Antonio Villaraigosa: The Hardest Working Man in Politics? Yea, right.
One of the most delicious stories of 2008 was that of the LA Weekly's Patrick Range McDonald's excellent investigation into the schedule of Mayor Villaraigosa and the revelation that he only spends about 11% of his reported 16-18 hour days actually on any city related business. The rest of the time is either related to fundraising for himself or other candidates, campaigning for candidates, appearing at photo opps and time spent traveling between all these non city-business related events. (One of the best items from McDonald's report: Villaraigosa's "sitting" for his wax dummy to be placed in Madame Tussaud's museum.)
"Everyone who knows me, knows I work hard. That's why both Sen. Clinton and Obama wanted me to campaign for them."
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
Apparently Villaraigosa didn't really appreciate McDonald making it known how little work he actually does and threw a zinger against the Weekly in Rick Orlov's Daily News column telling Orlov "It didn't really go anywhere because it wasn't true. They were upset because we only gave them my public calendar. They didn't get to see what I was doing privately, with meetings here (at City Hall) or in other places. Everyone who knows me, knows I work hard. That's why both Sen. Clinton and Obama wanted me to campaign for them."
Yet if you look at the copy of Villaraigosa's schedule the Weekly posted online, you can see that the "private" (blacked out) portions really only account for a small portion of the Mayor's schedule and really don't add up to hours of "working hard."
The truth is the Mayor is an attention addicted photo opp junkie who makes himself look silly whether it's hanging out with Dr. Seuss characters or playing the conga drums with celebrities at a taxpayer financed hotspot.
I have a feeling the Mayor could come to regret his statements to Orlov. Stay tuned.
Labels: 11%, la weekly, mayor antonio villaraigosa, patrick range mcdonald, rick orlov
Posted by Michael Higby @ 12/29/2008 03:00:00 AM
14 Comments:
"Everyone who knows me, knows I work hard. That's why both Sen. Clinton and Obama wanted me to campaign for them."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Let me understand this. The Mayor defends himself against charges he's ignoring his job by bragging that he's been away campaigning for presidential candidates?!
Antonio Villaraigosa has been a bad joke as a Mayor. He has been an embarrassment to the City of Los Angeles with his dishonest and unethical behavior. The affair with the television reporter shows that he does not have or use good judgement.
Democrats in Los Angeles need to reject this type of low-quality leader and demand more from their elected officials.
Vote Phil Jennerjahn for Mayor.
A Conservative who will finally crack down on illegal immigration and end the financial devastation it delivers to Southern California.
www.philjennerjahn.com
I have NO idea how Antonio could say, "That's why both Sen. Clinton and Obama wanted me to campaign for them.
Clinton did not chose to have Antonio campaign for her. Villaraigosa announced he was her campaign co-chair, ON HIS OWN. Then, Hillary was kind of forced to deal with him.
And of course we know Barack Obama would have nothing to do with Villaraiogsa.
So what a joke that he used those two as examples, when he bullied himself onto Hillary's campaign, and I don't think he did anything but claim he was going to help Obama.
Phil, let me get this right. You are running for Mayor, yet you seem to bounce around from one career to another.
You made an apparently bad decision to try law school, but a year later you realized that it was a mistake.
What does that say about YOUR judgement?
How many different careers have you had "since the mid 1990s" and why do you not know the specific year you moved to LA?
All your website shows is that you bounce around from job to job. What in your experience says you have the ability to stick to something and do it well? Your website shows that you've not got what it takes to do anything for more than a few years. That doesn't qualify you for anything.
And I hate Antonio Villaraigosa.
Here's an article that proves the mayor works hard.
L.A.'s New Mayor, Tony Villar
Patrick Mallon
Wednesday, June 8, 2005
Who Is the New Mayor?
For starters, Mr. Villaraigosa's real name is Tony Villar. He was born Antonio Villar; the name is a combination of his birth name and that of his second wife, Connie Raigosa. No big deal; many people change their names. But a routine search of Tony Villar illustrates that almost no mainstream media source has dared touch an apparently sensitive body of
accumulated history.
According to the Los Angeles Times, which endorsed Villaraigosa: "A Mexican American child of City Terrace, a largely immigrant community on Los Angeles' Eastside, Villaraigosa was raised by his mother after
his father abandoned the family. He grew up in poverty and has said he saw his father beating his mother.
"After bouncing in and out of high school, he went on to graduate from UCLA and earn a law degree at People's College of Law."Â
While the report creates a positive impression, it's also grossly misleading. He bounced in and out of UCLA too, arriving in 1972 from East L.A. Community College and leaving in 1975, without graduating until 1977.
Villaraigosa is not an attorney. He failed the bar exam four times. Nor does the Times explain that the People's College of Law, a communistic institution, is not accredited with the California Bar, and applicants are required to have completed only two years of college education or to have passed a college-level examination. And of the LSAT, a standard entrance test to any law school, the college states that "PCL recognizes the cultural and sociological limitations of tests such as the LSAT."
Villaraigosa became a teachers union organizer, later won a state
Assembly seat in 1994, and then was speaker of the state Assembly. He was termed out in 2000, ran for mayor in 2001, losing to James Hahn.
He then won a seat on the L.A. City Council, assuming office in 2003, and now has been vindicated in his pursuit of the L.A. mayoralty, beating Hahn in a rematch.
As with most liberal politicians who are mouthpieces for teachers
unions and against vouchers or school choice, his kids attended private schools.
The new mayor has a colorful track record. He still bears the tattoo
"Born to Raise Hell." While at UCLA he took pride in being an
affirmative action admit, later stating to students, "Some people have said I got in through the back door, but I left through
the front."
He also has a radical background as the leader of the UCLA chapter of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA). In fact, he would be forced to renounce his association with MEChA on May 12, 2005, after pressure from the UCLA Bruin Alumni Association.
MEChA is pure and simple a separatist organization. It doesn't negotiate. Its founding document, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, states, "We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent," and declares that "For the very young there will no longer be acts of
juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts," and introduced the motto "Por la raza, todo. Fuera de la raza, nada." (For those of the [Hispanic] race, everything. For those not of the [Hispanic] race,
nothing.)Â
He was a leading speaker at the January 1995 Latino Summit Response to Prop. 187 at U.C. Riverside, where Latino politicians, professors and
activists gave racist, seditious speeches to about 500 attendees
pledging noncompliance with the controversial law that would have
denied public education, social services and health care to residents in the state illegally.
Mr. Villaraigosa is charismatic, handsome, and a great speaker. He can work a crowd, knows how to be humble in the right circumstances, and has effectively been able to keep a wider public unaware of his incendiary past.
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/6/7/154251.shtml
I think the hardest working man in politics is Parke Skelton - not Tony Villar.
It takes a lot of hard work to convert every negative Chicano stereotype into a glossy campaign brochure. But it takes even harder work to get a dumbass like Tony elected mayor to the 2nd largest city in the country.
It's too bad Tony couldn't put any of that "hard work ethic" that "everyone knows" him for into keeping together just one of the four families he has started. But I guess Tony would rather use that "hard work" to hide his first son and to get his other kids and relatives cushy appointments.
This is good stuff. I was surprised that Orlov had the guts to report the story on Mayor being tested. "Kotkin and other critics give the mayor low marks for what they see as a lack of attention to detail." www.dailynews.com/search/ci_11311628?IADID=Search-www.dailynews.com-www.dailynews.com
The smart people in this city know what a failure Antonio has been. You go to any meeting and all they do is make negative statements about this loser. He's a clown and joke of the nation. He has no powerful opposition cause he's a corrupt little man who has thugs and croonies either buy off people or threaten them. Look at the past year with Cindy Montanez, John Perez, Felipe Fuentes, all the school board idiots and then there's Monica Garcia who has no experience running LAUSD. All low class, corrupt, lying, no ethics, no morals group of losers. Their mothers must be sad to know they raised a bunch of adults with no consciences. I'm waiting for the FEDS to DA to report their investigations into the corrupt city hall with Antonio as leader.
Walter lay off Phil he's no threat to you.
Barack the Magic Negro
¿Qué conexión existe entre las ideas del recién desaparecido politólogo de Harvard y la tragedia de Gaza?
Muy simple: la capacidad de la propaganda sionista de presentar el sitiar a 1'300.000 palestinos privándolos de las necesidades humanas mas básicas y bombardearlos inmisericordemente, castigándolos colectivamente por haber elegido democráticamente al único movimiento político que los defiende de la opresión Israelí, como una instancia de la 'war on terror', hace parte del mismo movimiento mistificador de 'El choque de Civilizaciones' que disfraza argumentos racistas sobre hechos políticos como análisis científico sobre la forma como los conflictos ideológicos y políticos están fatalmente determinados por contrastes culturales de raíz religiosa.
El apoyo de las ideas de Huntington a la 'war on terror', ocultando que el conflicto en el Medio Oriente tiene una causa muy concreta (el despojamiento de los palestinos de su tierra y la violación de todos sus derechos por parte del Estado de Israel) contribuyó al éxito de los neoconservadores americanos en mistificar el nexo causal entre la indignación del mundo árabe frente al apoyo americano a estas atrocidades y 9/11.
If the mayor was working hard for the city, why did he black out those times? You'd think he'd underline then and put them in bold if he was actually working.
His statement to Orlov makes everyone see just how incredibly stupid Antonio is. "Everyone knows I work hard which is why they want me to campaign for them." Sheesh. The only thing Antonio knows how to do is campaign with the help of his cronies.
Does anyone have any doubts whatsoever that Anonymous posting at 9:29 AM is Walter Moore?
Same snotty attitude.
Very mean spirited and petty.
Obsessed over unimportant tiny details.
(Who cares if I moved here in 93 or 94...what difference does that make?)
Sounds like Walter to me.
That's OK...it's only more motivation for me to work harder at beating him to a runoff with Antonio....
I am officially blowing the whistle:
In an action that I consider to be the height of hubris and subterfuge, $100K Villaraigosa spin doctors cite this blog as proof that Villaraigosa is, in fact, the hardest working man in politics. Not 30 seconds elapsed from the time I added the rest of the context from this blog to when it was removed from wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Villaraigosa
This guy is the worst Mayor in the history of L.A.
All he does is sell his image on T.V. Thats we call him T.V. Tony the fake mayor.
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