Los Angeles Politics Hotsheet for Saturday
The Grown Ups Now In Charge of CD2 | Photo by Mayor Sam
Members of the Police Protective League are baffled why their leadership spent nearly a half million dollars to elect Chris Essel to the City Council when eventual victor Paul Krekorian had a good record of supporting those in uniform. Perhaps the PPL bosses listened to Phil Jennerjahn when the former mayoral candidate blogged that Krekorian wanted to be a gang member.
Is Michelle Mowrey, who heads up bicycle programs for the LA Department of Transportation saying that Los Angeles isn't white enough to be a bicycle friendly city? Metroblogs notes some racially tinged remarks by the official when comparing Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon in response to a question by Clowncilman Bill Rosendahl saying "With all due respect the City of Portland is 450,000 people. It’s a homogeneous community that is very white, and very progressive with respect to transportation."
Friday Team Krekorian began their first day of fumigating the CD 2 offices. It's nice to see the grown-ups in charge again in the Second District.
CurbedLA reports a developer in Santa Monica is causing NIMBY outrage for proposing a 71 foot high building near the new Expo Line on Olympic Boulevard. As a Curbed reader notes if the developer really wanted a 71 foot tall building they should have proposed one 142 feet.
Franklin Avenue blogs some cool old local television commercials from back in the day including those for stores who are no longer here such as Gemco and May Company.
And finally the Walt Disney Company proves it's family friendly mettle by resurrecting an homage to a now deceased alleged child molestor.
Labels: expo line, paul krekorian, police protective league, walt disney company
Posted by Michael Higby @ 12/19/2009 02:00:00 AM
35 Comments:
All due respect Mayor Sam, but every time that you write anything about what Phil did wrong or misleading, I have to laugh.
YOU CREATED THAT MONSTER!
Any time that you criticise his stupid actions, you need to look in the mirror and take part of the blame yourself.
Thanks Michael and you nailed it. The troops who pay dues to the Police Political League would have never found out how their $6 million dues are spent if not for the PPL being outed by the media. $400,000 is what they gave Essel and for what? The troops are fuming because the 2nd guy in command is a former criminal defense attorney, Gerald Chaleff who defended murderers like the HIllside Strangler, Alphabet Bomber and more. Chief Beck appointed him his special assistant and many people in the city our puzzled and the cops are pissed. Read about it over at ronkayela.com
Can Michael Higby explain why Phil Jennerjahn's post about Paul Krekorian is racist. I read it and can't figure out, at all, what you could possibly be referring to. Unless simply opposing a candidate makes you racist.
Higby, do you feel all proud and clever for referring to MJ as, "deceased child molester?" Do you think people like you more, or less after a crack like that? I guess you sure showed Disney and every MJ fan in the world. Thanks for your leadership.
You don't need to say "alleged" if the person is now deceased, Higby. You cannot defame or slander a dead person.
For if he could, the original Mayor Sam would have sued you by now.
The L A NIMBYs who have fought every single development and vilified good developers and any councilperson who allowed any project to go up however excellently planned and designed, are now sowing what they reap when cities like Santa Monica and West Hollywood build right on the borders next to mass transit - so they'll get the tax benefits and social services while L A gets nothing.
Besides this one in Santa Monica, another "in your face" case in point: the City of We Ho has just made up its new building plan and identified some areas which can handle "extensive development." Among them singled out: corner of La Brea and Santa Monica Blvd., where the L A Brea Coalition led by that fanatical Lucille Saunders waged a years-long battle against Weiss and it continues now against Koretz, to halt replacing a very rundown old building of apts. with a beautiful mixed=use that underwent extensive revisions in conjunction wiht community input.
Right across the street, where WeHo already has a Target, bigcox store and mall, it will put up another huge mall - to take advantage of the proposed mass transit. Their plans dward by many times what L A has been trying to de. We Ho will continue to offer city services never heard of in L A., especially to seniors and is remodeling its parks, while L A is slashing services and staff like librarians and parks workers.
The likes of Jay Handel and Mike Eveloff in WLA and Saunders to the east can be thanked for that, as they continue to fight for zero development while S M and We Ho make up for the slack. But still don't build the affordable housing for the poor, that's L A's job even as we lose out on all tax revenue. With these militant HOA's feeling their oats I don't see sane middle ground public policy developing soon.
Especially since Zahniser reports that another aspect of ERIP will be that the experienced planners are let go, so the HOA's won't get the revised community plans after all, without which, they won't get the updated estimates of current and project traffic impacts. So projects may go up willy-nilly or not at all.
Phil's gang post was using racially tinged code words in referring to gang members and specifically mentioning only the Latino members who have served in the legislator and then trying to imply Krekorian was down with the browns so you better vote for the White girl.
It was sort of his Willie Horton moment.
Of course Orlov didn't mention the exact same thing when the PPL gave almost a million to Trutanich who'd spent his life defending criminals against LAPD, because he was backed by Zine, friend of Weber and a former Pres of the PPL, typical of their "leadership." But rank and file were never asked and furious to learn PPL backed someone other than their own Chief of Police, who also got the Officers Assn. backing him as did krekorian. Weiss was the biggest supporter of LAPD and is the one who didn't let them cur the force last year. It was the same situation. Just even odder that for a mere CD race, the PPL went to almost half a million.
They got Trutanich all right but first thing he did was bash LAPD for preventing any incidents over the Jackson memorial and he's created bad blood for a number of ignorant attempts to micromanage them. Even Zine's backing off from him on a number of issues trying to save his own ass. For what, we'll have to find out.
Does anyone not agree that Michael Jackson was accused multiple times of child molestation?
Does anyone think he was not messing around with little boys.
Perhaps you may wish to ask the victims.
Even what he admitted to was sick.
This man was a musical genius. I loved his music. He is not to be worshiped as a wonderful human being. He was not.
7:08, pretty hypocritical to slam Chaleff for being a criminal defense attotney when Kaye's still foaming at the mouth over Clown Carmen long after everyone else sees that he's reverted to being just a rightwing puppet to his puppetmaster Cooley like everyone who knew him said he was all along. Just lied about who he was to run. At least Chaleff never lied about what he's done, while Trutanich ran on being a novice asst. DA 30 years ago. Cooley just wanted him to have a puppet in the office at city level as is clear to all by now but to Kaye.
Their vendetta against "unnamed others" and the medical cannabis community is a waste of resources and their giving one-sided advice to the council and threatening to sue and jail them all means they have to hire outside legal counsel at our expense. But to Kaye he's "our bully" so leave Kaye out of it if you want any credibility.
Michael Jackson was an emotionally stunted individual, a child in a man's body who never had a childhood of his own, so I give him the benefit of the doubt as should you. Fact that he had teen boys in his bed watching movies and eating popcorn was the worst anyone could say specifically - in his mind, he was still that age sometimes.
Social workers can be a devious bunch and lawyers for the alleged victims could well have been in it for the money. Leave him be.
No one is disputing what Jackson was, or wasn't. Just commenting on how you felt the need to refer to him that way, today, for some reason? Are you here for city politics or to bully the spirit of MJ? The point is, "what's the point?"
And you are off your rocker on the Krekorian "gang" reference. It had nothing to do with any type of color or ethnicity. There is a word, "gang," and it is used as a collective body toward one cause.
Better take all your other analysis with a grain of salt if that is your thought process.
Squirrel chasing furry Nutty Scummins in da house again Mayor Sam.
Just Great, the first person the Silver Fox lets into the CD2 Hen House is an SEIU Organizer!
Karo Torossian:
Employer: Greater Valley Glen Neighborhood Council Position:Board MemberTime Period:April 2008 - Present
Employer: California State Assembly Position:Sr Field Rep.Time Period:January 2007 - Present
Employer: SEIU Local 399Position:Organizer Location:Los Angeles, CA.
Employer: So. Cal. Consulting
Employer:Center for American Politics and Public Policy Position:Researcher
You folks are about to get exactly what you fought against.
When does the filing for CD2 begin? I believe I may have to move back to the old neighborhood and set things right before it is too late.
The fact is that to be entirely accurate, Michael Jackson was an alleged drug addict and an accused child molester. It doesn't matter that he's dead and can be defamed freely; everybody knows what he did to himself and to others. However, his predilection for small boys and controlled substances was never proved beyond a reasonable doubt, so Higby is right to describe him as such.
What is interesting is the way the media is pussy-footing around AEG's manipulation of Jackson in his final days. In order to save his dwindling fortunes and stave off bankruptcy, Jackson sold himself to AEG and signed up for a European tour that had a punishing schedule. The pressure on Jackson was too much for for him and he's dead because he continued abusing drugs (but not small boys?) to perform for them.
AEG gets to walk away from the whole ugly mess, and sticks the city of LA with the bill for their hyped-up promo of the Jackson memorial.
This time it's not Jackson that AEG is manipulating to profit. They have a pair of much cheaper puppets in the shape of Jan Perry and Dennis Zine. But while Zine is seemingly merely trying to capitalize on the media attention surrounding AEG's alleged misconduct, Perry is taking a more active and vocal role.
For sure, AEG has contributed generously to Perry's career and probably will be a big supporter when Perry runs for Mayor. So Perry is doing the talking for AEG with her "Put up or shut up" threats regarding AEG's alleged misconduct. Perry wants the investigation dropped so that AEG can "make a donation" to "defray" the $3.2M cost of promoting the hastily pieced together 'This Is It' movie that uses video from Jackson's rehearsals at AEG's Staples Center. With the hyped-up memorial providing the perfect bargaining chip, AEG was able to sell their video to Sony for $60M plus a nice piece of the action off the back end.
Speaking of back ends, Jan Perry's not just covering AEG's, she was the acting Mayor/President when AEG played the City into paying $3.2M to protect Los Angeles from the flood of Jackson fans who were crashing AEG's website with relentless demands for 'free' tickets to the memorial show.
The $3.2M question, "Who authorized this?" remains unanswered pending the conclusion of the investigation. You might think that Perry really really wants the investigation dropped so that AEG can make a "donation" for her own reasons as much as AEG's.
It wouldn't look good for Perry's mayoral campaign if it appeared that she allowed city funds to be wasted on AEG's promotional event. It also could be that Perry is worried that the investigation might throw some light on other aspects of Perry's relationship with AEG - it was Perry who recently led the City Council into approving AEG's illegal billboard permits for their theater.
There's a lot more at stake here than meets the eye and Perry's stupidity in threatening that AEG will not make a "donation" unless the investigation is dropped shows how high the stakes are.
11:23
Shut Up, you don't even know the guy.
All the NC leaders and community activists in Valley Glen and North Hollywood love the guy.
Your too hard on the PPL, Weber and friends where conned by Shallman into endorsing Essel.
11:38, If Perry was Acting Mayor and dropped the ball, Zine was Second Pro Tem and Second in Command to her so he was really stupid in demanding an investigation into "who" in the city authorized security or more to the point, left LAPD to do what it thought best from a pure public safety standpoint, in the absence of any political oversight. Zine's now trying to have it both ways and blaming just Perry and making fun of her PayPal scheme. However, if it comes to that, none other than Trutanich was kept informed by LAPD every step of the way, so if Perry and Zine get in trouble they've got a paper trail leading to him, the Chief Inquisitor himself. Who is just stupid enough to have started something that leads to him too, so he's running and hiding now, refusing to "put up or shut up."
11:38 and 11:59 are both correct.
Team Krekorian in the house at CD2 is like moving from Yahoo to Google.
12:01 "none other than Trutanich was kept informed by LAPD ." You wish! The paper trail may show quite the reverse. That could be what Perry is so worried about. If what you say is true, then how come Perry hasn't said that Trutanich was in the loop? If he was in the loop, then why is he investigating Perry? You're not making any sense.
11:23 you must not live in CD 2 or AD 43 or you would know Karo.
Karo is truly a respectable guy who listens to the community and helps them out with their issues. We the community leaders of CD 2 love Karo because of his dedication, smarts and hard work. So much so that if he was the candidate instead of Paul, I am sure we would have elected him! I am sure he could have won, he is the reason people in the Valley knew Paul in the first place.
As for working for SEIU I have known him for 6 Years and during that time he has not worked for SEIU.
Actually I was sad to see Karo having taken the job with CD 2; I wish instead he ran for Assembly to fill Paul's spot. He is an up incoming star. I am still happy that he will be heading Paul's staff.
Higby criticzing another blogger for his "racially tinged code"
Mike Higby the friend of Walter Moore, what jack-ass.
Higby must have forgot about his comments about Obama during the election.
Higby defend minorites is like Wimpy defending hamburgers.
I Supported Essel, but I think 11:23 your wrong Karo is nothing but an asset to our community. Karo, has truly been a gem on the GVGNC Board.
NONE OF THESE STATEMENTS SUPRIZE ME! THE VOTERS, THOUGH'S WHO DID VOTE IN CD2 NEVER CONSIDERED REAL CANDIDATES WHO CARE FOR THEIR COMMUNITY. INSTEAD VOTED FOR STATUS QUO CANDIDATES WHO WERE HEAVILY SUPPORTED BY SPECIAL INTERESTS MONEY. YOU DON'T THINK THOUGHS ADS DON'T COST MONEY. THE OFFICE WAS SOLD AND YOUR GOING TO PAY FOR IT. WAKE UP! BEFORE YOUR COMMUNITY IS SOLD FROM UNDER YOU.
Karo is the man!
It is time for all boardmembers of every Neighborhood Council to disclose if they are paid staff members of any elected official or paid employee of any Union or other group who receives tax payer money.
I am all for Union Members, but the paid staff and leaders espically SEIU have made a killing in back room deals when it comes to getting tax payers to foot the bill for their political schemes.
Can you spell Martin Ludlow, Janet Humphreys, etc, etc, etc.
So forget about the Financial Disclosure, come clean about who you really work for.
PPL directors have only one goal in mind and that is to further the Council, Controller and Mayor’s agendas by continuing a lone goal of working with the city to find cost savings. The directors should run for council or mayor because it appears their goals are not set towards their members.
PPL Suggests 16 Ways to Save Millions – here are few
Offer a tax amnesty and collect back taxes.
Outsource bad debt collection instead of writing off the debts, which only increases the burden on taxpayers.
Consider incorporating wind and solar power in all future city governmental buildings; improve insulation to reduce energy costs.
Reduce power usage by city departments by utilizing "smart" power strips, timers or even unplugging computers and other equipment when not in use. Utilizing low-energy/long-life bulbs and turning them off when not in use has led to an estimated cost savings of 5-10% by companies who have begun implementing this rule.
1:27, the LA Times reported at the time that the LAPD by standard procedure kept the city attorney's office as well as acting mayor's offices informed of what they were doing - if they got no instructions to the contrary they acted based on best available estimates of crowds. And certainly Trutanich could have requested additional updates if he found them insufficient at the time. He seems to be using the fact that he wasn't up to speed yet as an excuse, but clearly he didn't think out the implications of attacking LAPD before he shot off his mouth. He did go on radio later that week admitting that even one incident of injury or major property damage, had LAPD NOT deployed as many cops as they did, would likely have far exceeded the cost of deployment.
Also, Trutanich is quoted in the Daily News and elsewhere admitting that AEG has NO contractual obligation to reimburse the city for any of these costs. If city officials including him did not think about capping costs in advance that's NOT AEG's fault and it's illegal to be shaking them down let alone in his thuggish manner, threatening to jail them!
Perry and LAPD command staff were all over the airwaves keeping people away so she did participate in that.
This is a separate issue from whether or not she's right on AEG's billboard issue - but she does have a legit case there, because the billboards in question were part of the deal AEG made 12 years ago when it agreed to build staples, and therefore any permit applications precede any moratoriums AND should the city renege, it will have significant legal liabilities. Trutanich was ignorant in shooting off his mouth in that case, too.
(Perry IS wrong on having giving Clear Channel a special right to put up 2 digitals on a highway in her district in exchange for money for a park she wants - she did mess up the city's moratorium there, by creating an exception that other companies can argue is unfair to them.)
Legal experts who have evaluated all aspects of AEG's position vis-a-vis the Memorial events AND billboards see no legal basis for either Trutanich's shakedown OR for "criminal aspects." If there WERE any evidence you can be sure we'd have seen it by now. He's hiding because he's a bully whose bluff has been called by people a lot smarter than he is. Which is pretty much most sharp lawyers.
Look, he's tried to flat-out lie in the Controller issue to stiff Woocher out of his fees by claiming "pro bono" and Usher lied in her claim that Jerry Brown agreed with Trutanich-Cooley on the pot sales issue, to stump them during a council meeting when she was supposed to be giving honest advice. However the council isn't usually smart or fast enough to call him on it: AEG did.
AEG created the hype for the Michael Jackson memorial. They announced to the world that there had been millions of hits on its Web site and that it crashed under the load. This is what motivated LAPD to prudently assign 3,000 cops to the event, most of which in hindsight proved unnecessary.
If AEG wildly exaggerated the activity on their web site so they could raise the price of the worldwide TV rights to their show, isn't that essentially the same as phoning in a false alarm to the police for financial gain? That would be a criminal offense by AEG, wouldn't it?
Anyone know how much money AEG got on the sale of the TV rights for the Jackson memorial?
Anonymous at 8:27PM writes [Trutanich] tried to flat-out lie in the Controller issue to stiff Woocher out of his fees by claiming "pro bono" ...
The facts are these: Chick was sued by Delgadillo. She went to City Council to ask for permission to hire a lawyer. The Council denied this permission.
Chick went ahead and hired Woocher anyway. This is malfeasance pure and simple - just look up the definition. As Controller, Chick knew this was malfeasance, so when she wrote about Woocher being her lawyer she had to lie and say he was working pro-bono. If she had said that she hired Woocher and expected him to bill the City then Delgadillo would have NAILED her for malfeasance right then and there - case over.
Now Woocher - an honorable man and a fine lawyer - wants to bill the city claiming that was his deal with Chick. This means he didn't know that Chick had no authority to hire him when she did, and therefore Chick must have lied to Woocher too.
If the Council pays Woocher, they explicitly accept Chick's malfeasance - an awful precedent to set.
1:27 is classic Trutanich: lie to Chick to get her support, then renege on the promise as soon as he doesn't need her anymore, and take the position of the council and his opponent, that she should have sought other remedies before engaging a lawyer. THEN when she calls him on his treachery as a liar and demagogue, to spin and weave tales to claim that SHE is the liar.
And by the way if you concede that Woocher is no fool - who didn't agree to work for free - you can't claim he was too dumb to know what the circumstances were of her hiring him. They were very public and he has worked for other councilmembers, he knows the ropes and clearly, when he called Trutanich a liar who abused his power by denying Chick the right to outside counsel in principle, and warned the Council that they'd be next, he was right.
Judge Mooney may have denied Chick's position this round, but he made it very clear that Chick and Greuel had a right to outside representation, i.e., to keep and pay Woocher, and he chewed out both Trutanich and the Council for initially ordering Greuel to fire Woocher.
He also left open the door to a broader argument that Woocher could pursue; if the Controller can't audit elected officials or even the Clerk and certain others on performance audits because it may be biased politically at some point, the same is being done by the City Attorney. His abuse of office for partisan and political ambition is very glaring and not a theoretical situation as alleged for the Controller.
This is the best dialogue I've seen in a long time. Trutanich needs to release his investigative report and say it was Bratton who approved LAPD OT. Gerald Chaleff, 2nd hand guy to BECK is a defense atty who helped murderers like the Alphabet Bomber, the Night Stalker who killed 5 women many more murderers. Chaleff is a Bratton guy and always called the shots. Now we all know BECK's selection was corrupt. Beck has no clue how to run LAPD so he appointed Chaleff. The troops are livid and want to know why PPL is sitting on their asses doing nothing. Here BECK is again following Antonio steps and supporting the ilLEGALS. Beck isn't known in the city and should go to the Valley or other areas but his little bitch Capt. Romero takes him to Boyle Heights. Why didn't BECk tell those illegals that illegal vending is against the law. Beck is destroying LAPD and officers don't respect him.
..The new chief tells Latinos at a posada gathering that he will continue Special Order 40, which bars police from initiating action against people solely to discover their legal status.
Okay, I'm all caught up. I just have two more things to say then I'll go away for awhile again.
To the residents who live in CD 2, you will love Karo Torossian. I'm not sure why the poster took one of Karo's jobs and tried to make it all about that. So what if he worked for SEIU? A few months into Krekorian's reign and you will all see the value of Karo.
I admit I HATE seeing Michael Trujillo's name on the Ass Clown story. Michael rocks. He's a great employee. Who wouldn't want him on their side? He did nothing to be on that story. Even if you disagreed with a measure he worked on, it's really not enough to have him named Ass Clown. Someone is jealous of Michael. It must kill you to see a guy that young having so much success.
Anonymous, December 20 5:06 AM writes: if you concede that Woocher is no fool - who didn't agree to work for free - you can't claim he was too dumb to know what the circumstances were of her hiring him. They were very public and he has worked for other councilmembers, he knows the ropes
For the first time, I completely agree with you on something, and I find the facts confusing. Maybe you can explain my confusion away?
1) Chick asked the Council for permission to hire Woocher, and the Council said NO (in my opinion, that was a bad decision of the Council, but let's stick to the facts).
2) After that, Chick did not have authority to hire Woocher.
3) There was no alternative interpretation of the Charter that gave Chick authority to hire Woocher, because Greuel could have used that same interpretation when the Council told her to fire Woocher. Woocher was right there to advise Greuel at that time.
4) Given his experience, Woocher must have known all these facts.
5) Woocher is too smart (and honest) to have offered to work pro-bono and now claim his fees from the City, so he must have been hired for a fee.
I must be getting one of these facts and logical deductions wrong, because I don't understand how Woocher got hired. I'm honestly trying hard to present only facts and logical conclusions, and no spin or opinions. If I got one of my facts or conclusions wrong, can you tell me which?
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