My Sunday Column: Memorial Day’s Lost Meaning Relevant Again — Healing the Wounds of a Nation Divided Against Itself

Posted on May 25, 2013 by

In the dismal Los Angeles election cycle that mercifully concluded on May 21, much was made about the lack of women in high places if Wendy Greuel didn’t win the mayor’s race.

Greuel herself played the gender card over and over, with pictures of her happy family on every mailer and email, her young son nearly always at her side at weekend and other events, reiterating how being a mother, a wife and woman in a man’s world made her especially qualified to run a complex and troubled city of nearly 4 million people.

To emphasize the point, she lined up support from many prominent women, such as Sen. Barbara Boxer, who appeared in ads and recorded messages for robo-calls that stressed the need for a woman in the mayor’s office.

Yet, she lost and lost badly — by eight percentage points in what was supposed to be a close race.

A long list of explanations has been offered for what went wrong in a surefire campaign that was helped by millions more in independent expenditures than winner Eric Garcetti had, thanks to the generosity of the police, fire, Department of Water and Power and other public employees, plus former President Bill Clinton, former Mayor Richard Riordan and L.A.’s most popular current figure, Magic Johnson.

Maybe she just wasn’t woman enough, as some have suggested, or maybe well into the 21st century in one of the world’s most cosmopolitan and diverse communities, gender and race aren’t the political trump cards so many believe them to be unless somebody makes an issue of it.

In the Hollywood City Council District 13 contest, labor darling John Choi, backed heavily by the city’s powerful unions, supposedly tried to drive a wedge in the Little Armenia community — but still lost to the underfunded Mitch O’Farrell.

It backfired, helping to solidify the Armenian community behind O’Farrell just as a similar effort worked to the advantage of Zareh Sinanyan in Glendale’s recent election.

The Armenian community already was energized by the flap caused by accusations of racial profiling at Assemblyman Mike Gatto’s event to select delegates to the state Democratic Party Convention when the controversy erupted over Sinanyan’s hateful comments on YouTube several years ago.

Nothing brings people together like feeling they are being attacked, which is why the Armenian community came together so strongly to help Sinanyan narrowly win a Glendale City Council seat despite the controversy.

The lesson I take from this is that heavy-handed politicking on race, ethnicity, gender or other cohorts — a detestable word used to enchain us in identity boxes that only are a small part of who we are — is turning voters off, or even getting a reaction opposite from the one that was sought.

Call it wishful thinking, but at a time when we seem to be engaged in an uncivil war and hell-bent on our own destruction, from Washington to Sacramento to City Hall, there are signs that ordinary people are starting to wake up and think for themselves.

It is an undercurrent that needs to go viral and push us in our personal and political lives toward greater tolerance of our differences in values and greater respect for each other’s needs and interests, even when they conflict with our own.

On this Memorial Day weekend, it is worth remembering that the holiday was originally called Decoration Day when it was introduced right after the end of the Civil War as a way to reunite the country and honor the 1.3 million soldiers who died — Confederate and Union soldiers.

Just before the start of the war, Abraham Lincoln, in his famous “A house divided against itself cannot stand” speech that cost him election to the U.S. Senate in 1858, presciently warned about where the intensifying debate over slavery was heading.

“I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free,” he said. “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

(THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED SUNDAY BY THE GLENDALE NEWS-PRESS)

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Glendale-Burbank, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | 7 Comments

Happy Days Are Here Again in This Temple of Democracy

Posted on May 22, 2013 by

Sunshine peeks through the clouds, the cynics with all their money and power vanish to their private enclaves, double-dipping Dennis Zine roars off on his Harley to his posh desert hideaway never to be seen again — the costliest, most tediously painful, anti-climactic city election is finally over.

Happy days are here again in this wonderland called L.A.

Enjoy it while you can because come July 1 order will have been restored, Garcetti will be BFF with everyone from Bill Clinton to Brian D’Arcy, Galperin will have his marching orders from labor and the party, and Feuer will posture and preen to the same political pretenses without even being told.

All’s well that ends well. Nothing really changes.

L.A. — you got to love it, the light and dark, the creative genius of it so visible in a new generation of artists, chefs, entrepreneurs and gangsters, so fading in an old guard that sees itself as so much better than the millions of minions so far below, the poor, the immigrant, and most of all the bourgeoisie they despise as nothing more than cash cows.

It has always been that way in L.A.

Nothing that happened Tuesday is going to change that unless you believe in miracles, believe that a man who has known privilege all his life, who believes that City Hall is “a temple of democracy,” a man who has trouble keeping his word will “rise to the occasion,” as editorial fantasists put it, and find strength and courage to stand up with love and respect for all for the greater good.

Unknown to world of self service that clothes itself in the noble language of public service, something great and wonderful is happening, mainly among the young in all their diversity filled with hope and mutual respect.

A new culture filled with promise is being born.  Like everyone who has ever been drawn to the place where dreams are manufactured and sold, their imaginations are lit by the myths of unlimited freedom and endless possibility.

It is not the discontent of the alienated, apathetic and defeated that needs to be tapped but the dreams of something better of those who seek their destinies without access or control by the world where all that talks is power and money.

It’s the beauty of the existential dilemma of living in L.A. now that the Grand Coalition of business, labor and civic elites that bet on a loser who, like them, was incapable of articulating a single idea, not even a single phrase, that contained a word of truth, of real hope.

Garcetti has barely a month to put an agenda on the table that sends the unions, the developers, the political apparatchiks, the big shots reeling back on their heels and inspires the forgotten and ignored.

We don’t need sound bites and pieties. We need leadership, bold and courageous.

If Garcetti wants to be President like most politicians, he needs to make his mark now or he will find he won’t even be mayor all that long.

Democracy isn’t about voting, especially when the system is so closed that it’s always a choice between the lesser of two evils.

It’s about empowering people to feel they matter and that they can be effective at achieving their goals individually and collectively to create a community that reflects their values, meets their needs and serves their interests.

This is L.A. and nothing can stop any of us in our pursuit of private dreams and personal lives wherever that journey may lead us. It’s our collective lives that are lacking.

Maybe that’s why we have been so indifferent, so myopic and self-absorbed, so disengaged that we let the forces of greed and selfishness in all their forms operate without impunity for the last three decades.

Personally, I set out five years ago this month to do what I could to make a difference.

I posted 1,910 blog items, drafted 161 others and killed 3. I started protests and activists groups, went to hundreds of meetings, created an online citizen journalism project. It was all for nought except to know in my heart that I did what I could.

Now, it’s time to get on my shiny new bike and start riding down the billion-dollar bikeway in the L.A. river channel from Winnetka to Long Beach even if it takes me five more years.

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , | 38 Comments

This Is Matrix City — Blue Pill or Red Pill: The Choice Is Yours

Posted on May 21, 2013 by

 

It really doesn’t matter how you vote today, whether you vote for a pixie like Wendy or a pixie like Eric, a user like Feuer or a mooch like Nuch, a swine like Zine or a right Ron named Galperin.

Or even if you don’t vote at all.

Because none of those people will be in charge come July 1. There has been a coup d’etat, bloodless and Invisible, at least to the naked eye.

The elite of the city, such as they are, are now fully in charge of the power and money and the political system.  There is no point of contention between them, no disruption from without that they cannot resolve satisfactorily for the furtherance of their vision and the enhancement of themselves.

What you think, feel, believe, want is no longer relevant. The cabalists have an agenda with all the answers.

City Hall may teeter on the brink of bankruptcy but the simple truth is that the leadership of the city has been bankrupt a long time.

This is a city divided, insiders and outsiders. The irony is those on the inside and those on the outside who are blind to the truth live in a dreamland indifferent to the crumbling the streets and sidewalks, the failure of our schools, the poor public services, the spreading poverty and lack of decent jobs – indifferent unless they can exploit the malaise to further themselves.

You are living in the “Matrix,” a world of delusion that has been pulled over your eyes or you can escape through the rabbit hole and embrace reality.

Red pill or blue pill — the choice is your.

You can remain oblivious to what is really happening around you or start to live .

You can choose the blue pill and wake up and believe whatever you want to believe, remain oblivious to what is really happening around you and never give a damn again about anyone or anything else, just like everybody else.

Or you can take the red pill and see things as they are, a wonderland of unlimited freedom and possibility where the tyranny of the majority holds no power over you.

The lie or the truth – the choice is yours.

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

My Sunday Column: Brains, talent, too much ambition — Paul Krekorian Angers Many in Little Armenia by Role in CD 13 Race

Posted on May 19, 2013 by

In the costliest and most vicious City Council race of the Los Angeles election season, the battle for Hollywood has shattered beliefs about Armenian solidarity, with Paul Krekorian‘s role seen as causing deep rifts in the community.

Little Armenia in East Hollywood is a key battleground area where Krekorian’s endorsement of labor union darling John Choi and the heavy-handed tactics that are being employed against Mitch O’Farrell, a popular council staffer, have enraged many local community leaders.

They claim Choi, a new resident of the district, with Krekorian’s help, hired Armenian campaign workers from Glendale to staff phone banks and walk door-to-door to confuse thousands of newly registered voters who are mostly immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

“Choi workers are telling voters they’re calling from my office and going to people’s homes and using my name and saying that I’m for Choi and telling old people that they’ll lose their low-income housing and benefits,” said Sam Kbushyan, son of a prominent Little Armenia restaurateur and the third-place finisher in a primary field of 12 who more than doubled Armenian voter registration during his campaign.

Choi, for his part, has repeatedly denied the accusations, claiming its actually O’Farrell’s workers misrepresenting themselves.

Kbushyan’s harsh words are repeated over and over by Little Armenian community leaders who are working hard to elect O’Farrell, a veteran staffer in mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti‘s council office who is highly regarded in the neighborhoods as responsive to their concerns.

Between them, Choi and O’Farrell got barely a third of the votes in the March primary. They have raised close to $800,000 combined, gotten $436,000 in public matching funds, and received, at last report, nearly $800,000 in independent expenditures, with Choi having better than a 2-1 money advantage.

“They’re calling Paul a traitor — it’s so unfair of them to ignore all that he has done for the Armenian community as a private citizen, a Burbank school board member, a state Assemblyman and now a councilman,” said Krekorian spokesman Jeremy Oberstein.

He suggested Kbushyan and others prominent in Little Armenia groups are not authentic community leaders and pointed to Krekorian’s original statement of why he was backing a candidate in the 13th District, especially one perceived as an outsider being promoted with union money to consolidate power on the council.

“John Choi has shown he knows what it takes to preserve vital city services like street paving, filling potholes and building parks despite budget cuts. He’s my choice for City Council because we need strong leaders like him in the tough days ahead,” Krekorian had said.

Others in the community offer a different take on why Krekorian, who represents a North Hollywood-based district in the East San Fernando Valley, would put his credibility on the line in this race.

“He’s trying to show to the unions that he did something they wanted, that he supported John Choi, so later, when he runs for mayor, they will support him. It’s all politics,” said Edgar Makhshikyan, a long-time resident who co-founded the Little Armenia Chamber of Commerce and heads the Little Armenia Homeowners Association.

“When Sam Kbushyan was the candidate we had no problem, we were all together and working hard for him and for our community. Then, after the primary, Paul Krekorian got involved and because of him, we have these problems.

In contrast to Choi, O’Farrell is seen as “a good person, an honorable person who has helped us every time,” said Garo Keurjikian, honorary mayor of Little Armenia and owner of a towing and auto repair business.

“I don’t want trouble, but Krekorian is dividing the community. It’s a dirty business. They just want to take votes from the old ladies and confusing people. They are doing the wrong thing. I don’t like that.”

In its endorsement of O’Farrell, the L.A. Times sounded similar concerns raised by the Little Armenia community leaders, noting Choi’s lack of history in the district and his deep union ties.

The Times said, “It was troubling during the primary when he promised at an endorsement meeting with the Service Employees International Union: “You are going to be on the inside. We are going to decide who to open the door for.”

For my money, that goes directly to why Krekorian unnecessarily got involved. I helped him win the special election to City Council after a long discussion about issues and values and watched him do all the right things for six months as he used his intelligence to learn the nature of the L.A. political game.

Then, he became its most eloquent and articulate defender of its most preposterous policies that ignored the concerns of residents, policies that served the unions, developers, contractors and the corrupt political machine itself, rising day by day to positions of greater importance and influence.

To my mind, he’s got that “lean and hungry look” that makes those with too much ambition dangerous. That’s sad, since he has the brains and talent to stand on his own and be a real leader, instead of a panderer to special interests.

(THIS COLUMN WAS PUBLISHED SUNDAY IN THE GLENDALE NEWS-PRESS)

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Community Activists, Glendale-Burbank, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Happy Days Are Here Again for City Treasuries So Bureaucrats Are Padding Their Paychecks

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

Here we go again — at the first sign of recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression, government officials are gearing up to line their pockets with taxpayer money.

The Burbank City Council took the lead last week by granting 100 department heads, managers and other non-union employees raises of up to 5%.

They even voted to give themselves 5% raises, but Councilman Gary Bric had a change of heart just before midnight near the end of a six-hour meeting, saying that “there are a lot of other people that are more deserving of that than we are.”

It wasn’t clear whether he meant city workers or the populace in general.

The justification for the pay raises put forth by interim City Manager Ken Pulskamp was that staff surveyed other cities in the region and determined that executive salaries in Burbank were 11% below the market average.

Ignoring individual merit and differences in actual responsibilities, training and experience of employees, the argument presented to the council was carefully sculpted to justify the raises because it’s in the “public’s interest” to have “motivated” managers and to keep the city “competitive.”

In fairness, it has been several years since these workers got raises and they started having to pay a fraction of their pension costs two years ago, an amount that doubled last year and doubles again, now, to 4% of their wages.

Yet, there is a lot that ought to be troubling about this.

Let’s start by noting it was this “competitive” argument that got local and state government in so much financial trouble during the last 20 years.

The real competition wasn’t to retain employees. It was the pressure on politicians from the unions that helped elect them, pressure to keep up with the public employee Joneses — a spiraling competition that escalates employee costs to the point that Burbank spends 80% of its General Fund on payroll and benefit costs.

One city gave cops and firefighters 90% pensions and then, like lemmings, everybody else followed suit. Same with accelerating pensions for civilian workers so they could retire at 55 with three-quarters of their highest salary.

Then there’s the competition to keep up with other cities by expanding health and other benefits, as Burbank did last week, including allowing the employees getting these raises to cash out unused sick leave and vacation time up to 250 hours a year, a 10% increase.

With a public hearing on the city budget coming up June 4, it might be worth taking note that General Fund revenue to pay for most public services is expected to increase less than 1% next year. And just a week before granting these raises, officials had to discuss ways of cutting $2.5 million — or 2% — from the budget.

Apart from setting a precedent that other Burbank employees, and employees of other cities, will surely take as a sign that the taxpayer money machine is flowing again, the really disturbing thing about this is the way it was sold to the City Council and the public.

“Burbank employee raises to save city money via higher pension contributions,” declared the headline in the Burbank Leader last week, capturing exactly the point city officials made by twisted logic in the staff report.

“The city will realize a total savings of $399,835 between FY 2011-12 and FY 2013-14, even with the proposed salary increase,” the report said, thanks to the increase in employee pension contributions.

Of course, that claim ignores the fact that employees were made to contribute to their pensions for the first time two years ago and the savings were already counted toward keeping the budget balanced. The raise effectively compensates them for their contributions.

In other words, they are wiping out the progress that was made to reduce runaway costs that have put some cities crashing into bankruptcy, the same runaway costs that have many others teetering on the brink.

Burbank is not one of those cities. It has a healthy economy, strong tax base and a low poverty rate, but it also is raising fees for public services and rates on utilities while staring at a $252-million unfunded pension liability for its workers.

At a time when the recovery is fragile, when so many in the private sector are losing their jobs and facing low salaries and benefits, when major structural economic changes are occurring — especially in the entertainment industry that is part of Burbank’s economic base — officials should think twice about granting pay raises.

This is a time for prudence, not irrational exuberance. Happy days are not here again, not yet.

(THIS COLUMN WAS PUBLISHED SATURDAY IN THE BURBANK LEADER)

Posted in Glendale-Burbank, Hot Topics | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Elect Mike Feuer as City Attorney — Who Better Than a Crook as L.A.’s Chief Prosecutor and Law Enforcement Officer

Posted on May 16, 2013 by

Putting weaklings without courage like Greuel or Garcetti into the mayor’s office is a problem, a big problem.

Putting a two-faced scoundrel like Zine in the controller’s office as the public’s watchdog when he’s nothing but a yapping Chihuahua is a joke.

But even worse is the near certainty that you the electorate, lapdog to the rich and powerful, will elect a criminal suspect as this second-rate city’s chief prosecutor and law enforcement officer. It is no laughing matter.

Back in the days when he was a City Council member, Feuer made the radical leftist Jackie Goldberg look a Republican and showed so little respect for the law and public policy despite his Harvard law education that he thought it was smarter to pay millions of dollars a year to people injured in trip-and-fall accidents on the city’s crumbling sidewalks than to repair them.

Somehow he fumbled the 2001 City Attorney election, losing to Rocky Delgadillo but found a new calling as a state Assembly member where he supported the spending sprees that have jeopardized California’s future, and backed gutting the California Environmental Quality Act for the benefit of AEG’s now deceased Farmer’s Field project and to squelch community concerns about transit projects in L.A.

His crowning achievement was authoring AB109 to empty the prisons of supposedly non-violent, non-sexual, non-serious offenders without effective monitoring or support – a radical reform of the criminal justice system that has allowed the freed felons to engage in murder, mayhem and rape across the state.

But none of those acts are criminal – just disdainful of the public interest.

No, the crime of Mike Feuer is this:

City Ethics Ordinance, Section 49.7.28.C, “Requests for Matching Funds Payments,”“A candidate who makes a request for matching funds payment and knows or should know that the request is false…is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall return all matching funds received as a result of the request.  If the candidate holds or is elected to office, the false request constitutes a violation of official duties and, if it is deemed appropriate by a court under Charter Section 207 (C), shall be removed from office.” — City Ethics Ordinance, Section 49.7.28.C, “Requests for Matching Funds Payments,”

What Feuer did was conspire with his political consultant John Shallman to make a mockery of public financing of political campaigns.

Under the terms of their deal, Shallman — who is desperate for cash since he faces huge tax liens and debts after being robbed blind in the Kinde Durkee scandal – agreed to take $1 as payment starting in February 2012 through March 5 of this year with a $50,000 bonus if Feuer won outright in the primary. At least that’s what they claimed when questions started being asked.

The value of Shallman’s services over those 13 months was between $200,000 and $300,000 but Feuer did not report it as in-kind contributions at “fair market value” as state law requires, a deceit that allowed him to stay just under the spending limit to qualify for $300,000 in public matching funds for the primary and even more than that in the runoff.

Feuer has shown his legal skills are not all that great in changing his story and double-talking his way around this problem.

He claimed he got “verbal” non-binding approval from someone in the City Ethics staff for a scheme that somewhat parallels the crimes Councilman Martin Ludlow committed in winning election in 2005 before being forced out a year later as he faced felony charges in both state and federal court.

Because Shallman didn’t report his in-kind contributions and now has a contract of a sort with Feuer (for $15,000 a month since their finagling was exposed), they potentially both face felony conspiracy charges, not just misdemeanors – not that anyone in an official capacity has shown any interest in doing anything about this.

The see-no-evil Ethics Commission took a pass on responding to formal complaints about the Feuer scheme. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich in the runoff against Feuer on Tuesday had to recuse himself, leaving it to District Attorney Jackie Lacey who responded by announcing she was endorsing Feuer for City Attorney — not investigating him for criminality.

That left enforcement of the law to private citizen and long-time community activist Laura Lake.

A little known provision of the City Charter allows for the public to act as a “private attorney general,” which the Ethics Commission says provides for “an additional layer of oversight, public involvement and accountability” and allows private citizens to enforce the City’s ethics laws if the city fails to do so in a timely fashion, usually meaning 40 days.

Here are key provisions of the city ethics rules in the Charter:

(2) Civil Enforcement.

(A) Any person who intentionally or negligently violates any provision of this section shall be liable in a civil action brought by the City Attorney or by a person residing within the City. Where no specific civil penalty is provided, a person may be liable for an amount up to two thousand dollars ($2,000) for each violation.

(B) Any person who intentionally or negligently makes or receives a contribution, or makes expenditure, in violation of any provision of this section shall be liable in a civil action brought by the City Attorney or by a person residing within the City for an amount up to three times the amount of the unlawful contribution or expenditure.

Injunction. The City Attorney on behalf of the people of the City of Los Angeles or any person residing in the City of Los Angeles may sue for injunctive relief to enjoin violations or to compel compliance with the provisions of this section. The Court may award a plaintiff or defendant who prevails his or her costs of litigation, including reasonable attorney’s fees; provided, however, that no such award may be granted against the City of Los Angeles.

On Jan. 18, Lake filed a formal ethics complaint. Six weeks later, Shallman claimed in an LA Times interview he was being paid only $1 with a bonus to be determined later.

On March 20, Lake received a letter from the Ethics Commission stating there are no records showing written advice or opinions about Feuer’s contract with Shallman.

A week later, she filed a lawsuit, alleging Feuer violated the law. The next day Feuer announced he was “voluntarily” changing his contract with Shallman because he’s such a great consultant – not because of Lake’s lawsuit.

In subsequent days, Feuer’s story kept changing.

One day, he said he “didn’t think it was necessary” to get the ethics staff’s verbal approval in writing despite clear language in the law that informal advice is not binding. Another day he claimed there was the $50,000 bonus provision in the original contract.

What really matters is that city ethics laws were created to provide a level playing field for candidates and to provide full transparency for campaigns in the city.

For too long, the Ethics Commission has handed down little more than slap-on-the-wrist punishments for violations. If Feuer gets away with this, public financing of campaigns will be dead and ethics laws will be decimated.

Even when Ludlow was forced out of office and prosecuted, he got off with probation and was celebrated as a hero by many of the most powerful and influential people in the city who raised funds for his legal defense.

In Feuer’s case, the best hope is that voters will somehow wake up from their dream world and reject this self-styled advocate of clean and honest elections and supporter of a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that opened the floodgates to unlimited campaign contributions.

If he wins as expected, he will have made a mockery of democracy and provided a fitting end to the pretense of the rule of law, not men.

Someday maybe Mike Feuer will be seen as the living embodiment of the triumph of the tyranny of the majority.

In the meantime, L.A. deserves to have a crook as their chief law enforcement officer, doesn’t it?

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Community Activists, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , , | 23 Comments

My Sunday Column: An idea whose time hasn’t come — Assembly Democrats Want Legal Immigrants to Serve on Juries

Posted on May 10, 2013 by

My head spun when I heard Democrats with their super-majority in the state Assembly slammed through a bill that would make California the only state in the nation to let immigrants, legal ones, sit on juries.

I thought, “What has America come to when, so soon after the Boston Marathon massacre, we want someone like Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a juror?”

But before I could get my outrage heated up, I found Katy Grimes, a writer on the conservative Cal Watchdog website, already had used the Tsarnaev line and concluded, “If you weren’t outraged over the previous bills affording illegal immigrants’ rights and liberties previously reserved for American citizens, AB 1401 should convince you that this Legislature is hell-bent on eroding what’s left of California.”

I’ve long supported immigrant rights and a pathway to citizenship, in no small part because it’s crazy to have millions of people without identities or records living among us while we spend trillions on measures to make us feel safe.

It passeth all my understanding why Democrats would exercise their absolute power to revolutionize the jury system ahead of all their other agendas: fix the schools, repair the infrastructure, ban cars, abolish corporations — there are so many true-blue targets of greater importance.

As much as we hate serving on juries, or even voting, I had to wonder whether we’ve gotten to the point that we want immigrants to fulfill our responsibilities as citizens.

As an intrepid pursuer of truth — or at least explanations that might be true — I started calling and emailing Assembly members who might shed some light on this mysterious move, starting with local Democrats who had voted for it.

Mike Gatto: Never heard back, maybe because I wrote some things he didn’t like.

Bob Blumenfield: Never heard back, maybe because I called him “2JobBob” for simultaneously running for re-election to the Assembly and for the L.A. City Council.

There were others as well, but nobody could provide any worthwhile insights, not even an aide to Assemblyman Adam Gray of Merced, the only Democrat who joined Republicans in voting against this bill. Gray took one look at it and thought it was nonsense — nothing to do with being a freshman from an overwhelmingly Republican district that almost never elects a Democrat.

I spoke with Assemblyman Don Wagner, a Republican from Tustin and vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee who was as concerned about the legislative process itself.

AB 1401 came out of nowhere, he said, as a “committee bill” without an individual sponsor, but it was done in violation of long-established protocols that such bills are bipartisan and technical in nature — not partisan and radical changes that require study and debate.

When Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Wieckowksi of Fremont called, he spoke at length about how hard it is to get people to serve as jurors (a point disputed by court officials), how women and blacks were once denied the right to serve as jurors, how there are a lot of smart immigrants and dumb citizens.

He quoted the great 19th-century observer of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, who noted how jury duty teaches people about justice and equality and is “the very best way of preparing people to be free,” and so on.

I tried to get him to bite on De Tocqueville’s key warning about American democracy, the danger of a tyranny of the majority inflicting its will on a minority, but he kept on rattling off reasons why this was an idea whose time has come.

So I scoured the Internet looking for pros and cons and the best I could find was the L.A. Times editorial calling it an “ingenious … interesting idea” but “in the end would move California in the wrong direction” — perhaps an idea whose time has not yet come.

The LA Weekly thought it was funny that juries made up of “the unemployed, retirees and neighborhood busy bodies” would be replaced by juries “of the people who sell used cars, wash dishes and twirl signs on street corners” — a comment that was clearly condescending and suggestive of latent racism.

It seemed like I was the only one shocked, clearly out of step with the mainstream. The only clue to what this was about came from the floor debate in which Speaker John Perez said everyone deserves a jury of their peers.

“This isn’t about affording someone who would come in as a juror something,” Perez said. “But rather understanding that the importance of the jury selection process of affording justice to the person in that courtroom.”

Immigrant juries for immigrant defendants — that’s what justice for all seems to have come to mean.

Maybe when the Senate considers AB 1401, it will take it to logical absurdity: Shouldn’t women have all-women juries, men all-men, gays all-gays, rich all-rich, criminals all-criminals?

Juries of our peers, justice for all — you’ve got to be kidding. This is California, not America.

(Published Sunday May 12, 2013 in Glendale News-Press)

Posted in Glendale-Burbank, Hot Topics | Tagged , , , , | 37 Comments

The Right Choice Is The Only Choice: Eric Garcetti for Mayor

Posted on May 7, 2013 by

I don’t know how there can be any question about who is the best person to be mayor of LA, given the choice between easiest to manipulate and easiest to intimidate.

Maybe as supporters – it would be incorrect to refer to them as believers – say Wendy is made of sterner stuff than she has shown so far in her long public career and maybe Eric has the capacity to rise above what he has shown so far in his long public career.  Maybe as everybody knows Wendy stands for nothing and Eric’s word counts for nothing.

But the choice is ours and the consequences are great.

As a muckraker and troublemaker, the only question for me is whether the bitchers and moaners in every part of the city, rich and poor and all the rainbows of so-called race and so-called ethnicity, can capture the ear of the one person who can move the public conversation and wield political influence all on his or her own.

Wendy Greuel is a decent woman; a feather dancer of sorts who always makes sure every part of her being is well-concealed. In a phrase, she is a butt-coverer who never takes a risk and so the rich and powerful and smart and caring – I mean those singular individuals of such great important who are at once richpowerfulsmartcaring and any other virtues applicable to the elite – know with certainty Wendy will do what she is told.

Eric Garcetti is not like that.

Those richpowerfulsmartcaring etc men and women of such great influence don’t trust him. I hesitate to say why but you need to know: They think he doesn’t really know who he is because he is sexually confused. If he was outright LGBT it would be OK with them. But the think that he is sexually confused – as if anyone who has ever lived wasn’t – makes him untrustworthy.

I don’t know or care about any of that. What matters to me is that he is so vulnerable and open as a person – perhaps because he is actually in touch with and expressing his sense of self – that anyone can get to him.

You may have to create a row. You may have to throw fits and tantrums and storm the City Hall Kremlin.

But anybody has a chance to get to Eric Garcetti, to make him listen, to make him do something. He doesn’t have to rise to the occasion as the elitists in the ivory towers so narcissistically put it.

He just has to respond to the clarion call of the disenchanted at least as much as from the whispers of the enchanted.

Not even as much.

Just sometimes.

Wendy cannot respond at all. She is not in touch with her own confusion so the doors and windows to her being are closed shut to all who have not met the qualifications of a woman of high standards.

There may be little hope for LA. But there is no choice for mayor.

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | 30 Comments

My Sunday Column: Standing up to the town bully — Glendale Just Says ‘No’ to the IBEW and Union Bully Brian D’Arcy

Posted on May 4, 2013 by

The sparse front page of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18 website expresses exactly the message Brian D’Arcy wants his members to get: Rotating photos of protesting workers waving “A DEAL IS A DEAL” signs.

It also features a “hot topics” box with a single four-year-old item about heroic workers, a one-sentence message with a mug shot of the union boss and a link to a story with the headline, “Union chief is wired into City Hall.”

The story is a three-month-old column in the L.A. Times by Steve Lopez calling D’Arcy “feared, coveted, respected, reviled” and talks about how the IBEW plans to spend millions of dollars to get Wendy Greuel elected mayor and put more compliant City Council members into office.

D’Arcy is the king of bullies and IBEW Local 18 is the club he uses to force the docile leadership of L.A. to surrender to the outrageous demands he throws on the bargaining table under threat of a strike intended to shut off water and power to four million people.

A lot of people call that blackmail. But extortion tactics have worked so well that D’Arcy — with 95% of the workforce under his control — wields as much clout in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power as the general manager. It’s a fact that helped him in contracts with municipal utilities in Burbank, Pasadena and Azusa — cities under pressure to match wage rates at the LADWP, where workers average $100,000 a year, a 50% premium over other city workers for the same jobs and a 25% premium over other utility workers in the region.

Nobody says “no” to Brian D’Arcy. Until now.

On Thursday, Glendale City Manager Scott Ochoa — after a year of being jerked around, threatened and harassed by D’Arcy and his minions during fruitless negotiations on an initial contract that long ago had reached an impasse — decided enough was enough.

He told the union the city was ready to unilaterally implement its last, best and final offer for Glendale Water & Power if the City Council agrees on Tuesday — an offer that includes a 1.75% pay cut.

Hooray for Glendale!

The pay cut doesn’t mean much will be saved this fiscal year, but it sets a lower salary benchmark for negotiations with the IBEW for next year. Martin Marrufo, the IBEW spokesman, did not return a call Friday seeking comment.

“The important part here is we are establishing a lower baseline and demonstrating our commitment to compensation and pension reform to all of our employees, that there are no protected classes,” Ochoa said. “And it signals to the community that we are equally serious in making sure we are negotiating for them in good faith. This is the city of Glendale, not the City of GWP.”

It’s a strategy not without risk. You can be sure that what happens will be watched closely by officials in other cities with IBEW contracts — even L.A., which despite its monumental budget problems, has won only modest concessions from other city unions in great part because DWP workers keep on getting richer.

In one of his first acts as mayor in 2005, Antonio Villaraigosa signed off on wage increases of up to 30% over five years for the DWP, and later for up to 4% a year even during the recession. It was a no-brainer for other unions to get 25% increases over five years in 2007.

Glendale has faced some cuts in services, but has also won significant concessions from its unions, even getting them to agree to pay some of the city’s share of pension fund contributions, and is in as good a position as any city to weather the continuing economic volatility.

But giving in to D’Arcy would endanger the deals and healthy relationships with other unions.

“We are not hell-bent for a fight,” Ochoa said. “What demonstrates that is we continued to talk with them, ‘OK, we’re at impasse, but for purposes of settlement, we’re willing to throw other things on the table.’”

It will be interesting, to say the least, to see how D’Arcy responds and the union explains what has happened, since it convinced a majority of Glendale Water & Power workers to join the IBEW with the promise of the lucrative wages and benefits enjoyed by LADWP employees.

It will be no less interesting to see how City Council members respond Tuesday night with the IBEW no doubt out in full force.

(This column was published in the Sunday Glendale News-Press)

Posted in City Hall, DWP, Glendale-Burbank, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , | 30 Comments

Public Be Damned: LAX Expansion and the Culture of Greed

Posted on April 30, 2013 by

In this the fifth anniversary month of my citizen activism, I thought the desolation of this election season and the futility of all that I have done – Saving LA Project, OurLA.org, LA Clean Sweep, 1902 blog posts and more than 100 newspaper columns – had silenced my voice.

And then a friend called to remind me the City Council today was taking up the long-delayed expansion plan for LAX, construction of a new north runway to accommodate super-jets at the expense of long-term disturbance of Westchester and other Westside communities and abandonment of a regionalized air traffic policy that would benefit all of Southern California.

It is an issue I’ve followed for 20 years or so and never understood why anyone in their right mind would try to salvage one of the world’s worst airports – landlocked and ocean-locked, bereft of public transport access – unless there was an ulterior motive that had nothing to do with the public interest.

The motive, of course, is the motive for everything that happened in L.A. for the last 150 years: GREED.

The business community, the labor leadership, the civic leadership are all aboard the plans for LAX, public be damned, congestion be damned, the environment be damned. There’s money to be made so why share any of it with the nobodies out in the Antelope Valley, Inland Empire or anywhere else.

Only Rosendahl (and his successor Mike Bonin) stood against the nonsense of the LAX “modernization” scheme if you discount the opportunism (Mayor) Garcetti and (Controller) Zine in casting safe “no” votes and the phony hand-wringing from the weak-kneed Koretz who rolled over as usual to the power structure.

The worst part is the EIR they approved 10-3 for the $652 million project to move the north runway 260 feet closer to residential neighborhoods for what LAX officials admitted was only a marginal safety increase, more convenience than safety in fact, totally lacks plans for traffic impact during years of construction that includes major re-routing of Lincoln Boulevard.

But who cares – more passengers means more jobs for hotel workers with their “living wage” deals, and more revenue for hotel operators blackmailed into those deals, more union construction jobs guaranteed under city-enforced project labor agreements, more business opportunities in the most congested part of the city, county and region instead of out in the boondocks.

It’s all about who profits and who holds the keys to power no matter how much harm is done to the quality of life for vast numbers of people.

This is what L.A. is about – money and power. It’s why the L.A. County Chamber of Commerce, the L.A. Civic Alliance, the L.A. County Federation of Labor all aboard to this high-flying flight to oblivion.

They are united behind Greuel for mayor and mostly for Galperin for controller, which is why Garcetti and Zine are siding with the begrudged community that came out in force with support from the city’s lowest paid unionized workers in the SEIU.

They have been united for decades now, feeding off the public, turning L.A. into a horror-show with the nation’s dirtiest air, worst congestion, bursting pipes and rutted streets, deteriorating neighborhoods, pervasive gangs, poor schools, soaring poverty, dying economy and a rapidly declining quality of life.

These are your masters. You are their slaves. You suffer the consequences of their actions, pay their bills and when it all gets to be too much, slink off with a whimper and whine.

L.A. – don’t you love it?

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Community Activists, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , | 41 Comments