Mayor Sam's Hotsheet for Monday
District Attorney Steve Cooley is well on his way to being re-elected to his third term though he once blasted former opponent and District Attorney Gil Garcetti for doing the same. Cooley says he further goals to achieve.Despite the scares and Neighborhood Council votes, Joe Mailander reports that LA's libraries have not been cut in their funding in the coming City Budget. Still it was a good opportunity for the libraries to shake down their patrons and the Neighborhood Councils.
You've read here about the antics of former Glassell Park Neighborhood Council President Bradley and his top lieutenant Paula Bagasao. Now David Markland picks up the story at his KNBC blog. Among the antics at the Council's meeting Tuesday; reviewing complaints over Bradley's attempt to prevent a stakeholder from video taping the Council's meetings and a complaint against Bagasao for alleged racist remarks made against Hispanics and Whites. In case you forgot what fun Bradley and Bagasao are, here' s video reminder.
Rick Orlov blogs what local Democratic activist and former candidate for LA Community College District Trustee Maria Agazaryan and her husband did with their $2100 tax rebate stimulus check: a shopping spree for patio furniture.
A goofy screed about the comining of the new 747 area code as an overlay for the 818. Writing in CityWatch developer Rickey Gelb doesn't understand how after 20 years of use the area code is running out of numbers. His math of six numbers of every man, woman in child doesn't take into account business lines, cell phones and other uses for lines. Time marches on Rickey, its time for another area code.
You can see a video of the new MTA advertising in subway tunnels at the LA Times website. Though the billboard NIMBYs are screaming about it. It reminds me of the old Peoplemover throuh Superspeed Tunnel at Disneyland back in the 70s.
Labels: 2008 economic stimululs check, 818 area code, billboards, bradley, District Attorney Steve Cooley, gil garcetti, glassell park, library, neighborhood councils, nimby, paula bagasao
Posted by Michael Higby @ 5/19/2008 04:00:00 AM
23 Comments:
Sorry-ass "scoop" on Steve Cooley, reprinting a day-old LAT kiss-butt afraid of his shadow article about him, after someone gives you all kinds of new info straight from the horses' mouths, one of his DA's running against him.
Validates Shaw, Sr.'s comments after all, that Cooley won't touch illegal criminal gangbangers, the career felons, even though it's his job even more than that of Bratton: those who re-enter after deportation are given 20 extra years to any convictions as FELONIES, which the DA prosecutes.
It's also his job to deport illegal felons and work with ICE, whether or not they've re-entered illegally. He has hundreds of investigators/ thugs who he misuses to intimidate his own staff and anyone who questions him, instead.
To those out there who want to know what Cooley's really like, go to;
wwww.fulldisclosure.net
Click on interviews with his two main, very articulate and persuasive, challengers, Dep, DA Steve Ipsen and Albert Robles.
You won't want this man governing you four more years.
VOTE FOR STEVE IPSEN
(Instead, Higby goes on about the same local, volunteer fools at an NC, stupid or not, they don't determine your fate, people.)
Ha ha. Now you got nobody candidates spinning on here anonymously. Validates rhe fact that this is the political blog in LA.
The same Albert Robles who was the attorney for the "South Gate" Albert Robles?? Hmm.....
I haven't been following this, so my un-blemished comment is:
1. The person filming is clearly trying to bait the NC with "I'm not doing anything wrong" and saying that over and over.
2. The person RUNNING the NC meeting seems like a control freak who should go and see how a city commission really functions.
3. The woman on the NC is asking questions she's simply not allowed to ask, such as the purpose for the video. It's none of her business "how it's going to be used."
This is a perfect example of why the NCs were formed: to keep us busy and out of the hair of the mayor and the city council.
YES...VOTE FOR IPSEN!
And read ronkayla.com this morning! There is an eye-opening 'anonymous' post re Cooley and Ipsen that will wake up everyone who is still in a coma!
And to "anonymous" poster 6:43 a.m.... you are an idiot! Do whistleblowers usually leave their name, address, and phone #??? Why don't you go try the Hispanic Business forum blog...it sounds more like your style!
Mayor Sam, this picture you have of Alarcon on this blog. Who are the two women and the old white guy next to him?
Was Ipsen rated not qualified?
BRADLEY is a train wreck, no doubt, but his little coalition of misfits got 2-3 times as many votes as the board they replaced, and still after all this has more support in that community. But the support for either group was minimal all along.
Now, what do you do with that?
Here's a clue. Zero-tolerance decertification of any neighborhood council that can't at least rise up above some minimal level of participation - maybe 5 percent (?) in elections - and to some lesser extent in the meetings they hold.
(And PLEASE don't tell me this is the same situation as nobody voting in council or mayoral elections).
It's NOT "raising the bar higher" for NCs (that's the hypocritical, defrocked ex-GM of DONE's illogical little mantra), and he knows better.
Read any of the original mandates for NCs, or even the 911 commission's very recent report.
Council and mayor are intended to be REPRESENTATIVE. (If people don't want to vote for who represents them, that's on them).
Neighborhood councils were ALWAYS designed to be PARTICIPATORY (and that doesn't mean counting people who attend the parties NCs throw to get the free food).
If nobody PARTICIPATES in a participatory body, then what good is it? Growing participation is the only reason they need to exist. Without that, they're a waste of taxpayer's money and the volunteers' own time.
Ipsen is Pres of the Assn. of Asst. DA's, so he's clearly respected by his colleagues. Who are an intimidated bunch -- Cooley and the media accused Garcetti of doing that to them, and Cooley claimed he's have an open-door policy to staff, with a transparent admin. Ho -ho.
The stuff he's turning a blind eye to in the South Cities, already in the pay of the Mexican drug cartels, is especially scary given what's happening in Mexico these days; even the current wimpy Daily News carries it on top: Drug Cartels are openly telling cops, with public ad campaigns, "Join us or die." Join us, we'll take care of you for life, unlike the state. If not, look what happened to your colleagues...
The former Asst. Sheriff who was investigating our local crooks said it may be too late to stop them infiltrating L A itself, if they haven't already through the infamous goings on in CD 14... But now or never for a last defense.
Does Ipsen know what Chamberlain did in 1938?
You guys are behaving like a bunch of gossipy women. You sound so damn insecure and whimpy, I'd love to ask how you were raised by your moms. Definitely not to be strong men. Shit, we have neough weak asses in city council please don't act like them. Bradley has tons of support citywide and many of them don't waste their time on this blog saying juvenile, immature things. Grow up and start acting like "real men" Shit we don't have any in this damn city.
12:33, Ipsen probably does, Cooley probably doesn't.
It's no joke, Chamberlain would have just handed Hitler the world because he didn't seem like such a bad guy.
Dumb enough to hand Central and Eastern Europe to Stalin, because he was so jolly at Potsdam.
And THAT was was handled with a lot more intelligence than WWI was, from start to finish. Where ruining Germany and Austria-Hungary out of vindictiveness, caving into France's historical animosities with them, at Versailles, let to WWII. And Russia was a "good guy." HO HO.
But the French hosted the Conference of Vindictiveness at their fancy palace, and served awfully good food and petit-fours.
They seemed awfully civilized, not like them Germans were portrayed.
Winston Churchill was the only non-idiot.
There are even more idiots now.
In L A schools, idiocy is the norm.
Obama is not an idiot but a fool.
His foreign policy experience based on living abroad as a small child with his (white) grandparents in a Muslim country for a few years. With a name like Barack Obama as a Muslim. Messed up is more like it, look at his finding his identity for 20 years from Rev. Wright.
McCain will be President.
Watching Council this a.m. as they jump all over each other to see who can raise more fees on "hidden" items is so pathetic.
This was not done before for many years, but now they've fu-ed so bad, they have to screw us every way they can.
Raising parking meter fees sky-high, along with hours of operation: Rosendahl.
Increasing red lights to catch people slightly rolling, turning right middle of the night.
AlarCON: Increasing fees for trash bins in addition to the huge increase in monthly trash pickups.
Wesson: Golf courses: Instead of letting 5 people play a round, reduce it to 4; charge non-res. fees. (Latter would be OK, Bev Hills and Santa Monica do it, but that means we've got the illegals at city res rates -- well, they probably don't play golf.)
Increase fees to use parks, pools; the state is doing the same.
Animal adoption fees, up.
They'll tax us to ride a bike soon.
Waiting for even stupider ideas.
11:38:
One of the things that the Neighborhood Council Review Commission said was using the number of people who vote in an NC election is perhaps the least effective way of measuring participation. That's one of the reasons that they recommended taking away the election process from the NC's and giving it to the City Clerk. The commission felt that this would give the NC's more time to do more important things, whatever those may be.
In doing that, the outreach money that DONE had used to for each NC election was cut to nearly zero. That leaves only two choices: live with the fact that less people will know about the elections, or ask the NC's to spend more time doing outreach which means that diverting even more of their time into elections.
As the election totals decrease because of City Hall's decisions, I can just hear you ragging on the NC's as if it's their fault.
If you want to be productive, be the first to think up legitimate ways to measure the success of NC's. And don't be silly and say it should be attendance at their meetings. There are many good people who don't want to sit though a business meeting, but who will participate in events when the right cause comes around.
This is so typical of Parks with his arrogance. At the South LA Congress of Neighborhoods Gathering this past Saturday at West Adams High Mark Ridley Thomas got a much louder applause then Bitter Bernie who pretended not to care.
....Ridley-Thomas was holding an Obama for President voter registration rally at his South Los Angeles headquarters recently when Parks - who was not invited - showed up to make a speech, reports Betty Pleasant in the Wave Newspapers.
Ridley-Thomas is one of Obama's national co-chairs. Parks has been circulating a picture of himself with Obama.
The problem is that attendance at NC meetings, as well as events, is a good solid metric of relevancy. The NCs that have 100 people in the audience get electeds to show up. Go to some of these jokey councils that have five people in the audience and the staffers don't even bother to show up.
1:08
Yes, and the Review Commission was absolutely wrong on that point, for the most part because nearly every appointed representative on the commission has failed to increase participation in their own NC areas.
(No wonder they don't think it's a "good" tool. They don't know how/have failed to use it).
The Amish think there's something wrong with telephones, too, but most people still manage to make it work for them.
The election of NC reps is the only regular, measurable form of seeing if NCs are affecting and involving the community. Stakeholders will vote in larger numbers when they feel ownership in a participatory process, and not that someone has just invented another level of unseeing, unhearing mini-politicians.
Take it away, don't track it, don't use it as the (only) tool available and you don't have a leg to stand on. Why should I as a stakeholder take part if you DON'T already have some minimal critical mass that growing? Why should anyone downtown listen to you if you can't show the numbers?
I wouldn't advertise on radio or TV if the stations couldn't show me they have ears and eyes, and just suggested "well, viewership statistics aren't REALLY the best way to measure impact."
Bullshit, of course they are - and so is election and meeting participation.
The commission felt that this would give the NC's more time to do more important things, whatever those may be.
What's the point of doing "important things" if they represent the desires of no one but a handful, and the number never grows?
Who decides what those "important things" are? The same 50 people who founded the group, ran the board then and run it now? NO WONDER participation doesn't increase in your NC world.
But the "doom and gloom" scenario is a nice touch. Election participation will decrease because the City Clerk is involved?
Not a chance. Bet the farm on this... once a recognized, official agency of the city (Clerk), the same one that runs other elections, puts an imprint on the NC elections, participation with grow 50-100 percent, per NC, from whatever low rate came before.
That's one of the aspects that's been missing and the NCs don't push enough - their connection to the city. Clerk-run elections will begin to change that.
Meanwhile "DONE" and it's outreach money? That's the biggest joke yet, and such a massive waste. A department that couldn't get but a handful of stakeholders involved in the formation of NCs for the 3-4 years of formation (letting NCs be certified with 8 people in the room because they promised to get more people involved later on), now telling that handful the best way to improve their sorry results. It's the blind tripping (not "leading") the blind.
And doing it by stuffing flyers into fence posts, like the pizza delivery place on the corner, to be blown into the street as trash more than ever were picked up and read?
"And don't be silly and say it should be attendance at their meetings. There are many good people who don't want to sit though a business meeting, but who will participate in events when the right cause comes around..
Call me silly, great. But offer no better solution yourself.
IF, the issues being discussed at meetings CAME from the stakeholders themselves, and not from the board people who were elected bya tiny handful in the beginning, participation would grow (and does wherever it's tried).
However, IF you think some "right cause" (read: crisis, scandal, scare tactic) needs to be injected before anyone will take part, then all you will EVER have attemding your NC meeting as the scared and silly.
(P.S. I don't "want" to be productive . . . I am.)
This works in the real world, but no DONE disciple or Commissioner will ever buy into real goal-oriented, broad-based participation by NC stakeholders.
They don't believe in the "tool".
During the course of this morning, that slimy Zorro Marxist Alarcon has increased his proposed fees per trash can. Bad enough he started with an extra $5.00 for trash can per month, and for green, except recycling, but NOW by the end of the day he's demanding it be an extra $10/5.00/ on top of the monthly trash fee hike.
This slimy Communist, who's always crying poverty for his illegals is telling Council that "$10.00 is what $5.00 used to be," PER CAN, so like it's nothing. Blowing off Rosendahl and Labonge's concerns. Wendy thinks it needs future consideration.
SO LIKE A COMMUNIST, THIS ALARcon.
Some raised concerns that to do this without public discussion is even illegal, they might get sued.
AlarCON is impatient with delay, it's his "gold in the gutter," as that jack-up-meters-and-parking- fines Rosendahl keeps saying.
Get rid of AlarCON, Reyes, Cardenas and there won't be such a problem.
Steve Cooley
There are not too many pols I'm willing to run through a wall for, but Steve Cooley is one. Actually, I think he's the only one right now.
My college roommate was kidnapped and killed back in 1994. Some Florida thugs after someone else, and my roomie got in their way.
The Feds nabbed them and basically made them rat out someone higher up in exchange for not seeking the death penalty.
Steve Cooley refused to allow these mutts escape from their crimes in California and had his department agressivly pursue the charges.
The ringleader of the gang sits today on California's Death Row, where I earnestly hope he rots to death!
Yeah, I guess you can count me in the Cooley camp.
3:04
Unions are tremendously effective at influencing governmental decision making. Their success isn't measured by how many people attend their regular meetings, but rather their results. And the ability to produce those results is often their ability to turn out people to the City Council meeting, on the picket lines, etc. when needed.
So why shouldn't NC's be measured by how many people they can reach out to and moblize when needed?
Having the City Clerk put its stamp on NC elections will help, but how will people know that there is an election whether or not the City Clerk has its stamp on it?
From the day that NC's were first able to submit applications for certification, DONE was swamped, and stayed swamped for a couple of years. You made the mistake of counting how many people were involved in the NC's formation effort by how many people were in the room when they were certified. Yet, if you read the official reports, you would have a better idea how many were actually involved. People, especially those with families, cannot often get the time to attend these evening meetings. There were many that were SRO.
So Cooley's got someone shilling for him at 7:21, Smiley. Complete with an elaborate sob story, sounds like something out of Raymond Chandler.
From 1994? That's 14 years ago, dude. Since then in his two terms in office -- last 8 years, lightyears from whatever he may have been or done once upon a time -- he's gotten fat, smug, greedy and often plastered -- and a Third World Dictator, who won't touch illegal criminals or mention or go near the Mexican cartels. Runs from corporations, rich people who might invite him to a party or give him money, and pedophile priests issues, too.
Isn't that how they all start? One or two "legendary" stories, and then...
Even Baca, for all his faults, has the guts to admit what's what with the gangs and illegals in jail, but neither he nor ICE have the staff in the jails to ID illegal felons. The DA does but won't...Ipsen has lots of DA's to back him up. Many more who are too afraid.
At least with Steve Cooley you know you can commit a felony and hire one of his high donor attorneys as your defense.
Guaranteed, the case will disappear.
For the record, I did not post the comment at: May 19, 2008 4:25 PM
the reason people may think it was me is cause of the spelling of alarCON/ALARcon (glad they picked up on that)...and it sounds exactly like something I would say about him...but I wouldn't have used the word, "slimey". (I prefer "shady".)
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