Mayor Sam 2.0

By Daniel Guss

@TheGussReport –    “Surprise, surprise, surprise,” as Gomer Pyle used to say.

A group of local political corruption watchers gathered in the shadows of Dodger Stadium a few hours before Game 1 of a recent Trolley Dodger World Series run.  After an hour or three of grub and grousing, some of us decided that if, a year or so before the next local election, life in Los Angeles was no better, let alone worse, we would join forces and report on those problems and their purveyors with unflinching directness.

Without artificial deadlines.

Without artificial word counts.

And without pressure to side-step truthful but uncomfortable stories.

By all reasonable measures, quality of life in Los Angeles, both at the the county and city levels, has never been worse.   Leadership and trust in our elected politicians has never been lower.  That goes double for Sacramento and triple for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Nury Martinez-led Los Angeles City Council.

And then there’s the question of why much of the local media parrots what the LA Times, aka The Nanny-State P.R. Agency d’El Segundo, puts out there.

The hash we sling shall be served cold with heaping hot sides of humor and sarcasm, here where L.A. political blogging started, Mayor Sam.

As our late great founder Michael Higby might have quoted, "let me be perfectly clear," our governments love to torture corruption watchers by hiding documents, ignoring public meeting laws and so on in what can be described as death by a thousand cuts in response to sincerely held civic concerns.

Touché is our reply. 

If we find a Mayor, Councilmember, County Supervisor or their corrupt-o-crat cronies and protectorates fail to respond to things like mundane public records requests, we may sue and report on it, but we may also post such requests as well as the lame excuses they give for not producing those records and explain what's behind their shell game.

And just because we post something, that may not be the end of the story. 

Mayor Sam 2.0 is going to have a rolling dialogue with L.A. because that’s another thing our political set loves doing: dragging things out until the concerned parties give up and go away.

We say nay-nay. 

We have a lot of catching up to do and prisoners shall not be taken.  

Let the madness begin.

(Of course, we do need to get me a sign-in of my own, but in the meanwhile, mi amigo Scott's shall suffice.  You are invited to follow me on The Twitters @TheGussReport.)