Morning Brief on the Los Angeles Political Machine for Tuesday

There is no minimum amount of critical musing when it comes to panning a pirating of a Campaign Gimmick for political gain.

The pirating of a "Campaign Gimmick" stimulates creative use of Photoshop.

** Ron Kaye's thoughts on pirating a Campaign Gimmick into a new Policy Initiative .......,

WHO WE ARE-It was the closing days of the dreariest mayoral campaign imaginable and the unions that so heavily backed the indecisive Wendy Greuel flooded the city’s poor neighborhoods with mailings and sound trucks blaring with the good news: $15 an hour minimum wage if she wins. 

Eric Garcetti was beside himself, denouncing Greuel for taking the millions of dollars in union money he wished he’d gotten and calling the ploy to nearly double the minimum wage a "cynical attempt to buy votes." It gives, he told reporters, “false hope to people who are struggling to make ends meet … a $15 minimum wage, that sets up a false expectation." You can’t call Garcetti a total hypocrite for coming out on Labor Day in support of raising the minimum wage 22 percent every year to bring it to $13.25 an hour by 2017 when he will be seeking re-election. Maybe he’s only a three-quarters hypocrite though you can bet all you’ve got it will get to $15 an hour soon enough.

** A blogging flashback moment via Jack Humphreville as he muses on the upcoming CD 14 Campaign between Jose Huizar, Gloria Molina (and John Perez?) ........,
Huizar is also embroiled in a couple of scandals, including a 2012 car accident which the City settled for $185,000 in March of 2014. The major scandal involves a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Francine Godoy, his former aide, alleging that married Huizar retaliated against her for refusing to continue their sexual relationship.  During her tenure in his office, the very attractive Godoy’s salary increased from $47,000 in 2006 to $132,000 in 2013, during which time she moved into an adjoining office to Huizar that had a specially constructed connecting door.

** LA Downtown News Editor and reigning "Scribe of Wit" Jon Regardie is no one's fool in musing his cynical thoughts (mixed with facetious word play) about a proposed voter lottery to stimulate turnout at the polls ........,
OK, I’m being facetious, but as mentioned above, how about looking at cash payouts only after trying other steps? Those steps, by the way, include having city politicians acknowledge that their attempts at career longevity are part of the problem. Actually, they’re about 88% of the problem. Get-out-the-vote efforts by politicians who target their own constituencies are much more effective for them when the voting pool is miniscule. That and other machinations mean many local elections are highly, if legally, manipulated. Said another way, local balloting is increasingly more a coronation than an election. While theoretically anyone can run for any office, the power of entrenched office holders and political machines, including big-money labor and business groups, means that choice is quashed long before election day.

Your thoughts ...............,
Scott Johnson in CD 14