Life is so unfair even for wannabe City Attorney Jack Weiss, the councilman with the lackluster record of public service who wants to ride th
e mayor’s coattails into the City Attorney’s Office.
Poor Jack has worked so hard to lock up the race without actually doing anything by raising a fortune from the same people buying favors from the mayor but people in his district and all around town keep referring to him as Jack Weiss(el) or Jack the Weasel.
And now Rick Orlov in the Daily News reports “Someone
bought the domain name jackweissforcityattorney.com and linked it to
the Recall Jack Weiss Web site that started more than a year ago.”
Weiss campaign manager Larry Levine — a master of political dirty tricks — laments: “We didn’t buy a domain name. It’s just a dirty trick. I guess someone thinks it’s important or clever.”
There are viable alternatives to Weiss in Assistant City Attorney Michael Amerian and Harbor area environmental attorney Carmen “Nuch” Trutanich. Videos of them talking recently to the Saving L.A. Project are worth watching.
It’s clear the real weasel is your man Carmen Trutanuch, because when you google JackWeiss for City Attorney, it’s THAT name which comes up. WHAT a coincidence!
…or perhaps it was one of the 20,000 people who hate Weiss, and signed the “RecallJack Weiss” petition. MORE LIKELY it was the person who runs the cite it links to: http://www.RECALLJACKWEISS.com.
poor jack. Such a rich family. Got him into law school and a shit job as a federal prosector. He climbs up Antonio’s ass. Then he figures, thanks to Larry Levine, he can run citywide. Incredibly, he might win, which should demonstrate, without any doubt, that we’re doomed.
That number of signators was never substantiated and in fact, Denise Whatever who was hired to run the campaign admitted they didn’t get nearly as many signatures as they’d hoped. You can be sure that that the small but bitter group in chasge did everything in their power to get the signatures. They didn’t submit them to the City Clerk to try to hide how few they actually got — claims to want to save taxpayer money counting them are a joke, as witnessed by other actions they’ve taken.
There are only a handful of people behind that and it’s so sad that they still have to resort to such childish behavior. Since they’re also clearly backing Trut, and make no bones about it, they’re clearly the ones who did this childish thing, like they’ve edited their recall campaign claims into his Wikipedia site over and over (isn’t that a little high school?), and are known to try to feed their allegations to every media in town, until no one responsible listened to them.
It’s really sad that Trut claims to be running on “ethics” and wants, with his buddy DA Steve Cooley, to take over the top lawyer jobs of both city and county, but he either accepts and condones this sort of unethical “support” If he didn’t actually arrange for his website to come up on any google of weiss’s, then he’s condoning those like 6:19′s childish and endlessly spiteful, unethical efforts. Don’t you realize that you people have only shot yourselves and your guy in the foot with this, before your guy even hobbled off into the race? You’ve lost him any credibility before anyone even knows who he is.
Dear 4:40 and 7:35.
The real dirty trick is for Weiss and Levine to pay staffers to blog that Trutan”I”ch (not Trutan”U”ch or Trut), which was intentionally mispelled to avoid a GOOGLE ALERT hit, is somehow behind the entire Jack Weiss recall effort and the websites that its 20K supporters started.
Long before Carmen Trutanich entered the race for City Attorney in December 2007, Weiss was taking money from developers, while creating traffic and enemies.
Weiss should stop taking dirty money, instead of using it to pay his staffers to throw dirt.
To see Weiss’ staffers work, look to other blog posts like the following:
1. See an “anonymous” comment to: “When lunch is more than just lunch” Los Angeles TimesMay 30, 2008. reference to “Trutanovich”
2. See an “anonymous” comment to mayorsamsister post on June 20, 2008, which references “TrutanUch”
3. See comments to Rick Orlov article. Same intentional misspelling in TWO diferent posts.
THAT is the real coincidence!
Wow, you people really are obsessive, aren’t you? OF course anyone who calls you out is a “Third Floor Spinner,” like anyone who doesn’t support Walter Moore is. Your comments on googling also confirm that it’s your little group of recall people who worry about getting your candidate onto as many search’s as possible — including Weiss’s. Like Levine says, if you really feel a need to do this kind of thing…
The domain name preemption and re-directing to the recall sites was clever and humorous.
It’s not going to stop Weiss or destroy his internet presence so it’s a story with much fuss for really just very little impact.
But the reaction to the story does show how much Weiss remains without friends in the public and probably in political circles, too, as more see that his unpopularity may just be contagious and putting some distance between them would be a good idea. He might have been passable as a CM if he started doing real work from the beginning and not try the Howard Hughes-recluse approach to constituency access.
While the article written by Rick Orlov was interesting and the one here on Ron Kaye is humorous, I think the comments posted here are very disturbing. To make reference that there is some kind of dirty political trick being played on Weiss is insane. I spent all of two minutes on Google and found the person who bought the domain names and the date they were were registered. I then went and spent two more minutes and found out the dates when the other candidates for LA City Attorney threw themselves into the race informally and officially.
The owner is clearly NOT a Weiss supporter, nor is the person a candidate for the City Attorney job.
I would hope that anyone who really wants the truth and truly wants to see the right person as the City Attorney would do a little reading and research before giving anyone the song and dance or making someone (Weiss) out to be a victim.
9:33 just makes his case stranger and stranger, with these self-referential denials. And to call this piece remotely “humorous” especially coming as it does on top of one a couple of days posted here calling Weiss “Public Enemy Number One,” no humor intended, leaves one to question what passes for “humor” among the bitter bunch who are involved in and try to justify this kind of thing.
Anything that annoys Jack Weiss IS humorous when it concerns a man who has no sense of humor.
More importantly, Weiss has shown nothing but disdain for his constituents, the rest of the City and even his fellow CMs.
Were it not for his support from the Mayor, one of the Council members would run themselves or recruit someone well known to run.
That being said, given Weiss’ miserable disposition and absolute arrogance toward and contempt of the voters, his lesser-known opponents have an excellent opportunity.
As a constituent of Jack Weiss, I’d say the bulk of his council term to date has been a “dirty trick” played upon me and my neighbors.
If anyone truly thinks that the only opposition to Weiss is from some closed circle of obsessed recall-cultists, then just come on down to my neighborhood, knock on doors and ask what people think of the guy. He is univerally loathed, his name is invariably met with a sort of world-weary smirk. People know when they’ve been rolled over and over by their supposed representative.
For those who know the “recall cult” theory is bs and repeat it anyway, then you’re obviously part of Jack Weiss, Inc. and deserve whatever dirty tricks come his way.
I supported Zev and St. Mike Feuer, too. But this Weiss is awful. He will drive liberal westside jews to vote for just about anybody who runs against him.
Hey Sam, I’ve seen you on various blogs and kind of know your general drift. (Funny name, by the way, and I assume not to be confused with the pock band of the same name or the Wild West Cowboy, but sounds like you’d like to conjure up all of these.)
Sure there are lots of folks angry about development and always have been — you mention Zev and Feuer and they both tried at first to keep it at bay, Zev infamously going along with those who believed that if you kill mass transit you’ll kill development, and look how that turned out. But Westside Pavilion and Beverly Center were developed under his watch and more. Then Feuer the same but much less effectively, and he managed to p o all the other councilmembers with his holier-than-thou attitudes so couldn’t deliver what he’d promised. Under his nose development went on anyway, and West Hollywood developed itself into the densest, most car-congested city in the West, second in the whole U.S. after only Manhattan, with its extensive subway system and good, relatively clean, and much-used by all demographics, bus system.
While West Hollywood and Santa Monica, self- styled liberal bastions of liberalism, kept on developing to gridlock, and building no new affordable housing as their old rent-controlled housing stock became decrepit and taken off the market, LA got the brunt of the through-traffic they attracted without the benefits.
(Paul Koretz, the most well-known of the candidates running for CD5, was all gung-ho for the WeHo development when he was there, and like every official in WeHo from then til now, made it clear they care absolutely zero about the concerns of hillside residents in CD5 directly north of Sunset Blvd. — WeHo ends 50′ north of the boulevard — or of Beverly Hills residents directly west, that Sunset gridlock spills into. He’s now claiming to be anti-development but his record says strongly otherwise. It was under his era that the House of Blues and Key Club were added, among other clubs generating all-hours problems for LA/BH neighbors, and the Sunset Millenium Plan approved which allows for the addition of a hotel and convention center to the Strip and more retail, with minimal parking. The current low-rise buildings that anchor the strip are zoned for huge-scale redevelopment in the possibly near future.)
Who else is running for the CD5 job? Candidate Robin Witter-Simom is attacked in CityWatch by Mike Eveloff, one key force behind the Weiss failed recall drive, for daring to write in an earlier article there that it’s not feasible to halt all future development, but she’d work to engage communities in dialogue with developers. (Which is already taking place in CD5 under Weiss’s office, from Century City expansion to Sherman Oaks.) Eveloff rips into Ritter-Simon very strongly for not toing his position, that nothing short of a total moratorium is acceptable. How realistic is that, given not only the track record of Zez/Feuer, the non-stop development of WeHo/Santa Monica without housing, the needs of some fine institutions like Wiesenthal Center to expand, and new State Assembly bills like AB1818 and a Housing Element taking things out of City Control and mandating affordable housing everywhere? I doubt any of the other candidates would fare any better than Ritter-Simon, and besides Koretz no one with a “name” seems willing to jump into the fray. They know that whatever Weiss is getting and worse will be lobbed their way after maybe a year’s honeymoon.
There is definitely frustration across the city with all these forced impacting on development, combined with LA’s need to keep competitive against neighboring cities which have developed much more while we’ve lost out on the tax revenue and gotten the impacts of their gridlock. The core of the recall people like Eveloff and the guy who uses his westside HOA site to endlessly blast Weiss, the anti-MTA Cheviott Hills people and others, have made it clear that their real issue is with the broader forces mitigating against zero development, and they’ll continue their battle against anyone who can’t or won’t deliver zero-growth. There are many people who, when looking at the big picture, think Jack’s done a very good job given the parameters, and has succeeding in significantly improving public safety for the district as well. I’m certainly not envisioning Koretz or one of the novices doing better, and worry that their learning curve will be huge.
Anyone else ever notice that Jack Weiss is almost always identified in print as “Jack Weiss, former federal prosecutor,” or “former federal prosecutor Jack Weiss?” I mean, as if “former federal prosecutor” is part of his given name?
Which begs the question – how many cases did Jack Weiss, FFP, (Or FFP Jack Weiss, as you prefer) actually prosecute? He claims that he has what it takes to be a law enforcement officer, that he has faced suspects in court (which is not the same as actually handcuffing them). But, what kind of suspects has he actually faced? And, how many, exactly?
Wasn’t he assigned to white collar crimes at the U.S. Attorney’s office? Was he actually in the courtroom, trying numerous cases? Or was it just one case? Or was his job to review reports and to decide if cases should even be filed, with somebody else taking them to the courtroom? Or, was it simply to accept plea bargains?
Or is he just a rich kid, politically connected enough to get a credential building and impressive sounding, yet non-exciting federal appointment? Just enough to convince the yokels that he has enough experience to get elected to City Council and become their self proclaimed public safety expert?
Anybody really know how much lawyering experience this guy has? And, aren’t there enough real lawyers in L.A. to serve as the City’s counsel?