EDITOR’S NOTE: Newspaper coverage of the indictment of Councilman Richard Alarcon and his wife on voter fraud and perjury charges have generated a lot of criticism. Walter Moore today tore apart the Daily News story headlined “Support for Alarcon Remains Strong” while the LA Times editorial upset Bruno, LA’s Watchdog.
Bruno’s favorite political operative is Rahm Emanuel.
He is so Brunoesque. The White House chief of staff is better looking but definitely part pitbull like me. Maybe it’s because he’s from very un-laidback Chicago. Who knows?
In the new Vanity Fair magazine, Rahm, who apparently works 24-7 and never sleeps, describes Washington as “Fucknutsville.”
Can you imagine what he’d call Los Angeles if this was his home base?
Case in point, this morning I sniffed at the Dog Trainer and couldn’t help but notice this morning’s editorial on the indictment of City Councilman Richard Alarcon for perjury and voter fraud
Talk about mealy-mouthed! I couldn’t help but leave my scent all over the newspaper.
The lede (that’s how us news hounds spell the lead sentence of articles) goes like this:
“Maybe it’s finally time for Richard Alarcon to go home, if only he could figure out where that is.”
Go home? Maybe it’s time for Richard Alarcon to go to jail! The guy is accused of lying about living outside Council District 7 that is supposed to represent.
It gets worse – much worse.
“If the councilman is convicted he should, at least, be booted from office.”
That’s it!
This guy has been leveraging the system and laughing at the voters for his entire political career.
And what’s worse is that The Dog Trainer knows it!
“It’s worth noting that Alarcon easily trounced his opponents when he returned to the council in 2007, and it’s just as noteworthy that he ran only weeks after he had taken office in the Assembly — an office he won without opposition. Even if no criminal liability is found, Alarcon’s rather loose attachment to any particular office, much like his unclear connection with any particular residence, is troubling.”
Troubling? Troubling? Calm down, guys. You’re going to spill your green tea.
Then they conclude with the coup de grace intended to end my suffering and put me out of my misery.
“Like various recent political scandals such as the one unfolding in Bell — in which elected officials drew obscene salaries without the knowledge of their constituents — it makes it all too easy to wonder whether our system is slowly being transformed from one in which knowledgeable voters select their representatives to one in which politicians use voters as a means to some other end.”
Makes you wonder? Who’s wondering?
If these geniuses can’t figure out that Alarcon, not to mention the crooks in Bell,- used voters as a mean to an end – the end being cushy, incredibly well-paid, very powerful job, or jobs, in Alarcon’s case – then they all ought to have their laptops smashed.
And if anybody hasn’t noticed, the voters in Bell and Alarcon’s district are largely immigrants, many here illegally, and poor They are easy targets for this kind of crap.
They thought they were coming to LA. Instead they ended up in Fucknutsville West. Change the address on your checks.
The Dog Trainer’s editorial writers might live in safer and richer neighborhoods, but what’s going on here affects their lives, too. And if they don’t get mad pretty damn soon, it’s going to get a lot worse.
Rahm will have to come up with a new word. After all, his brother lives here.
Woof!
“If the councilman is convicted he should, at least, be booted from office.”
What,they don’t think he should be allowed to vote electronically from state prison? Way, harsh — not.
What part of “18 felonies” do they not understand?!
Alar-CON will give new meaning to “termed-out” — as in “PRISON-termed-out.”
Nobody from the ceremonial mayor through the rubber stamp council will follow Walter Moore’s demand that the someone, anyone have AlarCON suspended as per Sectn. 211 of the City Charter.
Key point: Do any of the votes he has cast count? How about votes he casts from
now on? What if his vote is the deciding vote? If his vote sustains or
overturns a veto, do we have a giant “do-over” two years from now.
What a bunch of chick-hearted curs. And they call us dogs.
Your Pal,
G.
Everyone is AFRAID of Alarcon. Even the dog trainer.
Alarcon must go to jail. ASAP.
Typical PC crap. Just because AlarCON & Villar are mexicans both DN and LAT are scared to go after these crooks.
You’re awfully fixated on Alarcon, Richie Ross and the Katz race. Was your former owner named ‘Harvey,’ and did he walk a lot around muttering “twenty-nine goddamned votes!”????
The DWP bill just arrived. We’ve shut done everything we could but the bill was incredible! We’re on a fixed income, unable to find supplemental jobs. 2 days ago we were advised that we’ve also been rent-raised in our “rent-controlled” apartment. These elected representatives are unable to represent people who live as they have never done. They are crooks, liars, cheaters and thieves. We’re out of options. Sweep them out and clean up our city.
The majority of Angelenos aren’t as stupid as some of the idiots in Alarcon’s district he begged rto have that pres conference for support. Alarcon needs to be the example of what happens to corrupt politicians. The LA Slimes has the story of morons in valley supporting this crook. BUT the Slimes leaves out so many more important stories to post this crap. Why hasn’t any of the media reported the indictement against Nativo Lopex, President of Mexican American Political Assoc. and corrupt loser? His trial is coming up. He’s the organizer of all the illegal immigrant marches and bullshit. Maybe he and Alarcon could be cell mates. There’s no pity for this asshole Alarcon the thug. He even looks like a gangster. All the blogs are slamming him. Why isn’t the LA Slimes reporting that?
Remember when CBS 2 News did a report on council member DWP water usage and asked to see bills?
Richard Alarcon couldn’t seem to find his and couldn’t say why he couldn’t find a simple DWP bill sent to his home and told reporter he would get back to him.
I think we see why he couldn’t seem to find the bill. Turns out not because of over-usage (as many would figure) but because of no usage.
GUILTY!
Funny how Bruno is all of a sudden worried on behalf of the constituents of Alarcon and the crooks in Bell, because they’re “mostly poor and immigrants, many illegal.” (Maybe I got the quote just a tad bit off.)
What IS true is that the heavily ethnic, largely poor districts with uninformed voters, like those of long-time machine blacks like Maxine Waters or Latinos like Alarcon and the rest, have been redistricted to be largely considered “safe” and maybe these pols get more lazy and careless.
Bell seems as much working-class struggling white as ethnic, but these people also are too busy making ends meet to follow local politics.
A BIG part of the blame for ignorance in Bell and other cities other than L A is that the L A Times/ former fishwrap of record, as well as the other papers, folded up their news operations at the County level.
Cutbacks have literally made them scrap coverage of anything BUT L A’s City Hall, which is such a daily spectacle it makes for good theater. Compared to the somber and stately presidings of the County Supervisors (HOW do they manage to keep the public commenter rabble, many the same as who show up at City Council, quiet and actually behaving themselves?) There are NO watchdogs watching these little renegade towns.
L A by comparison, and Alarcon’s alleged crime of living a block or two outside his district, where he DOES own a home, is small potatoes by comparison but bigger news and hey, it’s election time for Republican Steve Cooley.
Hadda get him a Democrat who LOOKS like a crook, and The Mustache fits the bill. After all, he and Jerry Brown are TIED for who’s kicking the most ass out of those petty mafioso-look-alikes in Bell, THIS ONE is all Cooley’s.
The crime isn’t “living a block or two outside his district.”
The crime is making false statements, under oath. It’s called “perjury.” He was not required to move. He was required to tell the truth, and to refrain from running for that office.
I can’t even begin to imagine the mess his perjury conviction will create if anyone decides to contest an ordinance on the grounds that it was not passed by a valid majority.
The Times editorial is just dry understatement. It’s a form of humor. And it’s very well done.
I would point out that it’s semi-funny for Bruno to refer to the Los Angeles Times as the Dog Trainer (he being a dog and all that) but the continuing use of the term “Slimes” by commenters is getting awfully hackneyed. Calling something by a parody name ceases to be interesting about the second time, and it better be pertinent (which it isn’t) to be interesting the first time.
The deeper story — and the one that the Times doesn’t focus on — is that the real crimes are the ones that aren’t against the law, namely the sucking after campaign funding in exchange for legislative favors. Sometimes, the legislative favor is simply to do nothing about an ongoing outrage, and other times it’s to give tax breaks or zoning variances. In all of these things, Richard Alarcon participated along with 14 of his closest colleagues on the City Council.
So we get to see Alarcon lose his seat and possibly his freedom for the lesser of his antisocial acts. I can remember when he was running for mayor a couple of elections back, as “the Senator who’s running for mayor.” He bragged that he wasn’t hitting up the L.A. money folks for campaign contributions, unlike his opponents. But if you thought about it or checked the filings, you realized that he was collecting quite a bit in the way of campaign contributions through his chairmanship of a state Senate committee. The money just came from further away.
Bob G wrote:
“I can remember when he was running for mayor a couple of elections back, as “the Senator who’s running for mayor.” He bragged that he wasn’t hitting up the L.A. money folks for campaign contributions, unlike his opponents. But if you thought about it or checked the filings, you realized that he was collecting quite a bit in the way of campaign contributions through his chairmanship of a state Senate committee. The money just came from further away.”
I bet those contributors feel pretty stupid now!
Unless of course, they profited from his time in office. Then I guess anyone that voted for him should feel pretty used!
“Said I remember when we used to sit
In the government yard in Trenchtown
Oba, ob-serving the hypocrites
As they would mingle with the good people we meet
Good friends we have had, oh good friends we’ve lost along the way
In this bright future you can’t forget your past…”
—Bob Marley
5:03. You can thank Antonio and his cronies……..
PS: I think Walter is just funnin’ us. Is there any history of a city ordinance being overturned by a court because it later turned out that a council member was deemed ineligible? I can remember in my layman-like way, that appellate courts are loathe to reverse lower court decisions even on the basis that the judge was later proved to be a crook or a drunk. I suspect that 800 years of common law and precedent won’t allow for questioning everything that every city in America does based on some allegation of council impropriety. There is admittedly a much stronger case to argue over a vote of 8 to 7 in the future, but even then, it seems like an unlikely suit.
Of course most of this is moot because our city council has a proclivity for voting unanimously on most things. What this means in practice is that they will just have to make sure they have an 11th vote handy for those times when they legally are required to cast a two-thirds vote.
The most likely scenario here is that Alarcon will bluster for a while and then take a leave of absence from the council (or just resign) with the excuse that he needs to concentrate on exonerating himself, he will plead to one count (which is basically what’s justified), and his wife will be allowed to plead to one count and pay a small fine. I could be wrong, and it could be the trial of the year (might be 2012), but these things usually work out in a deal.
Bob –
Statistically, you’re probably right. And, like you, I’m unaware of any case where someone held an office that he lacked the legal capacity to hold. I think this would be terra incognita.
But imagine the following scenario:
Suppose some stubborn, taxpayer-loving person with a license to sue — we’ll call this hypothetical trouble maker “Malter Woore” — decides to challenge a DWP rate-hike that passed by one vote. You know, like the one where Parks showed up three minutes late?
How much money would the City have to spend to defend that suit? And what kind of a financial bind would result if Woore won, and the DWP had to refund tens or hundreds of millions of dollars it collected from rate-payers, on the grounds that the rate hike was never legally authorized?
Food for thought, don’t you think?
P.S. The vote was apparently 9 to 4, and Alarcon was among the four NOT voting to re-assert jurisdiction. So the City could argue that his vote wouldn’t have made a difference. The counter-argument would be that, since someone holding the office LAWFULLY could have made a difference, his presence on the Council WAS material to that vote.
http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/news/local/city-council-may-review-dwp-rate-hike-again-2010427
Most votes are pretty unanimous, though.
You know what might make a good campaign issue for the March 2011 election? The incumbents’ failure to suspend Alarcon per the Charter.
Let’s just say that, hypothetically speaking, that the mythical Malter Woore did bring a suit. It would certainly be fun to watch, but it might — just might — bring other things to light that would, hypothetically speaking, draw attention to other wrong-doings and other investigations by other entities.
I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’ that like Bell and Ticketgate, a few squeaks from the wheel brought the wrath of hell and investigations galore down on the heads of a lot of people.
Hey, speaking of Ticketgate, did you know I now have a statutory right to file a civil suit against Villaraigosa? Since the City Ethics Commission did not file one within 40 days of my complaint, I’m good to go.
Walter:
Regarding the DWP vote – isn’t there a short time limit to challenge City Council actions? It is stated on the City Council Agenda.
Also, I don’t know what happened on the vote in April 2010 in which Garcetti first had the Council Vote on findings for his special 1 to pre-approve a DWP Commission vote for a rate increase. They went against the advise of the City Attorney Dion O’Connell.
I would have thought that this vote could have been overturned on a Brown Act violation.
Softball is being played with th housing authority city of la officials you know the mayors friends