applies for and how the city manages the money it receives.
Friend call to say that there were two power outages in the Hazard Park area last night.
While we're on the subject, can anyone explain to me why the lights have been out along the Highland Park stretch of the Pasadena Freeway for several months?
Where does one start with this story?
Mayor to announce plans for more left-turn arrows
Daily News Wire Services
Article Last Updated: 12/05/2007 06:22:10 AM PST
NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will announce today a plan to add 100 left-turn arrows to the city's most congested intersections.
Work on the Right to Turn Left Initiative, which will cost the city $3 million, is expected to start Jan. 2. The 100 new signals will be installed at 45 intersections by June 30.
"Every commuter in this city has a fundamental right to turn left," Villaraigosa said.
"Logjams created by intersections without left-turn signals are responsible for some of the worst gridlock in the city. These 100 new left turn signals will improve the commutes of thousands of Angelenos every single day."
The plan is similar to the mayor's 30/30 Initiative, which he launched in October. Department of Transportation crews installed 30 left-turn arrows at the city's most congested intersections.
"We have a traffic crisis in Los Angeles and people demand immediate relief, which these left-turn signals will provide. No longer will you have to play chicken with oncoming traffic to see if you can make it through the light," said City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, chair of the council's Transportation Committee.
Sixty of the new lights will be installed in the San Fernando Valley. The Westside and Central parts of the city will each get 12, and South Los Angeles will get 14.
The mayor will announce the plan this morning at a news conference in North Hollywood
.....and I have a right to ask for a full accounting for the cost of these press junkets.
To 7:09 AM: Deaton was making $345,000. Nahai is only getting $310,000, but he's never managed a large enterprise. Why not attend the special hearing for him at City Council today at 10:15? The Council doesn't seem too interested in asking questions before making him permanent.
7:09 dum dum:
Nahai's salary is being DECREASED.
That means getting less, not more.
Deaton got paid for months while he was too ill to work and there was no leadership at DWP, so while that was a humane gesture from the city, Nahai has a lot to catch up on.
Nahai is doing more work for less money.
That's called a decrease in salary for increase in work load and pressure.
Look up Increase and Decrease, and get back to us with more of your insightful updates, MS reader.
Story in papers today saying thugs are stealing all the copper wiring and that's why lights are out. Cynthia Ruiz says that if there were graffitti crews out in the neighborhoods this wouldn't have happened. Is she as dumb as she looks??
EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA
.....While not falling as far as Giuliani, Hillary Clinton has lost ground recently in the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. The former First Lady now attracts 34% of the vote nationwide. That’s the lowest level of support recorded for Clinton since Rasmussen Reports began daily tracking in mid-July (see recent daily numbers).
L.A. officials said it is a twist on copper thefts that have plagued new home sites and even some office buildings in the last few years. With some lights pilfered during the summer still out, (WHAT IS CYNTHIA RUIZ BEING DOING SINCE THE SUMMER AND WHY AREN'T THE LIGHTS FIXED?) city officials Tuesday expressed concerns about the safety of passing drivers, pedestrians and bikers. The Los Angeles Public Works Department has already spent nearly $1 million repairing the lights.
"When we have to go out and replace that wire, it takes away from other city services," said Public Works Commissioner Cynthia Ruiz at a news conference on a downtown street corner near samples of copper streetlight wire. "If I had an extra million dollars I could put 10 graffiti crews on the streets."
From L.A. Slimes....
"Thieves posing as maintenance workers have taken 370,000 feet of wire. The city has spent $1 million on repairs."
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Could this be the midget mayor, Huizar and Reyes? The mayor can easily get access to city owned public works trucks. Zuma Dogg, hurry up, and get your teeth into this story. It sounds very "Shady" that the thieves are posing as city maintenance workers.
I don't trust the Mayor and the other Tijuana politicians for one minute. They are probably making a little extra cash, to buy Christmas presents for the mistress. Savvy?
I am sure Capt. JackHoff has some more inside rumor on the "copper coping" scandal.
Good morning Mr. Tracy (tips hat):
No, I do not have any inside information. I do, however, have two copper cents that I might feel compelled to toss into this particular fountain of veracity. But I choose not to do so at this time and make an ass-eared fool of myself. I'll leave that up to you as you'll do the bang-up job that you usually do, savvy?
Here's an interesting angle on this copper caper: There's currently a copper shortage here in the U.S., and the price for copper ingots is steadily increasing. For example, if you were to take 100 pennies and melt them, you would have a lump of copper worth between $1.07 and $1.15. If you do the math, the 370,000 feet of copper wire (which has a greater amount of pure copper in it) when smelted equals lots of ingots to be sold to the highest bidder, which in turn equals a really nice profit. Ka-ching!
Nahai is getting paid almost the same amount as Deaton. BUT he is bringing a lot less experience, a lot less understanding of city government and virtually no institutional memory to the table. At $310,000, he is probably being overpaid....
News of the attack on Mahony was published a day after a former Catholic priest was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to molesting two teenage boys in the mid-1990s in the Los Angeles area.
Michael Stephen Baker, 59, is believed to have molested more than 20 young boys in his 26 years as a priest and had confessed his problem to Mahony in 1986.
Mahony, who was then a bishop, sent Baker away for treatment and later reassigned him to other parishes. Mahony publicly apologized in 2004 for mishandling the Baker case, which he described in a 2002 newspaper interview as the one "that troubles me the most."
AND HE HAS THE NERVE TO CALL HIMSELF A CARDINAL!@@#$%%
Street Services are saying they were told to keep HUSH on the copper thefts. This has been going on for months yet no one was told. WHY???? Cynthia Ruiz should be FIRED
”Man of God” Mahoney. He should be in jail; after all he held back evidence that would have prevented his priest from doing harm to those kids that trusted him. He is just as guilty and the law should punish him too.
Hardest hit for copper thefts Boyle Heights. Where the hell has Sleazy Weezy been on this? why ares they protecting Cynthia Ruiz who has known that thousands of street lights have been out for months and streets are pitch black after dark yet not ONE WORD ABOUT IT TIL NOW. I called Street Services and they said they were told not to say anything because people would panic. IDIOTS!!!!
TMZ has learned that Kiefer Sutherland is at an L.A. County Courthouse and the judge has agreed to let him serve his time at a jail run by the city of Glendale rather than the perilous Twin Towers county facility.
Sutherland will serve his 48 days at the Glendale City Jail. He must complete his sentence by the end of March. He then faces 60 months of informal probation -- meaning he doesn't have to see a probation officer, pay a fine, complete 18 months of an alcohol education program and undergo six months of weekly alcohol therapy sessions.
t makes lots of sense for Kiefer to choose a city jail. Sources say Twin Towers has become a nightmare of violence, and jailers cannot guarantee the safety of high-profile inmates.
I hate to pile on illegals, but I did see people from Iowa who complained that illegals were stealing their copper too. It was a relatively new crime to them and went to their shop at night and caught the illegals redhanded.
You guys LOVE to pile on illegals, and you'd love to wave goodbye as someone else took them in shackles to the nearest international border. But would MayorSam's underemployed chronic bloggers have the integrity to go sign up for the hard jobs that would be left unfilled if millions of people were deported?
I didn't think so.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Are you one of the mechistas spinning for the Mayor?
Illegal aliens are now working in construction jobs which were previously done by American workers.
Illegal aliens are now working in the fast food industry jobs which were previously done by young students.
We have long passed the point of where we need illegals to work the jobs which few wanted, such as farm workers.
We also have too illegals in our schools, which has helped create some of the lowest performing schools in the nation.
Oh blah, blah, blah. Wrong on all counts.
If there were no illegals, there is no guarantee WHO would do those jobs, but we can guarantee that the salaries will be higher which will make the product more expensive. Then you'll bitch about that.
Illegals are working in fast food places? Stay out of them. They're bad for you anyway. Too bad all I ever see are high school kids, not illegal immigrants.
You are blaming the school mess on illegal immigrants. You know nothing about the school system then. Thank Jesus we are educating the children of illegal immigrants, most of those children being legal by the way.
monica harmon
Yeah, the good old free market will take care of everything if the illegals mysteriously disappear. Ask the airlines if the "magic of the market works." They can't charge what they should to provide service (having nothing to do with illegals) because people won't pay it. The downward pressure on ticket prices spills over into downward pressure on expenses, which leads to downward pressure on wages and benefits - for people who are as legal as it gets.
So you think you'll pay more for tomatoes? Maybe you won't pay anything at all for American-grown tomatoes because that industry could disappear under the weight of the "magic of the market."
Maybe we shouldn't care one way or the other in this Darwinian environment, as long as our longings for law and order are fulfilled. But we sure as hell should stop entertaining romantic notions that everything would be the same - only better - if the illegals left.
They'll be different, and we can only make educated guesses as to how different. Forward into the past!
New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s lead over Illinois Senator Barack Obama in South Carolina’s Presidential Primary has disappeared. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the race shows Clinton with 36% of the vote while Obama is the top choice for 34% of the state’s Likely Primary Voters. A month ago, Clinton had a ten-point advantage. In September, the former First Lady was up by thirteen points.
Currently, John Edwards is a distant third at 13% in South Carolina and no other Democrat tops the 2% level of support (see crosstabs for current survey).
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Clinton’s voters name Obama as their second choice. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Obama voters name Clinton as their second choice. Among supporters of John Edwards, Clinton is the second choice for 34% while Obama gets the nod from 16%.
"Illegal aliens are now working in construction jobs which were previously done by American workers.
Illegal aliens are now working in the fast food industry jobs which were previously done by young students.
We have long passed the point of where we need illegals to work the jobs which few wanted, such as farm workers.
We also have too illegals in our schools, which has helped create some of the lowest performing schools in the nation.
December 05, 2007 10:28 PM'
Yes, They take my jobs. I pay for their kids education and medicine and everything else. But I have no kids, am over 50, have beeen layed off from the Aerospace industry twice, and I know TARGET, Home Depot, OSH, KFC, and others wont hire me because I am too old, made too much money and they feel I wont stay. Senator Tancredi has the right idea" send them all back, as soon as possible"
Now the parents of kids and anchor babies get food stamps, section 8 housing, medical care, schooling; which I have paid for over the last thirty years.
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