'Take Michael Trujillo, the mouthpiece selected by City Councilman Richard Alarcon to represent City Council District 7 .. How appropriate, now, that this incurable negative-campaigner should be hand-picked (sloppy seconds!) by Councilman Alarcon, the most nepotistic of the bunch" who is charged with felony voter fraud/perjury over moving outside his own district. 

The LA Times was far less forthright but did acknowledge that the draft maps released Wednesday set "the stage for a series of pitched battles over neighborhood identity, ethnic clout and raw political power" -- a point made in the Daily News as well which said they kick "off a fierce battle over the political, cultural and ethnic lines of the city,"

In fact, the only voice that any reporter could find who praised this outrageous insult to the people of Los Angeles that is being foisted on them by a failing political machine engaged in a feeding frenzy as if there is no tomorrow (and there will be no tomorrow if anything like these maps is approved) was the Valley Industry and Commerce Association's Stuart Waldman, which was predictable if you followed the group's activities.

"You listened to me. You listened to the neighborhood councils. You listened to the people of the San Fernando Valley," Waldman told the panel at its Van Nuys Civic Center meeting Wednesday -- a position that was clearly out of step with the howls of protest from community activists and neighborhood leaders Sunland-Tujunga to Sherman Oaks to West Hills and throughout the city from Koreatown to East, South and West LA.

Some commissioners were appalled. "Quite frankly, I am embarrassed to be associated with this product," said former state Sen. David Roberti.

And even some the politicians who appointed this commissioners with the intent of enhancing their power, securing their political futures and expanding opportunity to raise campaign cash were shocked and dismayed at what they had wrought.

Bill Rosendahl called the maps an "outrageous case of gerrymandering," which was always the intent but not if it cost him Westchester or inflicted Tom LaBonge on Sherman Oaks and Encino or robbed Jan Perry of the big bucks from downtown developers to provide Jose Huizar with that plum even as rumors of his legal problems with the feds are heating up.

Not to worry says Commission Chairman Arturo Vargas, the mayor's appointee, the maps are "a work in progress" and "the final product won't be the same product" as the ones that were released.

That, of course, is the scam. They released maps deliberately intended to infuriate almost everybody so that people will be begging for mercy and be willing to accept crumbs from the table of power as usual and settle for districts that are only half as gerrymandered as these.

I'd like to believe that this insult to our intelligence would spark a level of community outrage that would lead to real change and spark a voter rebellion that threw the scoundrels out and put into office citizen candidates committed to serving the public, not screwing the public. But I'll have to see that start to happen to believe it.

Here are the current district and draft maps (you can see details in the LA Times' Interactive Map):

Draft Map

EXISTING DISTRICTS

My Fellow Americans:

It is time we come clean about where we are and where we are going.  I can no longer keep up the pretense that everything is going to be alright just like that by snapping our fingers. The world is changing and we have to change with it.

Early on in my term as President, I started a process to end the era of American imperialism but I was timid about just coming out and saying that we no longer can impose our will on other nations through the use of our military and economic might as we have tried to so for so long.

I say to you tonight, we are a great nation among the league of nations, committed to working together with other with respect to bring about peace and prosperity around the world. If there were any doubt about this, the globalization of technology and trade and the ability of even a small cadre of terrorists to inflict great horror should make it clear to one and all.

The lowered expectations we must embrace globally are reflected in the lowered expectations we must embrace domestically. We no longer create wealth, we consume it, and so we must be better managers of what we have.  We must go back to the roots of what are forefathers saw as the birthright of all, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We need to work less and have more fun. We need to be happy earning less and having fewer things and more connect with friends and family and the people in our neighborhoods. Our lives for too long have been measured by the size of our houses, the speed of our cars, by how much we can conspicuously consume of the material world.

The great opportunity of our time is to end the civil war that is tearing us apart and to nurture the ties that bind us together as a nation. Toward that end I am inviting the leading Republican candidates to the White House and offering them the chance to join a coalition government with me so that we can together tackle the complex array of problems we face.

Our challenges will not be met by people in high places. It will depend on every one of us to reach out and find the common ground where we can begin to world a new America, an America where each one of feels ownership stake, feels hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

So let's get to work rebuilding America with less greed and more loving kindness for each other.

God Bless America.

Addendum Email:

Barack Obama info@barackobama.com to me

show details 4:21 PM (28 minutes ago)

Ron -- I'm heading to Capitol Hill soon to deliver my third State of the Union address. Before I go, I want to say thanks for everything you're doing. Tonight, we set the tone for the year ahead. I'm going to lay out in concrete terms the path we need to take as a country if we want an economy that works for everyone and rewards hard work and responsibility. I'm glad to know you'll be standing with me up there. Barack ----- Support President Obama. Make a donation today.

Sooner or later, the bills come due in all our lives -- even in the lives of government agencies.

Just ask the people who bought a house they couldn't afford or city officials who got addicted over the years to draining vast amounts of tax dollars from the state, from schools, from their own funds for general services to put them in a kitty called community redevelopment.

What began after World War II as a modest way to rehabilitate blighted neighborhoods became, after passage of Proposition 13 three decades later, a way for cities and counties to build parks, libraries, affordable housing, shopping malls, entertainment complexes, luxury condos and apartments, and a $52-million parking lot for a billionaire's art museum in downtown Los Angeles without the annoying problem of having to get two-thirds of the people to support higher taxes.

All too often, blight came to mean anything officials wanted, an entitlement of government to do whatever it wanted for whatever reason. Abuses by government agencies -- like seizing one person's private property to give to another or massive public subsidies that mainly enriched the rich -- became as common as successes that benefited communities by creating jobs, generating new revenues or improving the quality of life.  
A year ago, Gov. Jerry Brown sought to put an end to all that by abolishing the state's 400 Community Redevelopment Agencies. No sooner did he win the fight to kill them than the Legislature provided a loophole to allow their resurrection if they turned over a combined $1.8 billion of their $5 billion in annual tax revenue to the state this year and a modest $400 million in future years.

Just before Christmas, the state Supreme Court ruled the loophole unconstitutional and set a Feb. 1 date for the death of the agencies.

Now, Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena and cities across the state want another replay through legislation that would extend the drop-dead date to April 15 or maybe next year or maybe never.

The irony of another resurrection of redevelopment agencies on Feb. 2, Groundhog Day, and the movie of that name in which events replay and replay over and over with changing scenarios was not lost last week on Glendale's new City Manager Scott Ochoa at a teleconference meeting of the San Fernando Valley Council of Governments.

"Some folks would say good riddance, now we can start all over," Ochoa told staff and business leaders in a City Hall conference room last week and city officials in Los Angeles, Burbank and Santa Clarita listening on phone lines.

"The problem is the dysfunctionality of the state hasn't been rectified. We are going to continue to have this problem. It will be like Groundhog Day until all the money is gone."

Cities are pulling out all stops to get the Legislature to give them a 10-week reprieve despite the governor's adamant opposition and the knowledge that they will need one reprieve after another to actually work out the complexities of how redevelopment will work in the future.

(READ FULL STORY at GlendaleNewsPress.com) 

(READ WHAT GLENDALE OFFICIALS ARE SAYING)

(READ JOHN WALSH'S TAKE ON THE DEATH OF THE CRA)

(READ REFORM ABUSES BEFORE REVIVING CRA)

You have to wonder whether government officials have reached the conclusion that the public really doesn't matter anymore.

They have huge staffs at their disposal including batteries of lawyers, unlimited amounts of taxpayer dollars and special interest cash and teams of political consultants and advisers who practice the art of deceit, deflection and denial as they create public stories that have nothing to do with what is going on behind the scenes in back rooms.

Last Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors considered all but eliminating public comment by limiting speakers to three minutes to share their views on the entire agenda that can reach 60 items as it did that day.

They probably would have acted and approved the unconstitutional limitation except that "respectable" people like the League of Women Voters - not just the gadflies and rabble - objected, causing the supervisors to take another look.

Now, Glendale officials are looking at barring the entire city staff from talking to "known crooks" when they are the clock doing their jobs.

The reason is gadfly Barry Allen was exposed for having been convicted of running a counterfeiting ring in the 1980s when he was known as Allen Barry Silbarman - a case of the watchdog being bitten by other citizen watchdogs.

The revelation prompted Councilman Ara Najarian to get the City Attorney to draft a report on whether "there was a way to bar officials from talking to Allen, his Vanguardian group, or others connected to criminal activities," according to Glendale News-Press reporter Brittany Levine.

"A few weeks ago I sarcastically congratulated some of our department heads and a captain of our police force for attending and hosting or being the keynote speaker at one of Barry Allen's forums," Najarian said. "I find that to be a huge problem and at this point forward a dereliction of the duty of the City Council to have this continue."

That view doesn't sit well with people who still think the First Amendment means something despite so much evidence that would call it into the question.

"Translating the desire to avoid talking to 'known crooks' into viable, constitutionally sound policy is probably impossible," said Terry Francke, general counsel of Californians Aware, an open government advocacy group.

"Most people would probably agree that the government's biggest problems do not trace to 'known' crooks, but to those unknown, both outside and inside city hall."

Now that is a quote that ought to be chiseled into the front of city halls everywhere, especially L.A. City Hall where lip service is paid to the First Amendment even as every means available is used to squelch it, especially in the way gadflies are treated like they are criminals.

The Occupy L.A. protesters were told over and over how much the mayor and Council respected their rights to free speech and to seek redress for their grievances, even promising them to stay at City Hall as long as they wanted.

But when public opinion turned against the encampment, the mayor ordered a massive show of force in evicting them and maximum use of intimidation techniques in the name of "constitutional policing," things like leaving them standing handcuffed for seven hours, crammed for three days into overcrowded cells, setting bail at $5,000 and then barring them from City Hall as a condition of their release.

I attended the Occupy the Hood general assembly meeting Saturday night on the lower steps on the West Side of City Hall.

Crime scene tape at the foot of the upper steps kept participants from going any higher and three cops stood at the top of those stairs watching a peaceful celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his commitment to non-violence.

There was no reason for the cops to be there looking down from on high except to chill people's exercise of their rights to speak and assemble freely.

With the sophisticated technology now available in every police car, cameras on every street and courts that have undermined our constitutional protections, we need to take a look at where this is headed and to ask ourselves whether the price we are paying for "security" is worth it.

Tonight at 6:30 p.m., the Police Commission is holding a "special" meeting in the San Fernando Valley at St. Nicholas Church, 9501 Balboa Blvd. in Northridge for no apparent reason if you read the agenda containing a short list of routine matters.

The reason is Chief Charlie Beck's incredible decision to stop impounding cars of unlicensed, unregistered, uninsured drivers because it is now politically correct to solve the problem of the nation's lack of an immigration policy and the state's refusal to allow licenses for illegal immigrants by allowing them to continue to operate vehicles even when stopped for a traffic infraction.

Only Commissioner Alan Skobin has objected to Beck's rolling over to the mayor and other politicians on this without regard to the public safety, without even attempting to offer a public safety rational, without conducting any kind of study to determine how many fatal accidents, how many hit-and-run accidents involved unlicensed drivers, without allowing the commission and the Council to review his decision by calling it a change in procedure, not policy.