The Attorney General of the State of California and the District Attorney of the County of Los Angeles both want your votes June 8 to move them forward on the road to higher service, to greater opportunity for public service.
But do wannabe governor again Jerry Brown and wannabe state attorney general Steve Cooley deserve your vote on the basis of their vigorous efforts to end the the blatant corruption that infects every agency from City Hall to the County Board of Supervisors to the schools and community colleges?
The answer is as plain as the higher taxes you’re paying one way or another and the shrinking of services you are facing.
City Hall is my beat and I’ll stick to that for the moment and the issue of freebies, gifts that our elected officials take as if born to royalty with all its special privileges. They all take all sorts of gifts and freebies from expensive meals with fine wines at the Pacific Dining Car and Mozza to name a few to trips to Super Bowls and tickets to Lakers games.
If they are aren’t on the take, it’s because they are so irrelevant nobody would even buy them. Corruption in LA politics is that pervasive.
The king of takers is Antonio Villaraigosa. As ineffective and out-of-touch as he is, he is still the mayor and certainly not irrelevant.
Phil Willon in the LA Times, despite being scooped on the story by TV reporter John Schwada, examines years of records and offers several examples of blatantly illegal gifts the mayor has taken like tickets to the Oscars, Dodgers and Lakers games and others.
“(He) has sat courtside next to movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg at three Lakers games at Staples Center. He has cheered alongside Tommy Lasorda and Dodgers owner Frank McCourt in the owner’s box at Dodger Stadium. Rarely has he missed an awards show: the Academy Awards, the Grammys, the Emmys and the BET Awards –anywhere there was a red carpet in Los Angeles, odds were Villaraigosa was photographed standing on it.
It’s no surprise that the mayor attends many of the city’s premier sporting and cultural events. But Villaraigosa acknowledged this week that he goes to some of them free of charge. He said he considers those appearances to be part of his official duty to promote and represent Los Angeles.”
Read what I bold-faced again: “He considers these appearances to be part of his official duty to promote and represent Los Anegles.”
Has there ever been a clearer expression of regal privilege than that?
The mayor believes that everything he does from going to the bathroom
to making love, to imbibing the finest foods and wines and taking
courtside seats worth thousands of dollars is part of his official
duties as mayor.
Thus, he doesn’t have to ever report he took
gifts which should lead to heavy fines if ethics enforcement agencies
were doing their jobs or broader local and state investigations if those
who bestowed such costly gifts were also getting favors from the royal
mayor.
Do the endless tax breaks and other favorable treatment
awarded to Hollywood or to developers or others who get handsome
benefits from city actions that have the mayor’s signature not
constitute bribery if he has taken advantage of their personal freebies
and generosity?
Truth be told, they are all in on the take to one
degree or another. The system itself is corrupt, so corrupt, that
taking bribes by local and state officials is seen as normal and to a
great extent been legalized by them.
Inside the bubble of
consciousness in political circles, honesty and integrity are words in a
foreign language they do not understand.
It’s gone on a long
time but never to the degree it has reached today, which explains to a
great degree why the city and state are in such dire financial straits,
why we are seeing hopes for the future dashed as our jobs disappear, our
businesses decline, our taxes rise and our schools and infrastructure
deteriorate.
We are in trouble.
But we are not crooks.
They are, and King Antonio is the biggest crook in town.
The fact there are so many allegations, suspicions, and innuendos, is enough to cast a cloud over every action the Mayor and/or the de facto Mayor take. This Administration now is in trouble, and it would be interesting how it extricates itself from this abyss. Remember Nixon? ” I am not a crook.” Famous last words. BTW, I am certain Schwada has tasted blood, he is on a mission, and he is very good at it.
Who is going to indict him Cooley? Brown? Nay.
city hall mayor and any one that works for city hall i all ways i say they are crooks and liars no one sacramento to the white house will look what this crooks are doing the democratic pary have become what pesident nixon was in watergate there is no more morals and they dont care what you say is all about them and there unions and there special interest but the big one is coming the american tea pary , i am a latino and there is no way in hell this lefth wing radical liberals are goin to take over america my father dint go to ww11 and defend us for this trash poltiticiand the war have just begim in america .
Does he pay taxes on those free tickets. They have to be reported as income, especially the second ticket for his girlfiend which can’t be justified as official business.
10:19pm, stay tuned. Of course he is not declaring the freebies to the Ethics Commission, less to IRS. Could not afford to pay the taxes.
10:26.
My point: this mayor can’t afford this extravagant lifestyle on his salary.
So who’s paying? And what are they getting in return?
But unfortunately the so called journalists have no interest to investigate this. Plus since he’s a latino, they’re all afraid to be branded racists.
PC run amok, this is what we’ve got.
This is an all telling look at what a no class, low life gangster the Mayor is. People who have class and aren’t cheap who make good money don’t try and get freebies like this. They have standards and they have integrity something the Mayor lacks. He behaves like a gangster from the hood always trying to put one over on you. He’s embarrassed the city with all the negative publicity he’s had in the last year. I would urge Cooley, Trutanich to go after not only the Mayor but all the city council members who also get freebies like Dodger tickets and not reporting them. I hope reporters continue doing stories like these.
Who’s the guy in the photo next to him? What a perfert scowl.
On the left, Napoleon Politics, on the right Napoleon Entertainment. Birds of a feather.
Remember Tony’s advisor, named ACE..with a moniker like that it invites curiosity…..
Didn’t Al Capone go to Alcatraz for cheating the IRS.
When Tony Villa is ousted from office, either due to being recalled or the natural voting process, can he PLEASE take LAPD Chief Beck and Assistant Chief Mike Moore with him?! All three of these guys are criminal idiots!
The obvious answer here is to have the Fair Political Practices Commission investigate ticket-gate.
I don’t understand how this guy can flaunt the law without even a slap on the wrist, and the company who gave him the tickets isn’t sanctioned?
My guess: the company is a big political donor and no one wants to take the first swing.
Mr. Cooley? Mr. Trutanich? Where are you?
Got back from Hollywood and noticed a huge John Frieda Salon trailer blocking the #1 lane right in prime spot on Hollywood Blvd. I asked the DOT guy how long has it been there and if they had a permit. THe DOT guy said the trailer has been there for an entire week. I want to know if that trailer which by the way was having hair stylists comb hair to the public paid for the permit fee or did Garcetti waive that for John Freida? That permit for one week would cost about $100,000. The trailer made traffic much worse too. I wonder if there was a campaign donation for this? Good questions we should find out.
Did anyone else notice the little American flags on Friday around the horse shoe? I didn’t see any Mayor proclamations for a solider or anything to celebrate Memorial Day in Los Angeles. Kinda of hypocritical for the council members to boycott American jobs then wave American flags. You drive to other cities like Burbank, Pasadena, Culver City and see tons of American flags and banners honoring soliders. Too bad Los Angeles honors everything else.
The solution is in today’s piece by George (“Another Tax For Our Worker’s!”) Skelton. Cut a bit and tax a lot! The state “needs” more revenue! Then our officials can BUY the tickets!!
George never really explains why people working here ought to be flayed to subsidize the travel and hotel costs to hold “academic conferences” for ethnic studies and english professors; why UC Irvine law school got funded (just what we need-another law school and its parasitic professors) and FREE tuition for its entering class; why UC’s head makes over $800,000 a year with his retirement package, …
….why state workers contribute less than 6% to their own pensions (if that); why law schools still publish those endless and silly academic journals that no lawyer reads (the Law reviews),including the UCLA-Alaska law review;
…why we still are hiring people for the state govt.,; why states, counties and cities committed to opposing age discrimination allow its perfectly able police, chp and firefighters to retire at age 50;
…why our prison guards make so much…
…why so much of the state court’s resources go to reviewing endless, frivolous petitions by convicts that are tediously reviewed and almost always denied…
…why the state employee unions oppose all the efforts to cut the cost of state employees by layoffs, furloughs etc., which all private industry has done…
But George has not lost faith. While our city falls apart, our mayor is at basketball games…our legislature wants to borrow even more…they need more money!!!!