Los Angeles Politics Hotsheet for Tuesday
Huizar's Winter Wonderland
Looks like former LAPD Chief William Bratton got out of town just in time - an audit showing under his watch the LAPD mismanaged millions of dollars in purchasing and contracting. The violations include contracts being issued without going out for competitive bidding and purchases lacking receipts. The Daily News reports the fraud, waste and abuse potentially represents millions of taxpayer dollars. The audit was completed last summer however the details were held until after Bratton's exit.
Legendary pro-marijuana activist-attorney Bruce Margolin thinks that elected officials concerns about the practicality and expense of enforcing regulations on medical marijuana lead to an eventual mood to legalize the drug. In an op-ed piece in the Daily News Margolin, a local West Hollywood based attorney and real estate investor who literally wrote the book on marijuana laws, says beleagured state and local government could "benefit from the tax dollars brought in by above-board cannabis shops paying millions in sales tax, plus payroll and other taxes." Legal pot just might coming sooner than expected - activitsts are prepping a measure for the November 2010 ballot.
Even though the IBEW got a big fat raise for it's DWP members, we're still having lots of DWP problems. Nearly 3000 customers in Sherman Oaks were without power over the weekend.
Yet another dumb idea from Jose Huizar - a downtown trolley car - has captured some taxpayer money. Whatever happened to HUIZAR'S WINTER WONDERLAND?
Good recap on the CD2 elections by Suzanne Lauer at the Village to Village Blog. Despite the fact that a well past his prime, former Mayoral candidate turned also ran blogger (no not that one, nor that one, yes THAT ONE) was urging people not to vote, more people turned out to vote, during the holidays and in awful weather for the run-off than during the primary. Lauer sees a positive and nascent movement locally against apathy that might have been further stoked by the hybrid grass roots victory of Paul Krekorian. Let's hope she turns out to be right!
Labels: bill bratton, bruce margolin, cd2 special election, dwp, IBEW, lapd, medical marijuana, paul krekorian, power outage, suzanne lauer
Posted by Michael Higby @ 12/15/2009 02:00:00 AM
41 Comments:
Based on public perception what grade (A-D) do you give these eighteen, highly paid, elected officials on overall performance in 2009?
Mayor Villaraigosa (D-)
City Attorney Trutanich (A)
City Controller Greuel (D)
1. Ed Reyes (D-)
2. Vacant
3. Dennis Zine (D-)
4. Tom LaBonge (D)
5. Paul Koretz (D)
6. Tony Cardenas (D-)
7. Richard Alarcon (D-)
8. Bernard Parks (D)
9. Pro Tempore Jan Perry (D-)
10. Herb Wesson (D)
11. Bill Rosendahl (D)
12. Greig Smith (D)
13. President Eric Garcetti (D-)
14. Jose Huizar (D)
15. Janice Hahn (D)
The money went to Essel/Greuel`s campaign instead of fixing the infrastructure.
To my shock, John Phillips on KABC 790-AM mentioned Phil Jennerjahn last night.
Get ready, Phil, for your "semi known" moment.
John Phillips said, and I quote, "Some people like to run for office without a chance in hell of getting elected. I just learned that Phil Jennerjahn, who finished at the bottom of the Mayor's race, now wants to run for Congress. Go figure."
If you don't believe me, go check out the KABC podcast.
Congratulations Phil! You are most definitely "semi-known" now. But for foolishness, rather than an issue.
Michael Higby gets a D, for letting his blog become an exclusively cd2 blog when only 9 percent of the city's population lives there.
He gets an F for firing the two contributors who contributed the vast majority of the content.
I don't think the curve theory is beng used by the grader...
Maybe they can take the tires off the fake trolley that rolls around for six months (like Garcetti's Holly Trolley) and have another FAKE WEEZAR WINTER WONDERLAND.
Don't you want your kid hopping into a stack of Firestone radials next to some fake snow? Doesn't that just say, "Christmas" to you? I wish I had some Firestones on my Christmas card this year.
Tell the "stay at home and don't vote guy," that none of us wanted to pick between the two, but you have to pick one or the other. It's easy to crap out and say, "don't vote." The challenge is to be a leader and make a decision, which is what leaders have to do. Make a decision based on the two crappy options before you. Glad he didn't win mayor.
What's "wintery" about being surrounded by USED TIREs???????
It certainly says barrio to me.
HA! It's Huizar's Barrio Barriers!
Yay us!
On this part of town we can thank the Sunland Tujunga Alliance, The Foothills Forum and the STNC for charging up the voters!
After fighting Home Depot, defeating an unethical, relgion using creep like Essel was a walk in the park.
STNC - that's a funny aconym. It sounds like STINK!
2:02 gives Zine a D too, since he's had to back off from shaking down AEG along with Trutanich since it's extremely illegal.
As even Clown Carmen had to admit to the City News Service reporter as published in the Daily News, before he ran away from the reporter who tried to get out of him what excuse he was basing his shakedown on then.
Trutanich hasn't been seen since, didn't even show in Council chambers in person though summoned to explain his threats, sending in a sad-faced Bill Carter who's job of mopping up after him leaves him holding a huge bunch of soggy towels with no end in sight. Even with the desperate lies he's been forced to resort to like claiming Chick's lawyer always meant to work for free (twisting one of Chick's slips of the tongues out of context) there's no way to give legit legal cover to the Clown's rantings and ravings to shore up an ego far bigger than his brain.
Like any bully when his thuggery is exposed and he's told to put up or shut up he runs and hides. A grade, ha, ho hum.
MS, did you hear the Phil mention on kabc last night? You sure can pick em!
Good morning all!
Huizar has gone modest.
EL SERENO WINTER WONDERLAND
Councilmember José Huizar invites you to a wonderful holiday event that he is co-sponsoring along with the Barrio Action Youth and Family Center-- the "El Sereno Winter Wonderland" on Saturday, December 19, 2009. This event is free and open to the public, and will take place on the median along Huntington Drive between Van Horne Avenue , and Lifur Avenue from 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.
The celebration will include a traditional tree lighting ceremony, live entertainment, a variety of family-oriented activities, and real snow! In addition, children will be treated by a special visit from Santa Claus.
Please bring your entire family, and join councilmember Huizar in celebrating the blessings of the holiday season. Please dress warmly as it will be snowing! If you would like to volunteer for this event, or have additional questions, please contact our El Sereno District Office at (323) 226-1646.
Hope to see you there and Happy Holidays!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
LA Observed is reporting a sudden end to the new and short lived "NewsCentral" at KCBS and KCAL.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
And plenty more cuts coming at KTTV in the newsroom. Again, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha and hats off to Kevin Roderick and LA Observed for reporting this before all media outlets and blogs.
more censorship but the pro-Trutanich propaganda troll on every blog with this idiotic rating of everyone but the Bully Clown getting a D is of course allowed and encouraged. Even Zine can't stand behind him anymore on things like the AEG shakedown so true to thug form he's now in the woodshed with former fans Chick and McIntyre and the medical pot people and - everyone but the old SLAPPERS who should slap themselves upside the head to wake up and realize what decade we're in.
Huizar needs all the help he can get doing something or anything if he wants to be re elected. The problem is like Essel, Huizar has been in the pockets of developers and anyone running against him has a chance.
Andrew Westall, senior deputy to Councilman Herb Wesson, announced he will run for the Paul Krekorian seat in the Assembly. He's 36, lives in the Toluca Woods and has also worked for Bob Hertzberg and Fabian Nuñez.
Why isn't Wendy going after DWP audits as so many NC members have asked her to? Where are those signature papers for the 1/2 OFF Salary of these politicans? I think after the CD2 race the momentum is there to get them quickly. You can now add Charlie Beck to the list of failures. The cops are livid he is lobbying for gang intervention money. He never lobbied for LAPD but there he is paying favors back to Connie Rice and the Village Idiot Jeff Carr who everyone knows told Villaraigosa to hire Beck and the hell with the fair selection process. Beck is not suppose to be the CHief because it was fixed. He asked for $200,000 for gang interventionist. Great, Charlie, let's give those criminals more of our tax dollars to abuse.
My Bruce Margolin Story: Ok, so I have this attorney "friend" (ho ho ho) who was in court with Bruce a few years ago, and as he was relaying the story of his dealings with Mr. Margolin, he kept calling him Stuart. "Yeah, I was in court with Stuart Margolin, you know, the marijuana attorney guy and he see's me and says "Hey Dude,what up" and I say 'Hey Stuart good, good how you doin'?"
And I said, "Really? REally??? You called him Stuart?"
"That's his name isn't it?", Mr. SmartyPants asked.
"No dumbass," I sez. "Stuart Margolin is the actor who played 'Angel' on the Rockford Files, you were talking to BRUCE."
Oh, I had a good laugh all afternoon.
xoxo
Just tuned in a while by phone for the council meeting audio- looks like there were truck operators finally seeing that they were getting pushed out of harbor work connected with the low-pollution only trucks (mostly union). They each pleaded for extensions from the Jan. effective date and some asked Villaraigosa for the attention as he's supported by lots of Latinos.
If Villaraigosa was relied on for little person help, they will be very dissappointed by his short memory on everything. Janice Hahn plugged a loan program that givea an automatic 4-mo. extsn. with the application filed. That was HER plug as a responsive CM. Will they qualify for any funding is a totally different question.
(I think she went past the 500-word Brown Act limit on speaking on Non-Agenda items by a CM. But in this case, it was at least informative as a partial answer.)
The self-serving presentation on the Guadalajara Book Fair was all about fun and vacation accommodation provided, with federal funding of $2.1 million, $200,000 to reimburse staff travel of the Cultural Affairs woman.
Nobody every talks about the pendind on the pressing issues that just sits while Huizar, Reyes and others go off on this junket. John Walsh called it the Antonio Villaraigosa Self-Promotion Tour.
Cultural affairs people only are concerned with their circle of interests and the rest of what keeps government operational is out of their realm or interest.
They never talk about money exiting the U.S. economy or time away from L.A. while things sit, and will sit after tomorrow until January's return to Council meetings.
The whole presentation of items is so slanted, with Cardenas doing jr. lawyer questioning of the staff head about the importance of the Guadalajara Book Fair in cultual circles. Very annoying and done awkwardly by him in that usual style of leading questions, and "would you say this was important, or would you say this was not important" type of boring questions that a stand-in could answer as posed.
The council decides what is important and when it it not. They decide WHEN something is important to deal with and when it can sit for weeks.
Worst of all, they can rush shady deals with the lowest level of notice legally required to try to avoid opposition or bad P.R.
They are just too pompous and wasteful.
There is 500 word limit on City Councilmembers responding to comments not on the agenda. The only requirement is that the comments are "brief." Whatever that means. But 500 words is a good guess.
Is Weezy still slapping his stickers and name all over toys that were donated by other organizations in order to take credit yet again for something he Hasn't done?!
11:04AM. D`Arcy OWNS Wendy. How could she audit him? Why do you think D`Arcy pumped $900,000 of ratepayers money in Essel`s race? Answer; WENDY!
A Judge just ruled that the City Controller can't audit city offices. Had Wendy and Laura Chick not tired to get their pro bono lawyer paid after he lost the case, this ruling would have gone another way, via settlement.
Now all of us are stuck with their inept decisions.
Good job Wendy. Thanks for once again looking out for yourself and not the citizens of L.A.
8:21 DeMule you just can't help yourself can you.
Let's not forget who among OURSELVES put these people in office.
I'm talking about Mayor Sam himself. He endorsed Antonio Villaraigosa TWIIIIIICE for Mayor.
So when an idiot like Cardenas or Alarcon, "Mr. What School Didya Go to" and "Mr. Gold in the Gutter" come up with idiotic schemes to steal our money, let's remember the political leaders in L.A., like Mayor Sam, Higby himself, who helped influence the public, helped educate the public, and helped persuade the public that Antonio Villaraigosa was the best person.
Garbage in to your voting decision, garbage results in City Hall.
Antonio wants to say he's the green mayor by pushing the clean truck thing at the ports - but it means that truckers who can't afford to buy the expensive new trucks are out of luck. in this economy. Janice Hahn went along with it so for her to have second thoughts now is like Bill Flippenthal her partner in crime on a lot of these feel-good things that aren't thought through.
Funny how the most liberal Democrats are the ones who never think about the impact of their decisions on poor working people, unless they're SO poor they qualify as Alarcon's charity cases in which case we're supposed to pay for illegals to take out loans so they can buy homes. He's always talking about how home ownership is so low in this city, and we need to give people living wage jobs and city-backed loans.
He doesn't get that the real hard-working middle class left because all the poor came in and overwhelmed the schools and services. That's why home ownership is so low. Plus because young professionals can't afford to buy in nice areas and don't want to move to the cheap burbs.
The Republicans on this council are even worse because they're liars to their alleged ideals - like Smith, Parks, Zine insisting that when they tripled our trash fee hikes and rammed through Prop S both for cops, getting Bratton to lobby for them using his name as the most respected official in L A, it was really meant just to offset the cost of trash pickup.
So these "conservatives" raised taxes under false pretenses and openly lied to us. Because they bungled the budget and now they're desperate.
Making local budget worse is that the state is stealing our local gas taxes and even recycling deposits. So of course the Assembly wants to "solve" the matter by lowering the bar to raise taxes to a bare majority.
Brown Act is 50 words, not 500. Even worse for those blabber mouths.
Mayor Sam why did you endorse Villaraigosa a second time if you knew he was such a screw up the first time? Do you really hate Walter Moore so much that he wouldn't have been a more equipped person to help the city?
What was it about Villaraigosa you felt was so good that he deserved a second term?
December 15, 2009 8:44 AM "put up or shut up"
December 15, 2009 9:11 AM "slap upside the head to wake up"
On July 1, 2009 Carmen Trutanich was sworn in as City Attorney. Since then he has not been shy in letting City Council/Special Interest Groups know that he is looking out for the best interest of Los Angeles constituents, which has not been the case here in Los Angeles for many decades.
The City Attorneys Office has set precedent by saving constituents million or billion of dollars in just a short time that apparently has upset some people.
See for yourselves: http://atty.lacity.org/NEWS/index.htm
Let the City Council/Mayor supporters name several, at least three, decisions that the mayor or council, including Dennis Zine, has made which have saved constituents money. These POLITICOS have been in office for many years, raising fees and taxes as a quick fix, with no valuable goals in mind for their constituents.
I guess you've never grown up in the snow if you consider tires to be barrio. Actually, tires are what we used to sled with back east.
I believe Bruce Margolin is somehow related to the former Assemblyman and insurance commissioner candidate Burt Margolin.
Higby, did you really endorse Villaraigosa TWICE?
What did he do in the first term that impressed you to endorse him for a second and WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT CHOICE NOW?
Couldn't you have put your vile hostility toward walter moore aside? See what we have now as a result? Can you ADMIT you were WRONG? Or do you still think your two endorsements of Antonio were right?
949 is full of crap. I grew up back east and we never used tires as sleds! Tires are WAY too heavy. The closest thing to tires we used were inflatable intertubes but NOT TIRES GET OUTTA HERE HUIZAR STAFFER!
Sleazy Huizy is desperate for attention and tomorrow is taking credit for a skate park that has been in the community for a couple of years. He's calling it a grand opening skate park at Hollenbeck Park. Problem is so many kids are getting hurt cause Latino kids don't have the money to buy helmets, pads etc. They get hurt and their parents don't take them to the hospital. This shows how clueless Huizar is about his constituents. He is desperate for any type of photo ops.
If the Mayor/council had any back bone they would appoint Jack Humphreville as the rate payor advocate. However, Jack won't get the job as they will only appoint someone who has the backing of the union. Have they asked the IBEW yet who they want as a rate payers advocate?
620
You are right on about the tires.
Inner tubes were the most popular.
Sometimes we would flatten a big cardboard box and convert it into a tobaggan. It was fast on hard snow. Surprised we didn't crack our heads open.
4:19 PM You mean there really is a difference between Republicans and Democrats in City Hall? Geez, and I thought they came out of the same bucket of manure.
You are correct fellow East coaster. Those were inner tubes, not tires. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I was thinking it's been a long time since I went sled riding and I had a big long plastic orange sled anyway. The thought of a heavy tire makes me laugh.
But I don't work for Huizar. I don't dislike him either. I have no feelings either way if you want to know the truth.
Rumor has it that Koretz is real sick and possibly in hospital. Can anyone confirm? hoping is not true.
748, maybe phil can make up some stuff about Koretz since he is a freedom hater, according to him.
7:48, Koretz probably had too many Latkahs. So, he got a little sick and went to the ER to check it out. He'll be fine by the end of Hanukkah.
Bad Latkahs or too much of this fried food can cause intestinal issues.
Now Jan Perry is going to ban Latkahs too!
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