Sunday Morning on the Terrace
Stephen Frank, a history prof at UCLA, puts his job on the line and tells media what the University won't: that he expressed concerns to the University about alleged slasher Damon Thompson a year ago. Teaching assistants agreed with Frank that Thompson then exhibited paranoia. Thompson is from Belize.
FBI LA is getting someone from Las Vegas to be its assistant director. Steve Hernandez has been here before.
Council v. the Mayor, at last. Orlov, up late, files a report about Mayor Villaraigosa assuring neighborhood councils yesterday that he will press for more cops, even if Council reels him in. He says that most of the hiring to date has come from the trash fee. Jan Perry opposes, and Bernie is skeptical. Zine wants to stand pat at 10,000, which is where the force is now.
Despite your cries of socialism, California looks even bluer in 2010 than the rest of the nation. Brown and Boxer are coasting as the GOP has trouble connecting to younger voters. "Republicans this week will unveil a pod-cast available on ITunes in which party chief Nehring and guests discuss issues and GOP positions." That ought to be even more hilarious than the Windows 7 Launch Party video.
Nina Royal of the North Valley Reporter, on Facebook: "The STNC is receiving a plaque for Service during the Station Fire. I really don't know why... we couldn't stop Tujunga Canyon from burning : (. It's going to take...me a long time to get over my friends losing their homes the way they did."
Daily News: "Jews court Hispanic evangelicals." Especially Bush-loving Central Americans. "They fell in love with this George Bush, man of God defending the family from the allegedly gay agenda, abortion and the additional hook of the faith-based initiatives," says a CSUN prof named Garcia.
LATimes finds Jesus this morning too: "California Christians worship in a big way." Porter Ranch's Shepherd of the Hills church leads the article, and there's a small slide show including a photo of Shepherd's pastor Dudley Rutherford. California has two more megachurches than Texas does, most in the Bible belt between LA and San Diego.
Missed this earlier: ten days ago, the Harbor commisioners approved a $1.2 billion plan to develop San Pedro's waterfront. Without financial specifics.
Mayor Antonio will get his St. Louis raviolis from the mayor of Augietown after the Dodgers sweep the Cards. After so much far finer dining at Mozza, he'll likely just pass them on to City Hall food-taster Matt Szabo.
Posted by mulholland terrace @ 10/11/2009 03:45:00 AM
13 Comments:
"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms,
but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life".
-John F. Kennedy
They just don't get it. It takes a year for LAPD personnel to go through the hiring process for a qualified applicant. If they stop adding to the eligible list,then when they do need to hire, future top applicants will have gone to anoher department to start their process. The huge money that has been spent for outreach to get the very best applicants will be lost. When we lose officers through attrition, we will not have qualified applicants, for possibly 2 years, to take their place. Think about the ramifications of that scenario. Police and Fire should have priority in insure safe communities.
The L.A. City Council will be making a decision regarding furloughs and delaying classes on Tuesday. Anyone interested should attend. I have been attending the meetings and the representation of our communities is dismal and you all will be the first to complain when you are a victim of a crime or a fire or need emergency services. Now is you chance to "Speak Up" people!!!
Too bad the Dodgers didn't lose so Tony could have kept his bargain to give the LA Slimes to St. Louis - they've got the RAMS and we get to keep the Slimes?
Nina @9:49, well-said: hope you add your comments to the LANow blog on the subject, Daily News etc.
Chief Bratton is also right that since the trash fee hikes were promised toward LAPD including the goal of 1000 cops, that's a promise we as taxpayers must insist the Council honor: shame on Parks, Smith, Perry, Koretz, Rosendahl who make up various excuses to claim the promise was never made and can go into ANY vaguely worded cause like (Parks said) the city attorney's dept. Liars, liars, pants on fire!
These liars like Parks quibble about "tax vs. fees" which aren't designated on a ballot for a purpose, but only by the word of those like the Mayor or Bratton who the public holds accountable -- Parks is only too happy to make the Mayor and Bratton look like liars, knowing the public will blame them, not knowing "how sausage is made" and the real culprits. Zine wanting 10,000 cops but no furloughs or concessions from current cops to please the Police political league, is not making sense. The budget does have to be balanced - the budget Bernie is in charge of.
Shame on Perry and Rosendahl for saying promises mean nothing when the financial situation changes - they're the kinds who make the public distrust all politicians.
Smith claiming the trash fees were Always meant to offset trash collection is a lie.
Koretz saying we can make do with 9500 because crime is down with 10,000 because Bratton did just a good job with too few as it is, is nuts.
If we had an informed electorate all these people would have their feet held to the fire: no wonder Bratton is shaking his head at how this city unlike New York or Boston has such a disengaged electorate that's so easy to lie to.
If anyone should know about the trash fee hike, it's me.
My neighbors and I lobbied hard to get other neighborhood councils to agree that they would raise the trash fees TO GET RID OF URBAN LANDFILLS. The truth is, other cities did pay for trash and Los Angeles residents have never paid. So with the understanding that we would get rid of the landfills we currently have an alternative technology in place so that each area of the City would take care of their own trash, many other neighborhood councils agreed with us.
I will never forget when the surveys came back and more than 60% of the City was willing to raise their trash fees and then then we were told that they were going to raise the rates and it was going to be used for cops. We were stunned. All of Granada Hills and those who had sided with us were just blown away by the news. Because at he same time that the surveys said they were willing to raise trash fees, the number one issue that the entire City was worried about was crime. So, since the trash fees go into the General Fund, the fees can be used for whatever the City needs.
I still feel that we won the battle in the long run though since Los Angeles will never landfill again after Sunshine Canyon is closed and that was the long term goal of the community.
Now we have to worry about the alternative technology and where it's going to go. But that is another thread.
And I agree with Nina about LAPD although I won't be at City Council on Tuesday. I hope other community members attend.
I strongly disagree with the anti-GOP rhetoric from that liberal rag - the LA Times.
Republicans have two Gubernatorial candidates who can spend hundreds of millions of their own money on their campaigns.
Boxer is in trouble. She's terrible.
Phil is in trouble. He's terrible.
neither Whitman nor Fiorina voted til recently. with lame/ no excuses - Whitman something about how until recently she was raising kids and didn't have time - but then she runs as a sharp CEO? Fiorina apologized at least, but they're both poor excuses for female Republican candidates. Typical though - no civic activism til they decide to run and capitalize on their financially lucrative careers. Which do NOT translate well into the world of politics usually.
Poizner? Campbell? Who? Why? Arnold has shown how useless a Republican Governor can be in this Democratic-majority statehouse.
Kim Thompson 1:37: you and Greig Smith wanting the WHOLE city to pay a whopping $40/month from 12 so that YOU can have your Sunshine Canyon issue is provincial politics at its worst. That is NOT what the rest of the city was told the money would go to: NO WHERE does Greig Smith and his district have the "right" to levy such a tax on the rest of us.
How can you say this and yet say you agree with Nina Royal, too? You're contradicting yourself: do you want us to pay even MORE for the cops WE were promised? You can Greig Smith can find another way to pay for the Sunshine Canyon issue. (He at least got a very nice city-paid 8-country trash tour out of it last summer!)
Kim, I'm really regret having to tell you, but the STNC never heard about the tax fee being used for anything other than hiring more cops.
In fact, most of us were against that tax because we were positive that the money would not be used for the police, as Chief Bratten and Sheriff Baca touted during their public speaking tours. They both campaigned heavily for it along with the Mayor. I also recall Sheriff Baca giving out information at a Memorial Service for fallen Police Officer Lazzaraga at the Newton Div., regarding the Trash Tax that specifically said that the tax was to be used for more officers only.
None of the literature I, or anyone else in my NC, received said anything about the tax going for anything else including landfills. We were explicity told it was to hire more cops in order to bring the department level up to 10,000 officers.
Now members of the City Council are back pedaling on that promise
But, we shouldn't be shocked because that's the way City Hall does business. It took them over 25years to locate the bond money they collected in order to build the much needed new police stations.
That 1984 bond money was conveniently forgotten when they did the ground breaking for the Mission Station. (where did it go?) One public official was quoted during the ceremony as saying "isn't this wonderful and we did it without taxpayer money!" huh? What???
At that time I mentioned the disappearnce of that Bond money that was supposed to be used to build those stations years ago to Mayor Riordan, his response was, "I know', then threw his hands up in the air saying, "but I didn't do it!" He couldn't tell me where the new "found" money came from.
So, it's no surprise that the Council is going back on their promise and now saying that it was never supposed to be allocated to build up the Police Department
Always nice to hear Tony manage to get through another speech where he gets to spin and face no challenge. Saturday's performance was no different.
His desire to boost the LAPD numbers was undeniable, but Saturday he relied on "survey" responses that really don't do much more than mean whatever the users (who often are the same ones responsible for drafting the text) want them to mean.
Tony made it look like WE wanted trash fees boosted and I don't remember much of a choice when it happened last September- and did he forget that it was sold as a series of GRADUAL annual increases over 3 years, I believe it was?
That hike just exploded into nothing that was desired by anyone I know, other than Tony (I did know him a long time ago- a very different person before entering politics, and before he lost all ability to exercise any veracity of word and deed).
Crime has decrease statistically, but ONLY in Los Angeles, as Tony positioned his presentation?
Did the impact of a 3-strikes law ALSO manage to keep recidivism low as more felons were unable to return to the street of the city?
His speech was carefully crafted but I can't say it was as cleverly delivered. The lack of any forum ot challenge the Mayor on any level of presentation is always something that he prefers and his credibility is one weak area that he attempts to improve by stacking the deck in ways from obvious to subtle.
And actions? Leaving the city for South Africa and the Iceland as soon as he officically was secure in a second term totally eradicated any force of the commitment to the city and to the job as mayor that HE PROMISED.
There is so much more but keeping with the police issue, until the city can legally print it's own money, continued hiring won't work. The City Council has always had their strings pulled by Tony until recently, having met up with the undeniablity of the financial crisis they ignored for too long.
Ron Kaye touched on the dog park issue of last Friday's meeting that consumed a big part of their meeting. The City Council works that way all the time, misdirecting energy to lower priorities while all else boils over on the stove's back burners.
I don't trust CMs or the Mayor, gnerally, and for reasons that were shown by their actions.
It's about time the Mayor refrained from continuing his travelling and try to stay put to deal with city business and not continually laying the ground work for future career goals, and leaving his city.
He needs to handle issues DAILY as he did NOT do over the last 4 years (The "11% Mayor" title just about tells what the problem is.)
He is so personally UNFAMILIAR with too much, notwithstanding his line yesterday, "I have been to every part of this city more than any other mayor." So what? Do some work instead of waiting for a crisis level to be reached.
The Shared Sacrifice? City employees amongst themselve have not shared equally- some getting better deals than others. And between private sector and public sector (city), only recently has any of the pain of lost work hours begun to be felt. Actual job losses threatened as necessary by Tony months and months ago, for all intents and purposes, didn't happen, as he did not want to lose any union support that he paid for before in deals, most notably with DWP and even continuing there with H. David Nahai, Tony's own selection, and the super sweetheart "consulting" contract that apparently can't be touched.
Yes, "accountability" happens to be another feature missing from City government.
In cd-14
The politically connected Dudley Rutherford from the Ozark Mountain Seminary School is bad. Post it. He's all about the money and the community has caught him in several lies.
Separation of church and politics? Not in CD 12.
This country already has a great policy of allowing lots of people every year to become legal.
Los Angeles is already legal. Problem is the people that live here are illegal. Illegal means they broke the law to get here. Those idiots do not understand that.
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