Once upon a time in the city we all love and hate, a man named Antonio stepped forward and inspired us with promises of a better life for everyone, of a new era with a new spirit that brought us all together..
He was going to plant a million trees and beautify our neighborhoods.
He was going to take over our schools and make sure every kid git a good education and graduated.
He was going to end corruption at City Hall after defaming the Hahn Administration as the “most investigated” in LA history.
Most of all, he was going to make us the “greenest city in America” — something that would restore our pride in the city and create tens of thousands of good jobs.
Fairy tales can come true or they also can turn into nightmares where everyone suffers, well, nearly everyone. Insiders and the well-connected flourish while neighborhoods are destroyed, kids still drop out cause they can’t read or write, corruption reaches unprecedented levels.
The man of a thousand broken promises has turned on his friends in the unions and embraced the evils of unbridled capitalism, indulging himself in a life of royal luxury while half a million of his subjects can’t even find a minimum wage job.
And now, in the latest chapter of this fairy tale gone awry, comes the ultimate hypocrisy: Antonio wants his pals in Sacramento to make a special exemption from environmental policy for LA so we can keep on destroying the oceans around us for another two decades.
“The city of Los Angeles has launched an aggressive lobbying campaign to
roll back tough new state regulations meant to limit the environmental
damage that power plants inflict on the oceans,” the LA Times reports today.
The justification for this is that it will cost $2.3 billion and require increases in the already soaring power rates of at least 6 percent for eight years.
Driving the effort for the exemption is Austin Beutner, first deputy mayor, jobs czar and part-time temporary DWP general manager.
“That’s money that will cause jobs to be lost in our economy and money
that we can’t use to invest in other renewable energy initiatives that
we have,” he says.
The issue is Assembly Bill 1552, now in the Senate, a measure created through subterfuge at the last minute with help from people like Antonio’s cousin, Speaker John Perez, and other phony environmentalist lawmakers.
It would exempt the DWP from tough, new State Water Board regulations that require sharply reducing the amount of seawater used for cooling coastal power plants.
Under AB 1552, every coastal plant in the state — except the three owned by DWP — would still be required to pump in seawater for cooling only once and then recycle it or move to air cooling
DWP’s three plants, now required to comply between 2015 to 2020, would be given up to 11 years longer, to 2031.
Environmental groups — long-time friends of the mayor — are as furious at him as his long-time friends in labor and the voters who elected him.
Heal the Bay has started a phone call and email campaign under the heading: “Your Help is Needed to Protect California’s Coast & the Public Process – OPPOSE AB 1552.”
.
“It completely ignores five years of process and guts the entire policy,” said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay.
Adds Sierra Club California lobbyist Jim Metropulos: “Now here is the L.A. DWP coming in at the last second with a special-interest exemption for them.”
.
What’s spectacularly appalling about this is that the DWP under then General Manager David Nahai was working on a rational compromise with the State Water Board long before the regulations were approved.
But like so many others, he ran afoul of the mayor’s political priorities — and in his case the greed of DWP union bully Brian D’Arcy — and was fired last fall.
His successor, David Freeman, the poet laureate of green energy who never actually built any, dropped the ball on that effort as he did so many others during his two disastrous terms running the city’s mos valuable asset.
Freeman preferred to play political hardball with the state board when the regulations were being finalized but struck out.
“It makes the department appear cynical and manipulative,” Nahai told the Times..
“I believe it was unnecessary, because the state board has shown a
willingness to try, even now, to deal with the department’s concerns.”
Put your money on the environmentalists winning the fight because they are right that DWP never should have been put in this position. You’ll need those winnings to pay your power bill.
So how did so many high hopes end in failure and broken promises? Whatever happened to the Antonio we knew and loved so much to put him in charge of our city at a time when we needed great leadership?
No one could possible have gone so wrong, betrayed so many. The answer can only be that the real Antonio was kidnapped and a replicant was put in his place to turn LA into the vision imagined in “Blade Runner.”
What other explanation could there be?
WE never really knew him>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Never loved him either. Even Lu doesn’t. Using the fool for free publicity.
I have no problem rolling back that policy, if and only if, WE put more electric cars on the street to help clean the Air and not be so crazy about the environment if it will result as the former LADWP Head Honcho said; Impossible to Achieve.
He’s a gang related thug from the east side no true
compassion for anyone but his life style and his many other CD 14 gang ties in this city. “Gangster Mayor” show them your tatt tell them who you really are.
Some of us knew he was fake from Day One.
He hasn’t changed one bit.
Rather, some of you are just taking longer to catch on.
Better late than never….
No one feels more betrayed than the union members whom the Mayor, through his touted prior union involvement, convinced that he was the better candidate for the office of Mayor. He has proven himself to be untrustworthy, not credible and thus, not in a position to deal with in good faith.
Would you buy a used car from this man?
Summarizing some key details from chapter 5 of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s 2010 Year Book on Armaments, Disarmament and International Security for 2008:
* World military expenditure in 2009 is estimated to have reached $1.531 trillion in current dollars;
* This represents a 6 per cent increase in real terms since 2008 and a 49 per cent increase since 2000;
* This corresponds to 2.7 per cent of world gross domestic product (GDP), or approximately $225 for each person in the world;
* The USA with its massive spending budget, is the principal determinant of the current world trend, and its military expenditure now accounts for just under half of the world total, at 46.5% of the world total;
SIPRI has commented in the past on the increasing concentration of military expenditure, i.e. that a small number of countries spend the largest sums. This trend carries on into 2009 spending. For example,
* The 15 countries with the highest spending account for over 82% of the total;
* The USA is responsible for 46.5 per cent of the world total, distantly followed by the China (6.6% of world share), France (4.2%), UK (3.8%), and Russia (3.5%)
Kelly’s Heroes 1970
Friends all tried to warn me
But I held my head up high
All the time they warned me
But I only passed them by
They all tried to tell me
But I guess I didn’t care
I turned my back and
Left them standing there
All the burning bridges that have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings and the burning memories
Everyone I left behind each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermore
Joey tried to help me find a job
A while ago
When I finally got it I didn’t want to go
The party Mary gave for me
When I just walked away
Now there’s nothing left for me to say
All the burning bridges that have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings and the burning memories
Everyone I left behind each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermore
Years have passed and I keep thinking
What a fool I’ve been
I look back into the past and
Think of way back then
I know that I lost everything I thought that I could win
I guess I should have listened to my friends
All the burning bridges that have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings and the burning memories
Everyone I left behind each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermore
Burning bridges lost forevermore
LA Daily News
The Untold Story of the Mayor’s Rise from Poverty to Power
BY TONY CASTRO, Staff Writer
Dated: 11/18/2006
Reinventing an image
The change of Villaraigosa’s surname – the joining of Villar with wife Corina’s maiden name Raigosa when they married in 1987 – was another attempt to reinvent his identity.
For Villaraigosa, the name change was only part of the reinvention. A low-rider image cultivated from the time he led student protests in high school and later at UCLA was discarded, down to having “Born to raise hell” tattoos removed from his arms. He replaced it with a look out of Gentlemen’s Quarterly, including a personal tailor and professionally bleached teeth.
One of those in whose memory the transformation remains embedded is longtime Democratic activist and Villaraigosa critic Art Pulido, who has known the mayor since 1978 when he met the then-25-year-old Tony Villar at the Olympus Health Spa in Montebello.
“He walked in and reminded me of Zorro,” Pulido recalled. “His hair was slicked back, and he had a little thin mustache, and he reminded me of Tyrone Power in (`The Mark of Zorro’) movie.”
Pulido, then 24, was a body builder who trained other body builders at that gym and remembers an extremely slender Villar introducing himself and asking to join the body-building group.
“He said he’d had an operation and needed to build up his chest muscles,” Pulido recalled. “He said, `I wanna be part of this (body-building) team,’ and we got to know each other.”
For the next year and a half, Villar sporadically worked out with Pulido and his group. Pulido recalls that Villar grew stronger, though he didn’t put on much muscle bulk because he was working out with lighter weights and concentrating on repetitions and not weight.
When Pulido saw Villar about 10 years later at a political fundraising event, a transformation had taken place.
“He no longer had a mustache,” Pulido remembered. “His hair wasn’t slicked back anymore – it was parted on the side like he wears it now. He was in a suit, and he was wearing these little specs that made him look like a college guy.
“I almost didn’t recognize him. I said, `Tony, what happened to you?’
“He said, `My name’s Antonio.’ I said: `Antonio? So you’re not Tony anymore?’ He said, `Yep.”‘
Transformations such as Villaraigosa’s, of course, are part of today’s political culture and the grooming and selling of political candidates.
“It’s all about marketing,” said Nancy Irwin, a Tarzana-based psychologist. “Politicians like the mayor are in the business of selling themselves and appealing to the broadest number of people.”
Irwin, whose specialties include sports psychology, took particular interest in an account of how Villaraigosa has sought to pump up his athletic past, especially in a City Hall where his contemporaries such as City Council President Alex Padilla and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo can boast of sports careers – both having excelled as athletic stars at the high school and collegiate levels.
In 2005, Villaraigosa was often heard using sports metaphors to describe his second mayoral campaign. In at least one instance, Villaraigosa said the campaign had forced him to use his “quick feet.”
“I’ve always had quick feet,” he said. “Quick feet from being a running back. That’s what I played in school. I wasn’t first string, but I had quick feet.”
In fact, Villaraigosa’s organized athletic career was limited to playing on the Cathedral High School team in ninth grade.
“There’s tremendous pressure to fit in with the guys, and sports is one of those ways,” Irwin said. “If the mayor really didn’t play football, he wouldn’t be the first politician to say he did when he didn’t.”
Why do politicians make those kinds of claims, claims that so often can be so easily disproved?
“Because they’re politicians who have fallen victims of politician narcissism – they’ve bought the T-shirt, and they’ve come to believe that they are what they want to be,” veteran political consultant Randy Economy said.
“These sometimes are very bright people, but they say and do some very stupid things because they’ve gotten carried away with themselves and the image they’ve created.”
`Are you real?’
All of which raises the question: Who is Villaraigosa really? What is his true “self”? Why does he pursue all he seeks, including power, with such manic speed? What kind of mind, what kind of an intellect, does he have? Or, as City Councilman Dennis Zine put it, after witnessing Villaraigosa’s near-manic exhibition of endurance during the recent Asian trade trip: “Are you real?”
http://tonycastro.com/themanthemyth.htm
LA Daily News
The Untold Story of the Mayor’s Rise from Poverty to Power
BY TONY CASTRO, Staff Writer
Dated: 11/18/2006
Reinventing an image
The change of Villaraigosa’s surname – the joining of Villar with wife Corina’s maiden name Raigosa when they married in 1987 – was another attempt to reinvent his identity.
For Villaraigosa, the name change was only part of the reinvention. A low-rider image cultivated from the time he led student protests in high school and later at UCLA was discarded, down to having “Born to raise hell” tattoos removed from his arms. He replaced it with a look out of Gentlemen’s Quarterly, including a personal tailor and professionally bleached teeth.
One of those in whose memory the transformation remains embedded is longtime Democratic activist and Villaraigosa critic Art Pulido, who has known the mayor since 1978 when he met the then-25-year-old Tony Villar at the Olympus Health Spa in Montebello.
“He walked in and reminded me of Zorro,” Pulido recalled. “His hair was slicked back, and he had a little thin mustache, and he reminded me of Tyrone Power in (`The Mark of Zorro’) movie.”
Pulido, then 24, was a body builder who trained other body builders at that gym and remembers an extremely slender Villar introducing himself and asking to join the body-building group.
“He said he’d had an operation and needed to build up his chest muscles,” Pulido recalled. “He said, `I wanna be part of this (body-building) team,’ and we got to know each other.”
For the next year and a half, Villar sporadically worked out with Pulido and his group. Pulido recalls that Villar grew stronger, though he didn’t put on much muscle bulk because he was working out with lighter weights and concentrating on repetitions and not weight.
When Pulido saw Villar about 10 years later at a political fundraising event, a transformation had taken place.
“He no longer had a mustache,” Pulido remembered. “His hair wasn’t slicked back anymore – it was parted on the side like he wears it now. He was in a suit, and he was wearing these little specs that made him look like a college guy.
“I almost didn’t recognize him. I said, `Tony, what happened to you?’
“He said, `My name’s Antonio.’ I said: `Antonio? So you’re not Tony anymore?’ He said, `Yep.”‘
Transformations such as Villaraigosa’s, of course, are part of today’s political culture and the grooming and selling of political candidates.
“It’s all about marketing,” said Nancy Irwin, a Tarzana-based psychologist. “Politicians like the mayor are in the business of selling themselves and appealing to the broadest number of people.”
Irwin, whose specialties include sports psychology, took particular interest in an account of how Villaraigosa has sought to pump up his athletic past, especially in a City Hall where his contemporaries such as City Council President Alex Padilla and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo can boast of sports careers – both having excelled as athletic stars at the high school and collegiate levels.
In 2005, Villaraigosa was often heard using sports metaphors to describe his second mayoral campaign. In at least one instance, Villaraigosa said the campaign had forced him to use his “quick feet.”
“I’ve always had quick feet,” he said. “Quick feet from being a running back. That’s what I played in school. I wasn’t first string, but I had quick feet.”
In fact, Villaraigosa’s organized athletic career was limited to playing on the Cathedral High School team in ninth grade.
“There’s tremendous pressure to fit in with the guys, and sports is one of those ways,” Irwin said. “If the mayor really didn’t play football, he wouldn’t be the first politician to say he did when he didn’t.”
Why do politicians make those kinds of claims, claims that so often can be so easily disproved?
“Because they’re politicians who have fallen victims of politician narcissism – they’ve bought the T-shirt, and they’ve come to believe that they are what they want to be,” veteran political consultant Randy Economy said.
“These sometimes are very bright people, but they say and do some very stupid things because they’ve gotten carried away with themselves and the image they’ve created.”
`Are you real?’
All of which raises the question: Who is Villaraigosa really? What is his true “self”? Why does he pursue all he seeks, including power, with such manic speed? What kind of mind, what kind of an intellect, does he have? Or, as City Councilman Dennis Zine put it, after witnessing Villaraigosa’s near-manic exhibition of endurance during the recent Asian trade trip: “Are you real?”
You bloggers who were railing on the DWP for having a billion in the bank treating it like it was just excess money lying around did not even bother to research things like EPA 316b back then, which is what this AB is trying to get an extension on. As mentioned in the article, EPA316b will cost a couple billion (no wonder there’s a billion in the bank) and now that the rate hikes that would have covered it weren’t passed, there’s not enough to money to cover that as well as meet the State RPS and GHG initiatives.
Ron’s article is framing the extension request as the mayor negating promises to environmentalists and Beutner scheming. But he’s ignoring the fact EPA316b is a federal mandate. If those cooling structures do not get upgraded, the city will get major fines until try ARE upgraded. Those fines will be eaten by the ratepayers in the form of an automatic rate hike that even the council won’t be able to spin – it’ll be a total failure of leadership. Yet in order for the structures to get upgraded, a rate hike is needed to fund it and you guys as well as the politicians have been fighting rate hikes even in the .01 cent / KWH range. Simultaneously, the DWP still has to find a way to build the infrastructure to meet the State RPS by 2020, which is a shame because voting down Measure B killed one of the cheapest sources of green energy, and the failure to pass rate hikes effectively halted all new capital expenditure projects, including the Solar plants that were supposed to be built. Since there’s no money yet there is a deadline for EPA316b that will impose fines, extending that deadline is the only thing keeping the DWP from being fined by the EPA. The mayor and Beutner have no choice.
If his lips are moving, ……
WTF?? David Nahai who got over $85,000 for 3 months AFTER he left DWP for doing nothing. I am proud to say I campaigned for James Hahn. Too many people wanted the first Latino thug to be Mayor and they all jumped on Antonio’s bandwagon with all his lies, hopes and dreams. Wake Up People!!! Many of us knew him from his gangster days in the barrio. A gangster never change their spots and any cop will tell you that. Even Wendy Greusome couldn’t find any documentation of the $28 MILLION for gang prevention programs hat proved any success. I hope some day the media starts reporting the corruption in city hall and reports the facts on the Mayor and city council members. The fact that blogs like this one has to tell us what’s really going is testament to why the newspapers have lost thousands of readers.
“David Nahai who got over $85,000 for 3 months AFTER he left DWP for doing nothing.”
Under Nahai, the largest municipally owned windfarm in the nation was built. I’d hardly call that doing nothing.
Agree with 8/25 1:12 p.m.
There was never an A.V. to know & love. He probably came out of the womb lying.
Like promising to take over the schools when anyone who’d been paying attention knew the mayor has zero authority over LAUSD. He had to fight, claw and cheat by getting his rubber stamps elected to the school board to get what little control he has now.
He’s the same smarmy little swamp rat he’s always been.
A wonderful recipe for the city’s future: Take the amoral, although typically lefty, politics of Villaraigosa, throw in the typical liberalism of virtually all the other politicians in LA, combine that with the demographic erosion of the community — in which larger and larger portions of it will be similar (economically, socially and culturally) to the Third World — add all the voters who vote blindly for “Democrat,” slot in a bit of token populist/egalitarian/libertarian nonsense, and, VOILA! and KAZAAM!, a Los Angeles that will be a cross between Mexicali and Michigan (meaning Detroit and Flint), and a chunk of Tijuana and Cleveland thrown in for good measure.
After graduating from Cathedral, I occasionally did volunteer work for the Alumni mailing list with the late Brother Francis Casper (his real name). He would update me about the protesting disturbances on campus. And, yup, Tony Villar hasn’t changed. Too bad those same teachers, couldn’t walk right down to City Hall and send Antonio and the City Council to detention until the end of their terms. The City would then be able to fix itself.
March 2011 is just around the corner.
david barron
barron4cc.com