Friends Don't Let Friends Vote for Scott Svonkin

Scott Svonkin
Illustration by Kyle T. Webster / LA Weekly

It's election day on Tuesday and though there are only a couple of races at most on the ballot, it's very important that voters go to the polls and make sure some pretty awful folks out of the power elite don't get elected.

For the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees, food spraying San Gabriel School Board Member Scott Svonkin wants to get on the panel that controls millions of your tax dollars going towards campus construction. The LA Weekly documented many of Svonkin's issues while serving in his current role. Svonkin is friends with the big developers who line up with politicians to ruin LA and is most notably the guy, while shilling for Home Depot, who called the good folks of Sunland-Tujunga racists.

On the other hand, Svonkin's opponent, Lydia Gutierrez is a former teacher and aerospace administrator, who hails from South Central, and would be an awesome addition to the panel. Lydia surprised many as a grassroots, community candidate who managed to make the runoff.

In the race for LAUSD School Board Seat 5, pick your poison. The UTLA backed Bennett Kayser or the Villaraigosa-Huizar-Garcia backed Luis Sanchez.

Los Angeles Politics Hotsheet for Monday

The DREAM Act, which aims to extend all kinds of goodies to individuals in this country illegally has been reintroduced, though it faces an uphill climb. And despite what some folks might say, racist, hillbilly, Christian Tea Party conservatives are not the reason why. Our regular reader Trojan2002 spills the beans that some very hard core, left wing special interests are the true blockers to the act's passage.

Read more »

Los Angeles Politics Hotsheet for Wednesday

Oh this is going to be great! Weinstein Company is going to take on Scientology in a new movie scheduled to begin  principal photography in June.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman will play L. Ron Hubbard, the hack science fiction writer turned creator of the world's most expensive religion. The film reportedly follows Hubbard's return from serving in the Navy in WW2 and through the creation of the religion in 1952. Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights," "Punch-Drunk Love" and "There Will Be Blood") penned the script.

Frontiers Magazine publishes a complete fluff piece on LACCD candidate Scott Svonkin and doesn't  bother to fact check the story in the slightest. The piece is so badly reported that the LA Weekly does something that they rarely do; they respond to Frontier Magazine and call them out for their sloppy journalism.

 The U.S. Navy really lives up to their slogan as a "Global Force for Good" by authorizing Navy chaplains to begin performing same sex marriages on military bases that lie in states that recognize these unions. 

And in California, SB117 has passed in the State Senate, mostly down a party line.
The bill was introduced by Sen. Christine Kehoe, a San Diego Democrat. Under SB117, "State agencies would be prohibited from contracting with businesses that do not provide equal benefits to their employees' same-sex spouses or domestic partners".The bill now goes to the Assembly.

Rut-Roh Republicans! The Democrats are reintroducing the DREAM Act bill today, and the timing could not be better.