Los Angeles Politics HotSheet for Monday
Jerry Brown and the State Legislature are taxing online purchases, leading to e-tailer Amazon shutting down thousands of mom and pop affiliate businesses in California. Who's behind this travesty? Liberal Democrats? Well, yea, but there's a bigger villain here: Wal-Mart. Amazon is prepping a ballot measure.
A Federal court affirms that the Lancaster City Council has the right to start meetings with a prayer. Really, it's a simple matter. The First Amendment was designed to protect religion from government, not the other way around.
Phil Jennerjahn. Mike Gatto. Male genitals. You wouldn't think a blog post could cover all three of those items but this one does!
Labels: amazon tax, carmen trutanich, circumcision, claudia martin, david berger, lancaster city council, Mike Gatto, phil jennerjahn, wal-mart, zuma dogg
Posted by Michael Higby @ 7/25/2011 12:01:00 AM
23 Comments:
"The First Amendment was designed to protect religion from government, not the other way around."- Michael Higby
Are you sure about that American Taliban idiot? Prepare to be embarrassed.
Yes, and praise the Lord our founding fathers were far smarter and less angry than you.
You need to be schooled.
A "secular state" does not mean that there can never be any public references to religion. All it means is that government cannot establish a state-sponsored religion, nor can it directly deny someone's rights to religious expression. Oh, and it also says that CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW. I hardly see a display of the Ten Commandments as being something that was passed as a law. It is just a friggin' statue! A statue, I might add, that represents one of the earlier forms of laws and statues that was actually written down. Violating religious expression in the name of protecting "secularism" does NOT uphold the First Amendment, it violates it!
Oh no! Higby tries to bring up some relevant info on the city attorney's office, the week city council is voting on hiring outside counsel, around him...and here come the wackos to try to divert the topic.
And Higby, that quote is hilarious and thought provoking. (But I hate to even jump into the nuttiness.)
Okay, stop drinking the Jesus Juice and pay attention! If the gov't is to not establish a religion then it must remain neutral in all matters concerning religion. It cannot allow one religion to take precedence over another. Letting one religion insert their prayers into a gov't meeting is excluding the prayers of other religions. The way it works is to keep religion out of gov't completely or risk gov't mandating your religion. Lesson one, American Taliban Idiot!
It seems like Nuch has some of the Mike Gatto bloggers blogging for him.
Strong rumor is that Nuch is dropping out of the DA race. The city council's plan to neuter his office has him seriously worried and even his closest supporters (all 3 of them) have told him that he needs to get his shit together and concentrate on working to show he's in charge.
The Martin Declaration was devastating to Nuch. Lawyers routinely ask judges for more time, but they always have to establish "good cause" for the request. Good cause is typically something like there's new evidence or that further investigation is required. Saying "I'm not prepared" is an embarrassing and unprofessional excuse, and revealed the depths to which the City Attorney's Office has sunk under Nuch. That one document probably sank any chance Nuch had to be DA.
Government can allow prayers and/or statues but should not allow church bells and/or amplified sound systems!!
That is a noise issue and not a "freedom of expression" issue. Noise is noise and no one or organization is above the law.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nochurchbells/
I have question for Neighborhood Council participants. If someone who chairs NC meetings is charged with assault, battery, false imprisonment and other related charges by LAPD, against an NC stakeholder participant, should the person be allowed to continue to chair meetings. Are serious charges by LAPD enough to be replaced, on something like this? What about if convicted? LAPD doesn't level charges, like these, against an known NC chair, unless something REALLY went down.
The reason I ask, is because I have some meetings to attend at this NC on a serious issue I am involved with, and am scared to attend. What if they don't like what I have to say? Am I going to get a boardwalk beatdown by the NC chair?
Your Thoughts?
I wish the Council would do a study on how other City Council's are set up. Maybe they'll see their pay is way out of line.
They should be part time at 1/3 of the pay.
Rut roh. The church bell lady is back!
As long as Lancaster doesn't declare their official religion to be Christianity (or Islam or Buddhism or JustinBieberism) they can pray however they like.
And quite frankly the LA City Council needs to pray a whole heck of a lot!
What happened to Nuch Jr running for Janice Hahn's Council seat?
Michael, Trutanich is none too happy with you right now. CMs are passing around your blogs, Ron Kaye and Joseph Mailander making Nuch look pretty stupid.
Hey you guys missed some stuff.
Ron Kaye says that Ed Reyes looks like the police sketch of one of the Bryan Stow assailants. SO True!
They're calling the UFLAC "Bell-FLAC" because Tim McOsker runs it like Bell.
Michael -
The City Attorney's Office has never been better. Morale is high despite nearly everyone having a 15% pay cut caused by having to take 36 unpaid "furlough" days. I say nearly everyone because there are a handful of exceptions made for essential personnel, such as Carmen Trutanich himself, and others who are close to indispensable. Nobody resents that, and that is because Carmen Trutanich is widely loved within the office, as are his executive staff.
Carmen Trutanich is a genius, a legal leviathan who has turned around the way the City Attorney's Office now fights lawsuits. He invented the "Porcupine Defense," a brilliant legal strategy to fight cases. Carmen learnt the Porcupine Defense when he was in grade school and it has worked for him ever since. He explains it as "You may eat me, but I won't taste good going down." It is an amazing strategy and as soon as the City stops losing cases because some of the lazy deputy city attorneys don't understand their leader's brilliant legal mind, it will probably be used by Harvard and other top law schools. For the present, the LAPD cases that are being lost, are a small price to pay for having the benefit of such an astute legal mind for a mere $237,000 a year, which is about a quarter of what Carmen Trutanich says he used to earn before become our great leader.
The Marijuana ordinance that Carmen Trutanich invented was finally bringing the explosion of pot shops under control until a stupid judge declared that it was unconstitutional in that it lacked a rational basis. The judge clearly was wrong, but very cleverly, Carmen Trutanich did not appeal the judge. Instead he wrote an even better ordinance. That's the kind of legal genius he is.
I heard you on LA Talk Radio last night speaking to Zuma Dogg and David Berger. Why you bother with those losers is a mystery to me. Zuma was very helpful to Carmen during the campaign, but Carmen was never serious about giving him a job. Carmen it too clever for that. Now Zuma just attacks Carmen at every opportunity out of bitterness.
The same goes for Berger who was fired for wasting city time fundraising to retire Carmen's personal campaign debts and refusing to carry out direct orders. He now hides behind pseudonyms at the Dragnet blog and tries to attack the good work of Carmen Trutanich at every opportunity. He is also trying to bust the DA's union by publishing tabloid style exclusives about a few minor errors that were made by the leader, Steve Ipsen, such as Ipsen being slammed by the Supreme Court for committing prosecutorial misconduct in double murder trials and other irrelevant stuff like that.
I suggest you stop associating with the likes of Zuma and Berger before you lose all credibility.
10:41 that's one of the funniest posts I've read all year. I wonder how many of our dum dums will get it.
Cheers,
MayorSam
10:33, I would guess given Nuch, Sr's issues, Nuch Jr. may be laying low. But there is still plenty of time for him to go down the Eric Garcetti/Jim & Janice Hahn road.
10:41 is quite correct.
Nuch is a hero and you guys, especially ZD and Berger (sour grapes) are LOSERS!!!
Nuch, and his Senior Staff, have already saved countless millions for the City by taking a hard line and trying cases and winning them, and hard bargaining before settling. None of that $2 Million plus giveaways to Firefighters whose feelings got hurt by some hazing with dog food.
The billboards and marijuana issues rankle the Council because their donations are drying up when the "donors" realize they can't skate any more on the loosely worded ordinances that are intended to regulate no one.
Nuch would make a great D.A. but the City would be diminished by losing him.
Just think, we could have had Jack Weiss. I rest my case.
Who just taught Nuch how to blog?
Lying to people and flipping 180 on what you said during the campaign, WILL turn people into sour grapes, Nuch. Why not aks yourself why everyone has turned on you? Everyone is sour grapes. Mailander, Higby, Zuma Dogg, Berger, Cooley...ALL former supporters, except Mailander. The rest TURNED. You are the sour grapes machine.
Look at Trutanich. He's referring to himself in the 3rd person, like Zuma Dogg. "The Marijuana ordinance that Carmen Trutanich invented..." (10:41 AM. It matches his syntax. Helen Keller can see that.)
2:50PM just confirmed the rumor that Nuch is backing out of the DA Race: "Nuch would make a great D.A. but the City would be diminished by losing him." In other words, Nuch got the crap scared out of him when he realized that all his lies and tricks were being outed by the bloggers. So now he'll try to convert any money his bogus campaign "Draft Trutanich 4 DA" raised to his bid to be re-elected as City Attorney in 2013.
But let's set the recored straight about Nuch. Marijuana shops are opening up daily all over again, and Nuch is stuck because his hastily cobbled together "scorched earth" ordinance was declared to be unconstitutional. Berger told him the original ordinance was fatally flawed because it based the limit on the number of pot shops on an expired and unenforceable temporary control ordinance, but Nuch knew better; he wanted the headlines fast. Now we're back to worse than square one.
As for Nuch saving the city millions, that's as false a claim as his lie that he came up with the idea for the ACE program. Nuch's figures are all voodoo math. He takes the first demand from a claimant which is always inflated, and then takes the figure the case settles for, as the the saving. In reality, he should be taking the final demand before trial and comparing that to the settlement figure. He won't do that because it will show that, with the exception of LAPD cases, he's about the same as Rocky. The LAPD cases are much worse. His schoolyard Porcupine Defense has cost the city millions because it is plain stupid.
Paul Krekorian will run for City Attorney and win, and that's what's scarred LA's bully into pulling out of Carmengeddon over the DA Race.
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