Every morning at precisely nine minutes to nine, the ferocious dog my wife rescued from the bushes several years ago goes berserk.
It's the moment the pool motor comes up and the vent in the pool bubbles up for a couple of minutes.
Bruno, a pit bull and shar pei mix, apparently thinks he makes the bubbling stop with his incessant barking.

EDITOR'S NOTE: As honorary chairman of the Saving L.A. Project, I am going down to City Hall on Wednesday to object to the City Council going behind closed doors to discuss in private what is nothiing but a political fight between Controller Laura Chick and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. I hope others will join me in the council chambers to protest this unlawful closed door meeting that is a slap in the public's face.


Who are they? Your Los Angeles City Council, who else fits that description?

OK, they could be anybody elected to city office in a system that's so rigged an honest person doesn't stand a chance and, if they did by some miracle fluke into office, they wouldn't be able to stay honest very long.

Here's the story of the best political catfight in L.A. in ages -- call it "The Tigress vs. The Rock." Here's a City Council that prefers to do business in the dark under rocks and act like a pussycat in public and this is a story they want to suppress:

City Controller Laura Chick who's earned a reputation as a maverick crusader without quite trampling on the tulips of City Hall's corruption keeps on demanding City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo get out of her way and let her audit how he has handled worker compensation cases.

Calling herself "a tigress," Chick "insinuated that Delgadillo was trying to block the audit because he feared auditors might find that the workers' compensation division, including the hiring or outside attorneys, is inefficient and wasting taxpayer dollars," as the Times put it.

Not to be outdone, Rocky claims she's intruding illegally on his authority and is up to the kind of "political mischief" she's engaged in before. She has nothing but a "personal politically-motivated purpose" in seeking to conduct the audit, he says..

She said, he said...it started back in March when pro-gang Councilman Tony Cardenas wanted to derail the mayor's efforts to take over the city's failed gang intervention programs by questioning whether Chick would have the authority to ever audit the programs success.

Which is funny when you think about it because one of the criticisms of her is she refused to audit the L.A. Bridges anti-gang program -- an audit many believe would contain explosive revelations.

Rocky quickly issued a legal opinion that controller does not have the authority to audit programs run by other elected officials because it's not explicitly given in the city charter.
That same day, Chick allegedly questioned the legal opinion at an anti-gang group meeting and followed up by declaring she wanted to audit the workers compensation program -- something that is well-know to be out of control.

Flash forward to Aug. 11, when faced with renewed pressure from Chick, Rocky filed a complaint in Superior Court seeking a court order backing his position.

Chick told the Metropolitan News-Enterprise: "What is he afraid of? What doesn't he want the public to see?"

Enter the Council. The very next day Councilman Jack Weiss -- the wannabe City Attorney who has a hard time actually getting to council meetings and casting votes --  intervened by proposing an emergency motion that has led to Wednesday's closed door session intended to make this political quarrel go away while keeping the public as ignorant as possible.

Weiss, as usual, wasn't actually at the meeting to introduce his motion or even vote for it but the courteous Greig Smith did his job for him while Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel, who loathe any public quarreling as much as the mediocrity of their colleagues, felt uncomfortable with the public knowing what's going on so they co-sponsored Weiss' phony effort to play the absentee peacemaker.

The heart of the motion says: "There appears to be significant confusion as to the intent of both commissions and the meaning of the language that was ultimately submitted to the voters in this regard. Legal action between two City elected officials is an extreme avenue to resolve disputes and spending taxpayer money, including the hiring of outside counsel for the Controller that would be required if this litigation proceeds, should be a last resort, All other avenues for resolving this issue should be explored. It is imperative that the Council receive a complete briefing from both the City Attorney and Controller and explore options for resolving this issue in a manner that best serves the public."

 

Despite some talk about letting voters decide in the March primary, Councilman Dennis Zine couldn't keep his mouth shut about what was really up -- headlines that let the public know just how messed up city government really is. That kind of thing could destroy the whole dirty political machine, bankrupt developers, force workers to earn no more than their worth and lead to actual public servants replacing the self-servers who now hold public office.

 

"It's fodder for talk shows, but does it accomplish anything? I don't think accomplished anything," Zine declared.

 

Which brings us to Item 15 on Wednesday's calendar. The council, refreshed from two weeks of vacation that included party time in Denver for many of them takes up the motion behind closed doors about how to make this political issue go away by pretending it's a legal issue.

 

There is no excuse for a closed door meeting except for the cowardice of the council to stand up in public and say what they mean.

 

This is a council that engineers unanimous votes with back room deals, routinely squelches debate on public controversies, inflicts rules for public meetings on neighborhood councils that they don't obey themselves and refuses to listen to the public's concerns while pandering to special interests who keep them in jobs that are better than anything they could earn in the public sector.

 

That's why I'm going down to City Hall on Wednesday to challenge the legality of going behind closed doors.

 

Let Delgadillo and Chick make their case in public.

Let the council debate and discuss it in public.

Let the public be informed about who -- if any of these people -- is serving the public interest and who are tools of a corrupt system that must be reformed.

 

By Katharine Russ
Correspondent

The Declaration of Independence is the nation's most revered symbol of liberty -- holding that is the people's right to abolish the government and replace it with a new government that will act in accordance with the will of the people.

The opening words of our Constitution, "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address echoed the same sentiments, "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Those who comprise the government of the City of Los Angeles have completely forgotten these principles as they bow to special interests for the sake of money and power.

For many months I have been reporting on the antics of Home Depot in Sunland-Tujunga. I have met and interviewed dozens of residents and community leaders who truly care about the area they live and shop in.

Plain and simple, there are inherent dangers posed by the nature of this business -- air quality, traffic, noise, water pollution, the safety of school children -- all of which would, irreparably, damage the general welfare of the people in Sunland-Tujunga.

Yet, their elected officials are too blinded by greed, too scared of losing corporate contributions, and too stupid to see what is beneath their very noses -- a community of people begging for representation from those they elected.

Consider Rocky Delgadillo and his ties with Latham & Watkins, the attorneys who are suing the City on behalf of Home Depot.

Latham & Watkins gave many, many thousands of dollars to Rocky's campaign.

Latham & Watkins worked with South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) to write Rule 1401.1 adopted in November 2005. This is the very law written to protect schools from the type of business that Delgadillo struck a deal with after the City Council voted to halt the project.

As he and the L.A. convention delegation come home to picket lines at LAX, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced this morning that he has convinced baggage handlers and other SEIU union members who work for private contractors at the airport to return to work over the busy holiday weekend and resume negotiations.
"In these difficult economic times for the airline industry and for hard-working Angelenos at the airport, we must come together to find a solution that meets the needs of workers and the airline industry, the mayor said in a statement.
Here's the full press release:
 

SEIU makes Labor Day Weekend News: Federal probe, LAX strike and the altruism of public service
One of the key elements in news judgment is proximity: Like there's a murder on the Westside and the Times gets excited so the next thing you know every crime on the Westside is big news.
In this case the story that's got proximity starts with the Times breaking the story of how Service Employees International Union's biggest California local made six-figure payments to firms owned by relatives of its president, Tyrone Freeman.
It's a total embarrassment for the one labor leader in America who actually organizes workers, Andrew Stern, and a series of developments keep the story alive: Officers ousted, FBI investigates and today we learn Democratic Congressman George Miller blusters like he really cares and is going to do something about it.
All that makes the Labor Day weekend strike by SEIU Local 1877 at LAX more interesting. The baggage handlers, security personnel and janitors want 50 cent raise on the $10.50 an hour they earn plus health benefits from the private contractors they work for. So there's going to be delays and confusions on the holiday weekend.
And those stories lead me to the Labor Day weekend commentary at City Watch by SEIU Local 721 leader Julie Butcher who represents the lowest-paid city workers actually has the brass to declare: "No one in public service does it for the money."
OK, I'm as guilty as anyone of using hyperbole to make a point. I like and respect Julie but she knows better than to argue that getting a sweetheart contract from her pal the mayor and supporting his efforts to raise taxes all the time are done for altruistic reasons.
It's like the mayor explaining his selling the city to special interests by sayiing: "Sure, I stole but I stole for you."

With a hearing set this afternoon before the South Valley Area Planning, Clear Channel has backed down at the last minute and withdrew its controversial application to put a much-hated electronic billboard up in Encino.
Perhaps Clear Channel has decided to be a good corporate citizen and renounce the incredibly lucrative deal it was awarded by the mayor, city attorney and City Council for no other reason that it's a cash cow to their political campaigns.
No, that isn't it.
Are they afraid of Gerald Silver of Encino Homeowners and his oft-proven ability to mobilize strong community opposition to schemes that destroy the quality of life in the neighborhood?
Or maybe the company figured out that the commissioners would be run out of the Valley of they approve the billboard at 15826 Ventura Boulevard, a block west of Haskell Avenue?
The only certainty is that hardball players like Clear Channel aren't suddenly going to respect the community and so it's up to no good. Count on it.
The company offered no explanation but is expected at the 4:30 p.m. hearing today at the Braude Center in Van Nuys. Here's Clear Channel's email to the city billboard.pdf.
The L.A. Weekly's Christine Pelisek did an excellent item yesterday on the citywide effort to fend off the mass invasion of electronic billboards that flash brightly all night long distracting drivers and disturbing the peace.
It's one of the most blatant examples of City Hall's crimes against the people.

Let's have a party -- millions in small change found lying around City Hall
If your house is like mine, there's little boxes here and there with coins lying around that could add up to enough for a pizza or something on a rainy day.
Imagine how much is lying around City Hall? $3.8 million is the number City Controller Laura Chick came up with. And she only looked at about half the pots of money in one department, Public Works, when there's 700 special funds hiding the public's money in various departments.
The biggest chunk of change is sitting in the Griffith Observatory Trust Fund which has $3.3 million left over from the restoration project.
Actually, Public Works paid $5.4 million in labor costs on the project that should have been reimbursed but it bungled the budgeting so it gets stiffed out of $2.1 million even if it listens to Chick.
Then, there's the $957,852 sitting idle in inactive accounts that have been all but forgotten -- or at least ignored and unmonitored.
"There is no reason millions of dollars should be sitting gathering dust especially when we are seeking to raise fees and taxes on the public," Chick said, in urging every department to look for hidden pots of money.

So is all that small change going to lower fees and taxes -- don't hold your breath
Chick suggested all Public Works' small change be moved to General Fund to ease the burden on taxpayers but that's not going to happen if past performance is any guide.
Two months ago, she offered 18 recommendations on how the General Services Department could save energy and money in city buildings and turn the money over to the General Fund. The department responded a month later, saying, "Thank you for the recommendations...there will be no impact on the General Fund."
It appears the savings will be eaten up having to hire consultants and staffs to figure out how to save energy.

It's hard to believe how this could be happening after all the headlines and trials and mayoral directives but it's true -- the give away of public money to public relations firms for jobs that city workers are paid to do or don't need to be done is still going on.

Last month, it was the L.A. Harbor officials who got caught red-handed ignoring the mayor's order and agreeing to hire two PR firms for $1.6 million to tell truckers new rules were coming to cut down on pollution.

Now, with documents I obtained under the California Public Records Act, we learn that Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) has been doing the same thing dating back to 2005 when Antonio Villaraigosa came to power and kept in place Jim Hahn's directive that ended the use -- and abuse -- of PR contracts that were nothing but payoffs for "other" services rendered.

Amazingly, the contracts I obtained -- and there may well be others in a subsequent release of documents -- show they were awarded without competitive bidding by keeping the deals just below the legal limit that would have required making them public at the time.

When things are done to keep the public from knowing what's going on, I like to use the word secrecy. It makes it sort of sinister and it's accurate.

Now I don't know whether these deals were a secret from the mayor or his staff but if I supported a ban on something that was useless and tainted by scandal in the past I'd be mad as hell to find out my orders were being disobeyed by people who work at my pleasure.

Of course, if I did know about it or didn't really care, I might do as the mayor did with the Harbor contracts when they became exposed to the light of public knowledge -- I'd cut the initial payoff back to say $350,000 and look for opportunities to extend or expand it.

And under those circumstances, I certainly wouldn't hold anyone responsible for defying my orders.

Maybe when the mayor gets back from Denver or campaigning in New Hampshire or raising money somewhere, he'll have a different view of these LAWA contracts.

The mayor of some small town out in the desert somewhere stumps for Obama in Pueblo. Colo
Jimmy Hahn, L.A.'s former mayor if you remember him, might not have inspired the masses with his laconic style but he did attract a true believer in veteran political consultant Kam Kuwata, long-time adviser to Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a lead organizer for the Democratic National Convention.
So you can imagine the self-control it took for Kuwata not to gloat a reporter asked him about Villaraigosa being snubbed in Denver and kept off the main political stage.
"I'm personally not aware that he made a request to speak," Kuwata told the Times. "My understanding is that he has been one of the tremendous surrogates for Sen. Obama."
Nothing cold about that, no hint of bitterness lingering from 2005 or Villaraigosa's passionate support for Hillary Clinton in the primaries.
And why would anyone think Villaraigosa's being snubbed just because the closest he can get to Obama is a private meeting with adviser Valerie Jarrett. "I've been asked that question 100 times," said Villaraigosa. "I'm going to Pueblo, Colo., this week to campaign for Barack Obama."

Many county social workers are "either liars or  really bad  drivers"  -- you decide
That's the question posed in a Daily News headline on a story about an audit of the perpetually broken Department of Children and Family Services.
Long plagued by serious problems in looking after the county's neediest kids, auditors in recent years have exposed the department misspent millions on unnecessary and overpriced supplies, violated county spending limits, paid unwarranted overtime and bonus pay to employees and allowed social workers to spend tens of thousands of dollars on meals and entertainment, including tickets to the musical "Wicked."
The newest audit found there's an epidemic of auto accidents among the 3,000 social workers who use their own cars and are reimbursed by the county.
Forged signatures, four claims in a year for  $6,000, a fender-bender that cost $10,000, $5,800 for two off-duty accidents and "dozens of claims for windshield damage were paid out at an average cost of $950 when the usual cost is about $265."
But fear not, the county is going to fix the problem: It's going to have a windshield repair company come to DCFS offices to make the repairs. That's keeping an eye on the problem

The best of times, the worst of times -- which is it?
New census figures show poverty in L.A. County has dropped sharply thanks to "a booming economy, gentrifying neighborhoods and soaring housing prices," according to the Times.
"Bucking a national trend, Los Angeles County's poverty rate dropped notably between 2000 and 2007, the data showed, with the percentage of residents living below the federal poverty level falling from 17.9% in 2000 to 14.7% last year."
But wait the Daily News reports that "Census Bureau data released Tuesday showed that nearly 4.6 million Californians, or almost 13 percent, had incomes below the federal poverty line in 2007, up from about 4.4 million the previous year."
And home prices are still falling and 30 percent of the people in Pacoima are living below the poverty level and 50 percent of the Northeast Valley doesn't have health insurance.
What are we to think?

Editor's Note: This item comes unadulturated from the Associated Press at the Democratic National Convention.

Democrats rent asunder _ over chairs, football

By DEVLIN BARRETT

DENVER (AP) -- There wasn't blood on the floor of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, but there was a deep scratch, and maybe some bruising.

Laura Chick, the controller for the city of Los Angeles, was sitting with California delegates when she grabbed an Associated Press reporter's arm.

"This man just took my chair, knocked into me, look at this!" she said, showing a bright red nick on her arm, and then pointing to her ankle, which she said he had stepped on.

The man in question, who would not identify himself, said: "I am a Clinton delegate and these Obama delegates are mistreating us," prompting groans and eye rolls from those seated around him.

Chick was furious but said she will handle it.

"If he does it again, I'll kick his" rear end, she said.

___

Delegates love to talk about how great their own states are, but they will admit, when pressed, which are the worst states.

Chick allowed that California was best, of course. But when asked which state was worst, pondered a minute and said: "Alabama, I guess, I just have this feeling that there is lingering prejudices there, but maybe that's totally unfair on my part."

Nearby, the Ohio delegates easily picked out the worst state.

"Oh, Michigan, definitely. It's a good thing they didn't seat us near them," said Rick Neal of Columbus, Ohio, citing the great rivalry between the two states' premier college football programs.

Too bad lawyers don't have to take an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when they argue their cases before judges.

If they did, Antonio Villaraigosa's long-time campaign treasurer Stephen Kaufman would not have told the panel of state appellate judges the things he did today or he'd be worried about perjury charges instead of the handsome fees he'll charge the League of Women Voters and the L..A. Chamber of Commerce he represented.

What Kaufman told Presiding Judge Candace Cooper and her two female judicial colleagues -- who I assume have not now nor ever been involved with the League of Women Voters --- is that Measure R extending City Council term limits and banning lobbyist contributions to their campaigns was a "good government" reform.

"It's working,'' he said, "to reduce the influence of lobbyists and special interests on City Hall."

He said it with a straight face and a sober voice but I could hardly contain myself. In the two years since millions of dollars were raised by lobbyists and their clients to hoodwink the public about Measure R, only one thing has changed: The lobbyists don't have to write checks anymore.

Actually, a second thing has changed: The insider political  culture of  City Hall  has  gone from being pretty corrupt to totally corrupt where everything is for sale. Measure R emboldened the system; they knew if they could sell it as reform, they could sell the public anything with enough money.

Tuesday's hearing was the culmination of an amazing two-year effort by community activists David Hernandez and Ted Hayes to keep alive their legal challenge which they did with help from advocates of term limits and other genuine "good government" organizations and individuals.

The heart of the legal argument is whether the state Constitution's ban on multiple subject state initiatives and legislative measures applies to a charter city like L.A. And if it does, whether there is any logic that brings together as a single subject a ban on lobbyist contributions and giving council members three, instead of two, terms.

I wish I could say that the judges were as ready to embrace applying the Constitution's single subject requirement to L.A. as they appeared to be willing to find false the claims that lobbyists and term limits had some legitimate connection.

It's always risky to try to read the minds of judges but my money is on them holding their noses and ruling that laws against public corruption and corruption of the political process don't apply to L.A.

As Kaufman said: "Don't substitute your own value judgments for the people of L.A.'s."

Kaufman argued as if influence peddling were a thing of the past. It used to be that council members -- most of whom have spent much of their adult lives in city government -- didn't know the way to the bathroom without lobbyists leading them by the hand. So they took favors and campaign money and looked forward to the day when they too would become lobbyists richly rewarded for their ability to get what clients want.

But with a third term, those days are over. As Kaufman told it, the council members are now experienced and skilled legislators who don't have to worry about future employment and are forbidden from taking favors or cash from lobbyists -- apparently the one and only class of people intent on corrupting City Hall.

Does the mayor's campaign treasurer not know what promises are being made to raise the millions that go through his hands to fund Antonio's campaigns?

Does he not know that former Councilman Richard Alatorre -- an admitted felon among other things -- is one of the mayor's closest advisers while representing unions, taxicab companies, Home Depot, Las Lomas and a lot of others in need of real insider help. And if he's read the Times, he knows Alatorre didn't even register as a lobbyist until a year after Measure R passed.

Did Kaufman not learn anything when he and Villaraigosa got fined by the Ethics Commission for campaign funding violations?

Another sweetheart deal for pals of pols, another public subsidy, another lawsuit...
It's an axiom of journalism that man bites dog is news because it's out of the ordinary while dog bites man is not because it happens all the time. That's what makes it so hard to make news out of City Hall's sweetheart deals for insiders -- they happen every day.
Still, Howard Fine and Daniel Miller in the L.A. Business Journal found a way to tell the dog-bites-man story of a CRA subsidized development in a poor part of town on the site of a former Goodyear Tire factory by showing how it "has become a classic example of how difficult it can be to redevelop in South L.A."
Efforts to put a shopping center on the property have languished for 18 years and there's still a few rounds to go as site's tenacious owner Stanley Kramer tries to fend off the CRA's eminent domain proceedings.
The CRA has promised a $14 million public subsidy to a non-profit called Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles which played a key role in helping Jan Perry to get elected to the City Council and naturally she wants her friends to succeed in life so Kramer is being pushed out of the way.
Kramer, who owns scrap metal recycling businesses, has his own non-subsidized plan for a shopping center at the site at Slauson and Central avenues along with his receycling facility. He's spent millions fighting against the confiscation of his property and the turning it over to other private interests. The case has caught the eye of groups fighting against eminent domain abuses but Kramer is running out of options.

Battle lines are drawn over NBC-Universal'a $800 million expansion plan

The Universal City project would include a new home for NBC studios which would move from Burbank and create 1.5 million square feet of new commercial, office and residential space on Lankershim Boulevard, adding at least 14,000 car trips per day to the already clogged southeast Valley.
The Daily News' Connie Llanos reported on the release Monday of a long-awaited environmental study which fans the flames of community opposition  which  already is intense throughout the area.
County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky flatly says the project is just too big and needs to be scaled back while City Councilman Tom LaBonge sounds like he's flatly opposed but in fact has left himself wiggle room, saying: "It's a dream to think that you can fit so much onto one little banana-sized lot."
The city will do anything to be able to boast it's actually home to NBC-Universal -- or any other major corporation for that matter -- and drools at the tax revenue the project will generate so the only question would seem to be how much the project will be downsized and how much will be invested in freeway and street improvements.
And that will depend on how well organized the community is.

Come on Rocky, call off the dogs and listen to the community's voices

Operating under the auspices of City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office, the Dispute Resolution Program has done its best to make a bad situation worse by siding with Home Depot and making a mockery of mediation efforts.
The point person is mediator Barbara Goldfarb whose lack of communication is matched only by her insensitivity. She set up the meeting last night to set up a meeting on the Jewish High Holidays to figure out how to run roughshod over well-organized community opposition.
No Home Depot protesters outnumbered the hand-picked participants in the meeting and made it clear that they're not going to be ignored no matter how hard the city tries.
Here's some of the voices the city doesn't want involved in the process thanks to Fox Channel 11 which covered the event:

Exposing another chink in City Hall's pay-to-play government for sale practices, activists fighting for the South Central Farm claimed a major victory Monday when developer Ralph Horowitz emailed city planners he will conduct a full environmental impact report before constructing a Forever 21 warehouse.

Activists atttibuted the development to a story in the Times a week ago in which David Zahniser reported Forever 21 funneled $1.3 million in campaigns supporting Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who has allowed the community garden to be sold and demolished despite hie earlier promises to preserve it.

The EIR could take a full year to complete and gives South Central Farmers time to reverse the city's actions. City planners are awaiting formal notification from Horowitz.

In the meantime, the activists are meeting tonight and prepared to send letters calling on City Controller Laura Chick (chickfarm.pdf) and state Attorney General Brown (brownfarm.pdf) to investigate the deal that led to sale of the farm allegedly below market value to a private interest even as campaign money was flowing into City Hall from special interests connected with the deal.

Quick, call the cops -- law-abiding people are protesting City Hall's lawlessness again
Here's hoping the mayor and his entourage of city officials take a break from the endless rounds of lavish parties in Denver to hear a sermon from Barack Obama on his guiding principles of unity, hope, respect for everyone and participatory democracy.
OK, I'm joking. There's no chance they'd listen to crap like that when they're adopting the tactics of dictators around the world.
First, it was calling the cops to harass the Jamiel Shaw family for daring to hold regular Sunday gatherings in South L.A. at Leimert Park to drum up support for a crackdown on illegal immigrants gangbangers.
Today, it's the bourgeoisie in the horse country of Sunland-Tujunga who are getting the city's Wyatt Earp treatment.
The issue it how the Dispute Resolution Program -- it should properly be called the Dispute Escalation Program -- is treating the citizenry and their objections to Home Depot's plans to convert a K-Mart store in the community.
Opponents turned out in mass several months ago for a "day of dialogue" event and made it clear what they want but City Hall is hell-bent on forcing Home Depot down their throats so the DPR set up an invitation-only, closed-door event tonight and hand-picked who can participate in planning a future conference intended to justify approving the store's opening.
For objecting to the secretive process, the Sunland-Tujunga Alliance activists were accused in writing by the so-called DPR mediator Barbara Goldfarb of "disseminating false and misleading information," and warned that they their "irresponsible behavior in issuing its unauthorized public invitation has forced the Dispute Resolution Program to request police presence at the meeting."
The City's "bullying tactics" don't seem to have intimidated the Sunland-Tujunga gang. They're staging a mass protest starting at 4:30 p.m. today at their Town Hall, 7747 Foothill Blvd.

Discontent with City Hall turns viral -- South Central Farmers revive their protest movement
One of the truly sinister attacks on community life was City Hall's selling out the South Central Farm that was an important sign of the area's vitality, a symbol of what could be accomplished.
But money talks and the mayor took $1.2 million from popular clothing maker Forever 21 which is building a warehouse on the site where the farm was.
Tonight at 7 p.m. at the community center at 1702 E. 41^st St, farm supporters will meet to demand restoration of the farm, an investigation of the Forever 21's contributions and to plan a boycott of the firm's products.

Showdown on the City Council's deceitful effort to cling to their positions
City Hall may be void of elected officials this week but their futures will be on the line Tuesday when the state appeals court hears a challenge to Measure R -- the phony ethics reform measure that did nothing to stop lobbyists from corrupting the political process and gave City Council members a third term.
The case will be heard at 10:30 a.m. at the 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division 8, 300 S. Spring St.
Community activist David Hernandez somehow managed against all odds to keep the case alive for two years and to gather broad support from community groups and government reform organizations.
Key issues are how the council created the measure to give themselves three instead of two terms in office and violated the state constitution by making it a two-issue initiative by linkiing ethics to term limits.
A victory would blow open City Hall politically and create a real chance to elect candidates who actually would be public servants instead of the pseudo-royalty we have who treat the people as their servants.
Seven of the 15 council seats -- all the odd-numbered districts except Bill Rosendahl's -- would be open if the court strikes down Measure R and that would create the opportunity for a citywide movement to change the face (and faces) of City Hall.

Councilman Jack Weiss has gambled his political future by hanging out in the Antonio Villaraigosa's back pocket for years in hopes the mayor's coattails will carry him into the City Attorney's Office despite his lackluster record of achievement and public service.

The other day the Daily News editorialized on City Hall's "lack of political will" to get rapists behind bars because it hasn't found the money to clean up the "backlog on the lab work it needs to do on DNA samples from 7,100 rape victims."

The editorial said "saber-rattling from headline-attentive politicians" like Weiss are guilty of political posturing instead of getting the job done. "Weiss has the bully pulpit to push the issue, but he hasn't followed through" to get the $10 million needed for DNA testing.
Today, Weiss responds with a letter to the editor:

Re "Lack of will" (Our Opinions, Aug. 19):
It's disappointing that the Daily News' coverage of the DNA backlog has been limited to one story and one editorial, because DNA is a constant priority for me. As promised, every week I lead a discussion in the Public Safety Committee on the DNA backlog and cold hits, but like the rape-kit backlog, these hearings haven't gotten the attention they deserve. For six years, I've made DNA a priority. Just in the past year, I got crime lab staff and found funding for outsourcing 400 backlogged rape kits. Last year, I gave the LAPD $100,000 from my office staff budget to test 100 rape kits because this issue is and always will be a high priority for me. - JACK WEISS, Los Angeles City Council member

A feisty, frequent commenter, Louise Clarke Stone, called the letter to my attention and offered her own letter to the editor:

I am shocked -- I tell you -- shocked.  Jack Weiss reads the newspaper and actually responds to something other than his cell phone?  Weiss must have actually attended a Council meeting and, as usual, was bored with the public comment portion of the meeting.  I guess this is a demonstration of Jack Weiss throwing down the gauntlet in his bid for the position of City Attorney.  Well, Mr. Weiss, as usual, I am underwhelmed with you.  The City has put up with Rocky for all these years and now you think you should get your chance -- no way.  You have been allowed to insult the "public" of the City of Los Angeles for too long already.  I vote "no on Weiss for LA City Attorney" and encourage others to do the same.-- Louise Clarke Stone

Tom LaBonge loves Griffith Park more than life itself but that doesn't mean we should save it from development
That's the extraordinary position taken by Councilman Tom LaBonge in the face of efforts to declare L.A.'s greatest urban asset an historic-cultural monument to provide legal protection against the many schemes to turn it into Disneyland.
The city's Cultural Heritage Commission voted yesterday to move forward in considering the massive park for protection but not before LaBonge got to make his point that city officials have big plans to develop the park for commercial gain of their friends.
LaBonge supports the historic-cultural designation for the park's buildings "but not an entire park," said Renee Weitzer, the councilman's chief of staff and chief planning deputy, according to the Times.
"There are many unknowns that need to be researched," she said, raising concerns that the designation would make city projects in the park "unnecessarily difficult, more time-consuming and costly."

It's safe for kids and old folks to walk the streets -- L.A. 's pols are getting high in Colorado on luxuries provided by special interests
Stop complaining about all the meetings City Council members cancel and all the travel the mayor does to raise millions for himself -- if they're not here, they can't hurt you.
Most of the city's elected officials, formerly known as public servants, are heading off to the Democratic National Convention for an orgy of self-congratulations and enjoyment at some two dozen lavish parties and other entertainments paid for by unions, corporations and everyone else who wants to buy their votes.

The self-destruction of the Times' reputation continues without any help from owner Sam Zell
Times' insider-blogger Kevin Roderick at L.A. Observed got the scoop on the latest development in the tawdry story of fired Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez and his love-hate obsession with PR flack Kelly Mullens.
He sued her, claiming she got him fired by lying about her role promoting Hollywood mogul Brian Grazer as guest editor of Martinez's Opinion section. It was a crackpot idea and her lawyers says he is a crackpot who needed to be restrained by court order to stop him from stalking her after she dumped him.

UPDATE: The Cultural Heritage Commission will consider a proposal today from the Griffith J. Griffith Charitable Trust to designate Griffith Park as an historic-cultural monument to protect it from city efforts to develop it. The great-grandson of the man who donated the park to the city in 1896 will make the presentation at a hearing at 10 a.m. in Room 1010 at City Hall.

This is a complicated story of promises betrayed, public trust trampled and ethics ignored -- the kind of things that take place every day, in one way or another, when the city's people stand in the way of the politics of City Hall.

It is the stuff that sleepless nights are made of for ordinary citizens trying to preserve what's good in their communities, the stuff that happy paydays are made of for those on the inside of a bankrupt political culture.

It sweeps in priceless American Indian artifacts and the city's oldest museum, the giveaway of public money to private interests, the corruption of the Griffith family's gift of a great "people's park" to the city and the web of insider relationships that are so much a part of L.A.'s "Chinatown" history.

Mostly, it's the story of what's killing L.A., the story of leaders that operate in secret and put private interests ahead of publc interests, the theme that runs through the heart of L.A.'s history for 150 years, and of the disregard for the needs, values and interests of local communities.

The focal point of this particular drama is the Southwest Museum campus in the Mt. Washington-Highland Park area where community activists are battling the Autry Museum which has assembled a high-powered team that includes respected architect Brenda Levin, the high-powered lobbying firm Latham & Watkins and PR man Steve Sugerman, the City Hall insider convicted in the DWP/Fleishman-Hillard scandal.

"The fight to save the museum is at the crossroads where politics meets culture in Los Angeles," says Daniel Wright, the local attorney who helped the effort to preserve this community treasure for years and with activist Mark Kenyon has put together a remarkable website called The Biggest Black Hat in the West..The Autry National Museum's Theft of the Southwest Museum."

There was an astonishing collision at that crossroads at a 4 1/2-hour hearing on Monday on Autry's plan to expand dramatically in Griffith Park and put the Southwest to death as a museum a century after it was born as the heart of the area's identity.

Autry CEO John Gray declared at the hearing he had "saved the Southwest, and put a plan in place to make it viable on a day to day basis."

But not as a museum. Instead, its collection -- worth between $300 million and $1 billion, far more than the Autry's --  will be put on display in the expanded Autry's proposed "Southwest Galleries."

To many in the audience, the plan to save the Southwest Museum dropped like a bombshell: The public will pay the bill to end the Southwest's life as a museum.

Under an extraordinary deal, the Los Angeles Community College District quietly agreed to use money from its $3.5 billion bond issue on the Nov. 4 ballot to renovate the Southwest Museum and use it as a satellite campus, thus relieving those costs from the financially-burdened Autry.

The deal was cut without community involvement or discussion and inserted as a line item in the bond issue by College Trustee Mona Field, according to the Arroyo Seco Journal.

"The bond measure plan came as a surprise to participants" at the City Hall hearing, it reported.

Members of the Friends of the Southwest Museum Coalition pleaded that the Autry's 2003 takeover of the Southwest contained a commitment to keep the museum and its collection together and the building's conversion to a school "could jeopardize the Southwest Museum's position on the National Register of Historic Places," said historian Charles Fisher.

Coalition co-chair Nicole Possert, a preservationist, told the hearing officer:  "The Southwest is an icon that can once again be lifted to the level of the Observatory: "When the taxpayers paid for a Gold Line Southwest Station, they were not paying for an educational facility, they were paying for an (active) museum."

The Black Hat blog headlined the latest twist in the plot this way: Coalition Reveals Autry Plan to Shift Costs to Rehabilitate SW Museum to Los Angles Taxpayers.

"This bait and switch by the Autry demonstrates a reckless disregard for its fiduciary duties to operate the Southwest Museum as a separately identified and independently run museum institution," they wrote in a post today.

The Autry's website took a decidedly different view of the situation in a posting under a small banner promo labeled "A New Plan."

"The City of Los Angeles and the Autry National Center have begun an important public review process for the Autry's plan to modernize and reconfigure its Griffith Park facility. The modernization plan provides greater access to larger segments of the collection, especially the Southwest Museum Collection, which has been hidden from the public for decades."

The drama over the Southwest Museum goes back to the 1990s when it fell on hard times and no one paid much attention until the Autry made its play, boasting that it had $100 million in assets and would come to the rescue and restore the Southwest's glory.

Activists claim that the Autry inflated its assets 25-fold and actually had less in assets than the Southwest. They have filed complaints with the state board that regulates accountants over the financial statements the Autry used and with the City Ethics Commission against PR man Steve Sugerman.

The Black Hat blog tells the back story of what unfolded:

I spent my whole adult life earning a living in mainstream media and the last four months working for free as a blogger so I offer myself as something of an expert on what's going on: Corporate news media still have a long way to fall while the blogosphere has a long way to rise.

Corporate media face unsolvable problems.

Advertisers have fled to new media. Readers, particularly the younger high-consuming audience, has no use for them. Few news executives have any experience working in highly-competitive markets having spent their careers managing virtual monopolies while executives being brought in from competitive industries have no clue about journalism except what they've read or seen in corporate news media.

Then there's the problem of costs. Quite simply, salaries are out of whack with the declining value of the product in the marketplace and eliminating staff further reduces the value of the product. It costs too much to send out a full camera crew. It costs too much for newsprint and delivery.

From my point of view as a newsman, the biggest problem -- one that I understand much better now as a blogger -- is the form itself is hopelessly broken.

When I started as a cub police reporter, half the papers in the country were going out of business because the industry was unable to compete against TV news. The old guard of reporters and editors were a rough lot, poorly paid and not well educated but they had a nose for news and knew how to get people to talk.They drank a lot and loved being out on the streets chasing stories and when their bosses pissed them off, they could cross the street and work for a competitor.

The new generation, of which I was a part, believed we were joining a noble profession and could earn a decent living doing work of great importance to society. The reality was that a whole new set of rules were being imposed in the name of the unattainable and intellectually dishonest ideal of "objectivity." 

Corporate executives running a monopoly with 30 to 40 percent profit margins had no motivation to ever rush into print or to allow any but the most skilled columnists to write with a strong point of view. Papers became homogenized and pasteurized -- in a word boring. Journalists became pretentious and easily manipulated by the armies of PR operatives employed by business and government.

Those days are gone and are never coming back. Many papers will fold. Others will merge or form partnerships that would violate anti-trust laws if it were not for the fact that newspapers and TV news to a lesser extent are obsolete.

Now, look at the blogosphere. Costs are miniscule. Most people blogging earn little or nothing. Bloggers say whatever they want whenever they want to. There's no bosses. Anyone  can do it. The blogosphere is totally democratic, free enterprise at its best -- and its worst.

The worst is the lack of time and skill to actually do much reporting. Bloggers live off of what the media produces, what other bloggers produce and what they generate out of their own because of their specific areas of interest.

The best is that there is actually more content and a richer variety of content from more sources -- available faster and in real time -- than there is in newspapers that are always a day late except for the odd exclusive.

True, the information from bloggers is sometimes dead wrong, usually incomplete and speculative and it's often hard to separate fact from opinion.

But the bloggers I follow in L.A. work amazingly hard in most cases and are getting better with experience. Their audience is growing along with their reliability. Far more stories are available from bloggers every day on politics and community life in L.A. than the professional media produces.

And bloggers and the people who comment on blogs fight with one another on their values and points of view. There's a public conversation that is growing stronger and broader day by day.

Take the story of the massive government raid on Leimert Park in South L.A. on Sunday in which the Jamiel Shaw family became victims of harassment because they had a table set up to pass out water and chips while drumming up support for tougher laws on illegal immigrant criminals.

The first report from the Shaw family which I blogged about sounded like an attempt at intimidation by the LAPD and other city officials who have done their best to ignore the groundswell of support for Jamiel's Law.  Many other blogs noted the report.

The next day another blogger reported LAPD officers from the local station were not involved. That was followed by another blogger's report that it was General Services cops and the City Attorney's office leading a city-county task force coming down hard on illegal street vendors.

Today, Councilman Bernard Parks whose district includes Leimert Park denied prior knowledge of the raid and demanded a full investigation, an aide told Zuma Dogg.

To the best of my knowledge TV and the newspapers have ignored this story although radio talk show hosts jumped all over it.

So is incomplete information as it happened, information that's updated and challenged by multiple voices, not better than no information at all?

News in real time affects the course of events and the consciousness of the public. News long after the fact has as much impact as a tree falling in a forest with no one around.

To answer the question I posed at the outset, newspapers will survive in a shrunken form of decreasing importance.

The blogosphere will see consolidations of bloggers and major improvements in quality and credibility in the next few years and revenues will increase. Skilled journalists will earn at least some of their income blogging and reporting on the Internet and have a lot more fun doing it with their own subjective points of view out in the open than they had working in the corporate media environment.

I know I am.

Former LAUSD School Board President Caprice Young is resigning as head of the California Charter School Association to become an an executive with Knowledge Universe, a private education company founded by Michael and Lowell Milken.

Young was credited with leading then Mayor Richard Riordan's efforts to reform L.A.'s public schools and with leading the statewide charter school organization's efforts to set up more than 300 charter schools with 100,000 students.

She joins Santa Monica-based Knowledge Universe as Vice President, Business Development and Alliances working with national and global business leaders to identify, develop and implement innovative education approaches in the K-12 education sector, according to a press release.

The company provides tutoring and other services to implement the federal "No Child Left Behind Law" as well as services to online schools and home schools.

Times gets scooped on feds probe of Rocky -- it's Sam Zell's fault
Clearly, there can't be any other explanation for the San Francisco Chronicle of all papers scooping the Times on the federal probe of City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo -- it's got to be Zell's fault, isn't everything?
At least it seems that way if you listen to KCRW and KPPC and all the coverage they've given to blaming the Times' decline and fall on the guy who bought the paper a year ago instead of the people who ran it for years.
Columnist Tim Rutten doesn't go that far today in his sour grapes column. Instead he makes the odd assertion that the FBI has the moral obligation to go public and announce it's investigating Rocky -- which is funny since the Times has lived off of anonymous federal sources stories for years.  It must be Zell's fault the feds fed it to the Chronicle this time.
That said, the Times had half its sadly depleted staff working day and night on the story and throws around the names Diane Castano-Sallee and her minority outreach firm and Helen Mars and her printing company as people questioned in the investigation that appears to be focused on Michelle Delgadillo, Rocky's wife with the bad driving record.

Another day, another L.A. "feelgood" law that will be selectively enforced
You got to have a laugh at the County Supervisors passing a law to hold parents liable for the cost of cleaning up after their kids spray-paint graffiti all over the place.
Even Supervisor Gloria Molina suggests the goal is to shake up parents who pay no attention to their kids rather than actually hold them responsible.
And that's the problem: Why not start enforcing the laws and actually holding parents responsible for truancy and neglecting them to the point they join a gang for something to do.
Twenty years ago, Tom Bradley suggested cracking down on irresponsible parents and the howl was so great, he never brought up the idea again.

Even as they were spending the city into a $500 million deficit four months ago, your City Council members came up with yet another bright idea to make your life better and the mayor wholeheartedly agreed: Every cat and dog in L.A. would have to be spayed or neutered, no exceptions without paying heavy penalties.

Of course, talk -- like City Hall's selective enforcement policies -- is cheap. In this case, they were so cheap in fact they provided no funds to enforce this law.

That should surprise no one since the city doesn't even enforce the requirement that every dog must be licensed every year.

Law-abiding citizens clearly are as much a rarity as city politicians who expect the laws they pass to be obeyed.

Back in May, Controller Laura Chick estimated there's only 125,000 law-abiding dog owners and as many as six times that many who are scofflaws -- which made people like my wife feel pretty foolish for obediently licensing Bruno, the beast she rescued from bushes before he killed someone.

In a city so cash-strapped it's imposed charges on just about everything honest people do and seeks to make them pay even more to save the souls of hardened gangsters,  it seems like getting their dirty little hands on the $9 million a year lost from not enforcing the pet registration law would be enough motivation.

But no, this is L.A. and as Chick showed in an audit Tuesday absolutely nothing has been done to fund the mandatory spaying and neutering law for cats and dogs and the Animal Services Department has done nothing to educate the public or implement the law when the grace period ends in October.

"Though Animal Services is charged with enforcing the mandatory spay and neuter law, it does not intend to do so," Chick said in her audit statement.

In other words, it's up to you to decide whether you want to obey the law or not -- like just about everything City Hall does to selectively punish the law-abiding while letting the scofflaws do whatever they want.

I suppose some of you NIMBY types and middle-class malcontents have a problem with that. If so, why don't you post other examples of the city's SCOFF LAWS or selective enforcement.

More bad news for Rocky
Rumors circulating for several weeks that the FBI was poking around City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's personal finances finally burst into the print -- in San Francisco.
The Chronicle got the story because FBI agents were sent down from the Bay Area to avoid putting L.A. agents in the awkward position of investigating a law enforcement official whose office they frequently work with.
The story is short on details and long on background but asserts the "probe began after Delgadillo was criticized for allegedly using city resources for personal benefit."
Rocky has suffered a series of embarrassments involving his use of city staff to run personal errands for him and his wife Michelle's driving problems such as not having a license and smashing up a city-owned car which her husband had the city fix.
More serious questions arose when he refused to disclose clients his wife was consulting for.
The City Attorney's Office issued a strong denial of knowledge of the probe and said any allegations of wrongdoing were "nothing more than trash."

Mixed news for LAPD
* Celeste Fremon at Witness L.A. followed up on the harassment of Jamiel Shaw and was told  by the Southwest Division watch commander that the LAPD wasn't involved in the raid as the family claimed. Cops from General Services and officials of other agencies were, which still leaves open the question of why the park where the Shaws have been holding court every Sunday was raided and how officers and others conducted themselves.
* For the second time in recent months, the LAPD was caught lying and a criminal case thrown out. The Times reports accused killer Saul Eady was freed after three years in jail when a judge dismissed the case because LAPD Det. David Friedrich, the key witness, was proven to have falsely testified about a stakeout. The D.A.'s said it wasn't a lie, just a poor recollection.
* Sweet revenge for Chief Bratton with outspoken and often obnoxious LAPD critic Najee Ali pleading guilty to trying to bribe a witness in his daughter's criminal case. He got four years in prison. Bratton more than once called Ali "one of the biggest nitwits in Los Angeles."

Jamiel Shaw's report of how the LAPD and other city officials swooped down on Leimert Park on Sunday and broke up his attempt to get signatures on petitions to put his proposal on the ballot to force the cops to crack down on illegal immigrant criminals.

According to the account on Mayor Sam, the patrol cars, motorcycle cops, a police helicopter  along with Sanitation Department, Parking Enforcement, General Services, the Health Department raided the park Sunday afternoon and closed down the Shaw family's weekly petition effort.

"Suddenly, the park was surrounded with Los Angeles Police Officers," Shaw reported. "Some in plain clothes and some in uniform. At least 7 or 8 black and white cars and a couple of police vans, if not more. They started with our family.

"Asking for identification and asking for our social security numbers. We showed our identification, but we refused to give our social security numbers to the Police Officer. The officer was not happy with this and said, "You know, I could give you a ticket for blocking the sidewalk'".

Imagine asking proof of a Social Security number from a man who lost his son to a senseless attack by a notorious illegal immigrant gangster and wants the city to use the full force of the law against people like his son's alleged killer.

Where's the civil liberties lawyers, where's the Police Commission, the chief or the mayor. This calls for a full investigation to determine if Shaw's account is true and for those responsible to be held accountable no matter where the trail leads.