Among the many reasons the mainstream press is dying is it has such a hard time telling the truth -- a problem I've long asserted is due to the rules of modern journalism imposed by corporations for just that purpose.
A case in point is Peter Hecht's story in the Sacramento Bee today under the headline "L.A. mayor's star on the rise again as higher office beckons.
The story backs into its thesis by noting the mayor's divorce scandal, flubbed school takeover and other problems tarnished his reputation but he's back in contention in the governor's race because he's easily going to win re-election and "leading again with passion and swagger."
"Despite questions of personal character, Villaraigosa has consolidated his power with public charisma and backroom chutzpah. With a month to go before the election, he has chased away serious challengers, vacuuming up campaign dollars despite the city's $1,000-per-person limit.
"He is a powerful politician with a brand name
across the nation in political circles," said Jaime Regalado, director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. "The perception is that he can do somebody harm if you get on his wrong side. Politicians who want a future in L.A. have pretty much decided not to challenge him."
OK, I'm being a litle unfair to Hecht, an excellent reporter whose article is filled with the negatives about Antonio Villaraigosa's leadership of the city but wraps them with a story line that makes political success more important than policy failure.
It's easier to tell the story that way than to seriously engage how a mayor who has raised taxes, fees and rates so high has run up a $400 million-plus budget deficit and failed to even address the city's most serious problems can hold such an iron grip on power for the benefit of a few special interests over the public interest.
The rules of corporate journalism lacks a strong point of view that competitive media have so reporters must feign objectivity, pull their punch. And that usually means hiding the truth as they know it by setting up a facile thesis and leaving it to readers to figure out what they're really saying, what they know to be the truth.
Columnists like Steve Lopez, writers for alternative papers like the L.A. Weekly, bloggers aren't handcuffed like that and have an easier time saying what they mean, at least to the point the facts support it. They are free to exercise their First Amendment rights.
Sunday's story in the L.A. Times under the headline "A Villaraigose-Weiss-Greuel troika would consolidate power at L.A. City Hall" has the same problem.
It points out Weiss and Greuel are "two of his most unwavering supporters" and cites the mayor's promise to hire 1,000 new cops (failed), takeover of the schools (failed) and build a subway-to-the-sea (you should live so long).
The heart of the story is this: "If all three win March 3, the Villaraigosa-Weiss-Greuel troika would usher in a major change in mood from the current environment at City Hall, where the three citywide-elected politicians have eyed one another warily."
That sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? No more bickering, no more conflict, no more of those nasty audits exposing the endless failures of City Hall to solve L.A.'s problems, to spend the public's money prudently.
The facts of the story support a different thesis: Antonio is buiding a political machine that will continue to bleed money out of the money and pass it through to special interests that are destroying the city with densification, luxury hotels and developments, digital billboards and sweetheart contracts.
I"m not criticizing the reporters. They did their jobs well enough but faux objectivity forces them to leave it to the readers to figure out what it means. And that requires people to actually read the whole story and to actually think about it.
How many people actually do that? Not many.
I worked in that environment my whole life and pushed against the restraints. I no longer have to do that. I'm free to say what I mean as well as I can. You know where I'm coming from. You can say I'm right or wrong or whatever you want about what I write.
And that's all freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion was ever about. We haven't really exercised those rights in any meaningful way for a long time but the Internet is changing that and none too soon.
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the National Enquirer.
Memo to Bruno's dad.
Grrrrrrrrrrr! If only there were a way to take a huge, big dog-size bite out of these dirty bastards who give bastards like Bruno and me and bad name.
They are the real four-letter words and we need a way to stop them in their dirty tracks...and fast.
I know who my mom is voting for and which issues she's voting against, but she's already howling that it won't matter, because her vote, which is on the right side of the issues is always out voted by the people who are scared into voting against their own best interests, or don't take the time to figure out what their best interest are.
Your friend,
G.
When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.
Sac Bee comment copy.
L.A.native sets the record straight. Tony Villar was barely average H.S.student who was a gang member from East L.A.. Never could pass the bar exam. He became member of the City Council and kissed everyones butt. He became mayor because Mayor Hahn had his hand out for pay to play on everything. Tony V is in bed with the unions, developers and special interests (syndicate money) so they put up the money and pushed for his election. He is their boy. The L.A.Weekly in depth report proves that he in on the job approx. 11% since elected. The other 89% he is in front of the cameras running around the country kissing butt to further his ambitions. He wanted to be the #1 Latino poster boy. All of his great plans have gone on to fail along with his dishonorable marriage.The 1 million potholes he claims are really the numbers of holes in his record. Mr. Hecht did Tony V's team send you a free ticket to L.A. City Hall and an all expense trip to Disneyland to write this floral arraingement?
Jack Weiss will do whatever the mayor tells him to. He is not an independent voice. He will make the city attorney's office into a bigger disaster than it is now.
Do NOT elect Jack Weiss!!!
L.A.'s New Mayor, Tony Villar
Who Is the New Mayor?
For starters, Mr. Villaraigosa's real name is Tony Villar. He was born Antonio Villar; the name is a combination of his birth name and that of his second wife, Connie Raigosa. No big deal; many people change their names. But a routine search of Tony Villar illustrates that almost no mainstream media source has dared touch an apparently sensitive body of accumulated history.
According to the Los Angeles Times, which endorsed Villaraigosa: "A Mexican American child of City Terrace, a largely immigrant community on Los Angeles' Eastside, Villaraigosa was raised by his mother after his father abandoned the family. He grew up in poverty and has said he saw his father beating his mother.
"After bouncing in and out of high school, he went on to graduate from UCLA and earn a law degree at People's College of Law."
While the report creates a positive impression, it's also grossly misleading. He bounced in and out of UCLA too, arriving in 1972 from East L.A. Community College and leaving in 1975, without graduating until 1977.
Villaraigosa is not an attorney. He failed the bar exam four times. Nor does the Times explain that the People's College of Law, a communistic institution, is not accredited with the California Bar, and applicants are required to have completed only two years of college education or to have passed a college-level examination. And of the LSAT, a standard entrance test to any law school, the college states that "PCL recognizes the cultural and sociological limitations of tests such as the LSAT."
Villaraigosa became a teachers union organizer, later won a state Assembly seat in 1994, and then was speaker of the state Assembly. He was termed out in 2000, ran for mayor in 2001, losing to James Hahn. He then won a seat on the L.A. City Council, assuming office in 2003, and now has been vindicated in his pursuit of the L.A. mayoralty, beating Hahn in a rematch.
As with most liberal politicians who are mouthpieces for teachers unions and against vouchers or school choice, his kids attended private schools.
The new mayor has a colorful track record. He still bears the tattoo "Born to Raise Hell." While at UCLA he took pride in being an affirmative action admit, later stating to students, "Some people have said I got in through the back door, but I left through the front."
He also has a radical background as the leader of the UCLA chapter of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA). In fact, he would be forced to renounce his association with MEChA on May 12, 2005, after pressure from the UCLA Bruin Alumni Association.
MEChA is pure and simple a separatist organization. It doesn't negotiate. Its founding document, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, states, "We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent," and declares that "For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts," and introduced the motto "Por la raza, todo. Fuera de la raza, nada." (For those of the [Hispanic] race, everything. For those not of the [Hispanic] race, nothing.)
He was a leading speaker at the January 1995 Latino Summit Response to Prop. 187 at U.C. Riverside, where Latino politicians, professors and activists gave racist, seditious speeches to about 500 attendees pledging noncompliance with the controversial law that would have denied public education, social services and health care to residents in the state illegally.
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/6/7/154251.shtml
With all of the things that are wrong with Measure B, is it possible that there is another that has been kept rather quiet: the solar panels to be used will not come from California manufacturers; will not come from U.S. manufacturers; WILL COME FROM CHINESE MANUFACTURERS??
I can't think of a single CA Democrat who I'd like to be governor off the top of my head. Isn't that sad? It's my party, I'm very proud of my party on a national level, but in CA we're in a lot of trouble and I can't think of one Dem who can lead us out of it.
Maybe Laura Chick. I do like those Dems who strive to expose wasted millions.
The other thing we need, even as much as a good governor, is budget approval reform. We need to rewrite the state constitution so a simple majority is all it takes to pass a budget, not 2/3s. It's got to be done.
Every year Sacramento is faced with a task that's hard to do: get 2/3s of them to agree on something. Every year it's a horribly difficult thing to do and yet, every year people are surprised it's so freakin' hard to do!
If we really want cooperation and less partisan stonewalling, it would help if the state laws facilitated that.
Just a little anecdotal tidbit:
Five years ago, I happened to be having lunch at a little restaurant in the Palisades where Villar was making a campaign stop. Didn't know much about him then...but I have a lasting impression of him now!
First thing I noticed was his 'retinue' of 6-8 'body guards'! Seemed so inappropriate in our quiet little community! Second thing I noticed was his appararent inability to put a cogent sentence together. He just had the typical canned buzz words, which meant absolutely nothing. It was obvious that he was nervous.
But the thing that I will NEVER forget is when one of the diners started to ask him about his affiliation with MEchA. He hemmed and hawed, stumbled and mumbled, and then excused himself to go to the men's room! We never saw him again because, instead of making a pit stop and returning afterward, he high-tailed it out the back door (through the kitchen)!
My friends and I just chuckled and remarked..."Well, that's the last we'll see of him"! LOL! Never in my wildest dreams did I envision the outcome!
In the interest of fairness to my own comment: Ron, when you say that the mayor has not managed to do some of the things he promised, we do have to accept the fact that he couldn't do those things because he couldn't get the money.
A subway to the sea, which I think should be a light rail to the sea because it would be so much cheaper and easier to repair in the event of an earthquake, is an idea that is about 30 years overdue. It should be built someday. But before they build that they need to open a hospital in South Central.
Let's face it, the city and state are in a vastly different financial place in 2009 than they were in 2005. I think more poor people need to be elected to government office. Poor people know how to trim a budget. The rich forget how.