Los Angeles Politics Hotsheet for Tuesday
Speaking of millions of dollars and rail construction Senator Barbara Boxer has come out behind Mayor Villaraigosa's subway plans. Boxer will work to get LA the billions in Federal dollars it needs to build the choo choos. However she better get moving as her days could be numbered. The new Senator might take so kindly to such boondoggle spending as noted above.
Eli Broad is getting his Downtown mausoleum. I mean museum. It's official and the building will be built next to Disney Hall. Broad was originally going to pay $1 a year but later said he would cough up $7.7 million for a 99 year lease. Sounds like a lot of money but it comes out to about $6500 a month which is a steal for prime downtown real estate. Also what most folks don't know is that only a small portion of the building will be an actual museum. Most of it will be private space for Broad's foundation. But Downtown just like everywhere else money talks and serving the people walks.
In the meantime blogger Celeste Fremon drinks the Broad Kool-Aid. I was hoping when her post crossed my desk it was going to be something surprisingly interesting. No such luck. Celeste should focus on saving Homeboy Industries from the Mayor.
Councilman Bernard Parks usually gets it when it comes to the notion of the free market but sitting in that horseshoe next to Hamburger Jan Perry might be having an effect on him. He's playing up this whole nanny state notion where we need to ban fast food in the hood. Which is silly because Parks is one of the leanest members of the Clowncil and didn't need interim control ordinances to stay trim living in the same District as his constituents right? Didn't he take care of himself?
Freedom hating nanny staters in Sacramento have put the brakes on food trucks like Kogi etc. developing in our state capital. The Sacto City Clowncil enacted tough laws that effectively outlaw the trucks.
Keeping the Nanny State theme going the plastics industry is fighting back on the state's tax on plastic grocery bags with a great new video. We have to eventually get rid of plastic bags (I hate them) but the industry has responded with many solutions. And in this case the state law is not even the usual nanny poo ban the bag but a cynical tax that is only serving to balance the state budget.
And finally it's going to be a scorcher the next few days! Our friend Brian Humphrey of the LAFD has some good tips for you to stay safe - and stay cool!
Labels: barbara boxer, bernard parks, brian humphrey, carly fiorina, celeste fremon, eli broad, fast food, food trucks, jan perry, mayor antonio villaraigosa, mta, plastic bags, Subway to the Sea
Posted by Michael Higby @ 8/24/2010 02:00:00 AM
16 Comments:
Broad got even more of a steal than you realize. The lazy local media have neglected to inform people about the OTHER terms of the deal.
For example, the City agreed to REDUCE significantly its "cut" of the rents from the other buildings in the "Grand Avenue" project. So he not only gets this land for a song, but he gets a bigger share of the pie from all the other land you and I donated.
Also, they report how he's paying $7.7 million, but they omit to mention he will then receive $8.0 million from the City.
Instead, the press release journalists present this as if the generous Mr. Broad is building us this nice pretty museum because he's just so gosh-darned civic minded.
Details at my website.
This is funny.
Today, Phil is deriding Meg Whitman for her "lack of moral clarity."
This, from the idiot who stole James Andion's url and actually TOLD us about it on his blog. And he says he did it in order to "catapault" himself into national prominence. All it did was get him catapaulted out of the Westside Republicans.
Then he said he wouuld give it back. Then he said, "Nope," he's not going to do it.
That's the funny thing about challenging others' moral clarity Phil. It has a way of putting YOU under the spotlight. We know you enjoy the negative attention, so now you have earned perpetual scrutiny for your own lack of moral clarity.
Maybe you can regain it by explaining how you don't have enough money for a car, but suddenly came up with $10,000 for your gambling excursion in Vegas. Only someone WITHOUT MORAL CLARITY would refuse to explain it.
Does anyone know how we can demand a financial accounting of the recall funds from Phil?
I gave $25 and I'm concerned that there isn't any accountability. Anyone?
Phil, how did you get that $10,000 to enter the World Series of Poker, when you haven't enough to buy a car?
Since you speak of moral clarity, why not some transparency?
Your silence is troubling.
Then there's the Broad Performing Arts School downtown, open only to minorities by the way, which is one of those ridiculously expensive LAUSD schools only NOW in the news way too late after the fact.
Didn't he sell the land it was on to LAUSD for some price that made him a tidy profit, but with the building costs being way more than estimated and so on it's another huge cost to us the taxpayers.
Never did see an actually financial breakdown of that one.
Meanwhile the former fishwrap's editorial today finally points out that although LAUSD is supposed to by law share its space with charters since a 2000 Voter prop was passed, it still isn't.
The other boondoggle former Ambassador Hotel site being a case in point, not one charter allowed among the numerous "independent schools."
What about Belmont fiasco, built on a toxic dump site? Billions of dollars but parents don't trust it, and those are the almost all Latinos, many illegal immigrants.
Then there's the Bernstein high school in Hollywood built at a huge cost but also on an alleged toxic site and too close to a freeway so students aren't allowed to use the over-priced state of the art soccer fields for health reasons, or open their windows?
NO new schools on the Westside in decades meanwhile let alone pushing out the charters. Parents who pay for everything get stiffed. It really is unfair to blame teachers for test scores when they're stuck with kids of illegal immigrants and poor blacks as the bulk and they bring their problems to school.
Overpriced buildings in minority areas can't solve the underlying problems, as Marlene Kanter used to point out. Charters in crummy physical spaces outperform them with the same caliber of students because kids aren't lost in the shuffle.
Marlene Kanter was one of the few reasonable voices who said charters deserve a fair shake but the others falsely claim they're "elitist" because they cherry- pick students and insist on staying with "magnet schools." Which are such a FARCE and nightmare as Sandra Tsing Loh's comical because so true rants, highlight. A stupid game where you reapply and expect to get rejected year after year unless you're a "minority" (which in LAUSD would be the 7% whites or 3.8% Asians) until MAYBE you get in long after most sane people have moved away.
While we have the most expensive school building program in the nation, are paying property taxes for them and they're full of problems and defy the law on sharing space with Charters as voters demanded.
I'M AGAINST THIS BLOATED SUBWAY IDEA. I GUESS TONY THINKS EARTHQUAKES DON'T HAPPEN HERE OR AT LEAST HE WON'T BE ON ONE WHEN IT DOES HAPPEN. THEIR ARE MANY BETTER AND CHEAPER MODES OF TRANSPORTATION THAT PEOPLE LIKE HIM NEVER GIVE THOUGH TO. FOR THE MONEY HE WILL COMMIT US TO FOR UP TO 25 YEARS NOT COUNTING INTEREST. WE COULD HAVE THE ENTIRE CITY WITH A FAR SAFER FAR CHEAPER TO MAKE AND USE SYSTEM. BUT HOW DARE I POISE SUCH A, I BELIEVE OBVIOUS QUESTION. PEOPLE THIS IS NOT THAT TOWN LIKE HIGH NOON WHERE THE SHERIFF HAS TO RID THE TOWN OF KILLERS BECAUSE THE REST HADE SOME EXCUSE TO GET OUT OF TOWN. NO WONDER PEOPLE ARE BECOMING SLAVES IN THIS TOWN. THIS ONE MORE EXAMPLE OF TAXDOLLAR WASTE ALL TO GIVE TONY SO MUCH NEEDED P.R.
I GUESS TONY THINKS EARTHQUAKES DON'T HAPPEN HERE OR AT LEAST HE WON'T BE ON ONE WHEN IT DOES HAPPEN.
Shouter dude, try this exciting experiment.
Snap a twig about a foot long in two places, close to each end, but not so that the pieces completely break off.
Now wrap your fist around one of the breaks.
Now shake vigorously.
Which snap does all the moving or breaks off? The one inside your fist or the one outside it?
The one inside your fist is like the underground. It's the very safest place to be of all in an earthquake.
MTA, the same folks who while heavily promoting the subway, light rail lines, and major boulevard "Rapid" lines the last few years have been systematically dropping and cutting service on dozens and dozens of neighborhood bus lines that FEED the subway and light rail lines, sending more and more people back into their cars. (Look it up, 2-3 lines hacked every 6 months to "save money" -- then they have experts "drilling down" trying to figure out why less people are on the Blue, Green, Gold lines, etc.)
Because, simply put, they don't have any sense of how real people "think", e.g., if I'm already going to have to use my car to drive 4-6 miles to get to the stations (where parking is very limited anyway), then wait to get on -- I might as well just stay in that car, get on the packed freeways, and drive the remaining 6-8 miles (on average), to get to work.
DOH! (Is Alvin Parra running MTA these days?)
You can dispel G's myth about being in a subway during an earthquake by googling earthquakes and Japan. They have way more and larger earthquakes than us and there are zero reports of tragedy on subways.
Now try this experiment:
Dig a hole 50 feet underground, in an area laden with hydrocarbons -- ideally near the La Brea Tar Pits, or near where methane leaks out of the ground and catches fire.
Now, when you're deep underground in a train car, trigger a massive earthquake.
Using your timer figure out how much air you have, and how many of the people struggling to get around above ground will be dig, dig, digging their way down to save you.
Then take that twig and poke out the eye of whoever talked you into riding that thing, because you, my friend, will be as dead as a dead coal miner after a cave-in.
Sionara, Subway Boy!
You can't REALLY do that, can you, Wacko Walter?
Digging big deep holes, triggering earthquakes?
I know you're an AMAZING power, but I think you're pushing your luck on this one.
Walter would make the mexicans dig the hole.
"Digging big deep holes, triggering earthquakes?"
No, silly. It's the EXPERIMENT. Imagine you're deep underground when an earthquake occurs.
I'm no geologist, but I'm pretty sure you can't cause an earthquake just by digging a subway.
However, since we're on the topic, you COULD weaken the lateral support for buildings all along Wilshire if you do it wrong. I think there were lawsuits in San Francisco on that theory. I'm guessing by now, however, the tunnel-digging technology is relatively safe.
it's sayonara mr. brilliant.
The guy jumping the turnstyle has a nice ass.
It is "sayonara," isn't it? I stand corrected. Domo arigato very much.
Love,
Mr. Brilliant
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