Mayor Sam's Hotsheet for Sunday

The LA Times reports that District Attorney Steve Cooley's office is investigating former City Councilmember turned lobbyist Richard Alartorre on ethics issues.  Though officials are not talking much about the investigation the inquiry centers around alleged lobbying of City Council members and other officials Alatorre may have done though he was not properly registered as a lobbyist.  Alatorre has been involved with consulting work on the controversial development project Las Lomas, a 5000+ home planned community in the Newhall Pass andvarious airport related contracts.


If you had forgotten that State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas was elected to the County Board of Supervisors, he has a plan to make sure to remind you.  Ridley-Thomas will be sworn in Monday at the County Hall of Administration with a ceremony befitting a Presidential inaguration.  Marching bands, chors, military color guards, singers, TV anchors and stars galore will be on hand for the festivities

Every time in history that the railroad has come to town it's changed the area around it.  And now the same thing is happening in Eastside communities like Boyle Heights as the MTA's Gold Line heads eastward with an extension of the rail line that runs from Pasadena to Downtown.  Interesting story in the LA Times chats with residents looking for upscale retail that has evaded them for decades are divided among those who feel the community could lose it's primarily Latino, working class feel.  That being said change is already come to the area and completion of the rail line will only do the same.

Everyone from the guys who own Google to Hollywood actors are lining up to buy one but Chris Paine, director of the film  Who Killed The Electric Car?, already has one of the much anticiapted Tesla Roadsters, an electric vehicle which gets the equivalent of 120 miles to the gallon and can do zero to sixty in 3.9 seconds.  Paine writes at the Revenge of the Electric Car blog that curious Sheriff's officers on Ventura Boulevard pulled Paine over and that Paine has also given a ride to Council President Eric Garcetti.  Besides being such a fabulous piece of engineering that is great for the environment, the Tesla is a testament to free enterprise as the company, headquartered here in California, was built with private investment (mostly from Silcon Valley sources) and not the government (nor government bailouts).

MSNBC talking head Chris Matthews says he isn't but reports are that he's lining up a campaign staff for a run at  Arlen Specter's Pennsylvania US Senate seat.  Initial polls show Matthews running well behind the 80 year old liberal Republican but that's apparently because voters don't know him well enough.  No truth to the rumors that Anderson Cooper and Greta VanSusteren are eyeing Senate runs.