A MAGA President's Departure in Photos

The Mayor Sam Blog had a hillside view of President Donald Trump's L.A. Departure after a very productive night and morning of Campaign Fundraising, leaving behind a city longing for solutions to its Homeless Crisis, amid contemptuous behavior at nearby, 200 N. Spring Street.  

President Trump's Motorcade arriving at the Old Cornfields, now a State Park near Chinatown.

** Blogger's Notes: Pardon the momentary bloggin pause in partisan commentary as we regale in the spectacle of witnessing the shear logistics of a Presidential Visit. 

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A Question of Judgement

The email shown here is piece of spam that made its way around a couple of years ago. It was being forwarded to employees by a high ranking official of a public agency using their work email address. (click on the image for a larger version.)

Earlier this year, Los Alamitos mayor Dean Grose was caught forwarding a similar kind of email showing a picture of the White House with a field of watermelons in the front yard. The public criticism of this behavior quickly cost Mayor Grose his job.

What if it were a Los Angeles official that sent this using their City email? It clearly isn't appropriate and it shows a serious lack of judgement and sensitivity to some of the biggest problems facing Los Angeles today - gang activity, street violence, race issues, LAUSD and the quality of public education in Los Angeles, and so on.

The fact of the matter is that this email was sent by the Office of Public Safety's top officer - Chief of Police Gary Newton - using his City email to others in the department. Newton is the same chief who was found guilty along with the City of racial discrimination and illegal hiring practices a few months ago in a lawsuit that will cost LA taxpayers $1.4 million. One of the people Newton illegally hired over other qualified individuals to manage OPS's patrol officers was previously convicted of beating a minority in handcuffs and fired by the City of Huntington Beach's police department.

LAPD only just had a major federal Consent Decree lifted for the kinds of activities Newton and his hand-picked leadership team have been found guilty of engaging in. In a city where politics and policing is practically defined by the many hot-button issues related to Newton's activities, it leaves one to seriously question why Chief Newton is still in the job and who is keeping him there.

Requests to the City Attorney's office for comment on this issue have gone unanswered.

Biden: Obama is the first "clean" African-American?

I predicted here on Mayor Sam that it'd be Obama-Biden five days before it was announced, back on August 17th.

Without mentioning who I think would be the best President, I would like the Obama-mamas to comment on the following.

1. If Obama is about "Change," why did he choose a 65 year old Senator who has been in the Senate since he's 29? He's been in D.C. longer than John McCain! What happened to "Change"?

2. Biden, in 2008, said about Obama's inexperience, that "...the Presidency is no place for on-the-job-training."

3. Biden, an admitted plagiarist, in 2008, referred to Obama as "...the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said.

I still predict that McCain + anyone will defeat Obama, especially with Biden. I am not saying which way I am voting. It's just how I think it'll go. It will be very interesting watching.

But everyone in Los Angeles should be grateful, however, that Obama had the wisdom to give no TV speaking time to Mayor PromoteMe-Raigosa. We hear that Jack Weiss, the mayor's girlfriend, is very upset about it. But Rocky Delga-dodo must be having a great laugh about it!

Noone From The City of LA

One of our readers posted that no one (or is it noone?) from our local City government reads Mayor Sam or even knows about us.

I guess that's why after home users (which could be anyone including city officials) for the current period, the City of LA is the #3 source of visitors to Mayor Sam.

Who is this Noone guy anyway?

Network Location		Visits
1.	road runner holdco llc	4,910
2.	verizon internet services inc.	2,210
3.	city of los angeles	1,375

Will it be Senator or Mayor Schwarzenegger?

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was on the Tonight Show for a 7th time this week and left open his political future (after he wraps things up in Sacramento). Some believe he will run for the U.S. Senate next while others suggest a campaign for Mayor of Los Angeles is far more likely.

The conventional wisdom--if there is such a thing--is that he would prefer to be back in Los Angeles with executive powers and closer to his family than an even longer commute and being one of a hundred senators--albeit an incandescent one. Perhaps recent Schwarzenegger biographers Daniel Weintraub and Joe Mathews will shed some light. Below is his quote from the show:

I see myself as a public servant, not as a politician. I want to finish my term, and I'm absolutely convinced that if I do a good job, and a great job ... we always will get a job after that.

Open Thread for Wednesday

Here is your Open Thread for Hump Day, is Los Angeles becoming a third world city? You may not read this in the Los Angeles Times, we have to go to England to find out the following (hat tip to Joe B. for pointing me to the story):

"Los Angeles is becoming a "Third World city" with immigrants making up half its workforce, says a new study.

A third of immigrants have not graduated from high school and 60 per cent do not speak English fluently, the Migration Policy Institute found."

A Brief History of Manipulation

For your enjoyment, on a lazy Sunday afternoon.....

Between the years of 1926 and 1932 there was a tremendous effort by the City of Los Angeles to annex the incorporated City of Tujunga. Los Angeles wanted control of the water flowing from Tujunga's surrounding mountains. Water that, even to this day, still provides 14% of the L.A. water supply. There were also rumors of huge oil fields lying beneath the local grounds, and the City of L.A. wanted a piece of that action as well, (the oil was never found).

The battle to stop annexation was fierce and dividing, causing neighbors to cease speaking and dominating all other local issues. The vast majority preferred their independence and saw no benefit in answering to a distant government. Most L.A. City officials had only seen maps of the area and few had bothered to make the journey up to this isolated community,
(a phenomenon that apparently still exists to this day) .

The control of water was essential to the City of Los Angeles, from Owens Valley to the Ports of San Pedro, and the City of Tujunga presented an annoying, albeit relatively minor in comparison, roadblock.

On four occasions, the issue of annexation was put to a vote in Tujunga (1927, 1930, 1931, and 1932). Annexation was not accepted in the first three rounds of voting.

And then something very strange happened.

After Los Angeles lost the 3rd attempt at annexation in 1931, The City of Tujunga experienced an unexplained growth in population.
Over the course of one year, every available home, cabin, or shack was rented.

Each of these new residents made a point of quickly registering as voters... and then they waited.

The issue of annexation came up for vote again in 1932, this time winning by 59 votes.

The very next day, the new residents began moving out, en masse. Within a few months, they were gone, and Tujunga, now an annexed community, turned over the keys to it's City Hall to the City of Los Angeles.

And so it goes.....

Astro-Turf campaigns (I wonder what they called them back in 1930?) and bussed in supporters are nothing new to this City.

Neither is Tujunga's long standing mistrust of the City of Los Angeles.





Source- "Sunland and Tujunga- From Village To City" Marlene A. Hitt -Arcadia Press

Jack Hoff to L.A. City Council: Stop Graffiti NOW!

$21,000 In City Money Found

Sunday I reported on a couple of thousand dollars owed to Mayor Villaraigosa and his ex-wife Corina which is sitting in an unclaimed property account at the office of State Controller John Chiang.

You won't believe who and what has money waiting for them at the Controller's office. click read more to dig deeper!



The Unclaimed Property Bureau receives funds that banks, companies, insurance companies, utilities have on the books for various individuals or businesses but for some reason or another - i.e. a check was never cashed, a refund was never claimed, etc. - the individual to whom the money is owned has not been found. It then becomes the State's job to track these people down and give them their money. If this task is impossible, after three years the State claims the money for the general fund.

Recently, there has been controversy regarding the length to the which the state was going to track down the rightful owners of these funds. Controller Chiang has proposed a series of reforms.

One wonders how hard however it is to find well known figures such as the Villaraigosas, singer Barbra Streisand, actor/director Danny DeVito and his wife actress Rhea Pearlman, recording artist and father of Nichole Lionel Richie, developer and Maxine Waters fan Rick Caruso, sitcom star and comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Ray Romano and even a few past Los Angeles Mayors such as Richard Riordan and the REAL old, dead Republican Sam Yorty. Other than Yorty, I think the rest of these people should be fairly easy to find.

But as the Daily News' Harrison Shepard reports the Bureau has had a hard time finding even government agencies that are owed funds including - amazingly - itself! Its been removed since but for a while the Bureau listed money it was holding owed to the Bureau.

So it's no surprise that the Bureau is holding nearly $21,000 from various sources owed to the City of Los Angeles. Indeed, its no surprise that the State couldn't find the city nor that the City can't keeps its books straight enough to not collect on money it is owed.

Certainly $21,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to the billion dollar plus City Budget. But this raises questions as to the accuracy of the City's accounting, particularly at a need when needs are greater and resources are scant.