It’s hard to know which is worse: The lies and deceptions of our corrupt politicians or the bungling incompetence of the bureaucrats who carry out their policies.
Look at the nonsense in Sacramento in the last days of another disastrous legislative session where nothing was achieved of any significance for the 35 million people of the once proud Golden State who are enduring some of the nation’s worst unemployment in no small part because of suicidal policies that drove away the businesses that create the jobs and squandered the public wealth while letting the infrastructure age and deteriorate.
Despite the ideological differences between the know-nothings and the know-it-alls, the Legislature did muster the votes to bar local communities from banning circumcision while criminalizing the sale or possession of shark fins.
Now it’s on to the really important matter of eliminating the state’s complex environmental protections — the CEQA blamed for so long for creating an unhealthy business climate — solely so that Anschutz Entertainment Group can build a football stadium in downtown LA and sports venues in Sacramento and Santa Clara can move forward in creating lowly-paid part-time service jobs without the annoyance complying with the same laws everybody has to.
Always willing to say or do anything in order to get its way — including spending a million bucks on lobbying and millions more buying friends and fabricating stories for public consumption that have nothing to do with private reality — AEG’s latest creation to skirt environmental law protections is that a domed
74,000 seat air-conditioned stadium lined inside and out with digital
signage and brilliant lighting will be “carbon neutral.”
Dakota Smith in the Daily News puts the lie to AEG’s specious argument by delving into what “carbon neutrality” means, which is next to nothing for LA’s dirty air, and what AEG means by it, which is mainly based on the claim that Farmers Field will bring more of its fans to the game than any other stadium in America. Apparently, AEG’s Tim Leiweke never noticed nearly everyone, even the rich, take the subway to Yankee Stadium and the El to Wrigley Field.
“Carbon
neutrality, in general, is an elusive goal,” said Ted Bardacke, senior
associate at Global Green USA, a Santa Monica-based nonprofit that
advises on green building and greenhouse emissions. “It can mean many
things to many folks. To call it (Farmers Field) carbon neutral is a parsing of the term that I don’t think is appropriate, Call it trip neutral, call it offsetting of trip emissions.”
Similarly, David Carter, a sports business professor at the University of Southern California, believes the promise of carbon neutrality based on use of public transit is a “marketing pitch, business development, public relations document, and a legal document” all rolled into one …
“They will offer some balance of public transportation. Not because the fans are always going to take it, but because these team owners want to work with their respective city, so to as appear as though they are continuing to help the problem.”Legislative leaders John Perez and Darrell Steinberg appear to be so pleased with AEG’s lie they are ready to push through the exemption for Northern California as well to get the votes they need.
LA County Supervisors have their own deceitful game going with regards to drawing up new districts.
The plan put forward by thei 10-member was unacceptable to the board so they are fighting over three different plans: Knabe’s that preserves the current boundaries, gerrymandered as they are for the benefit of the incumbents, and two by Molina and Ridley-Thomas that create a new Latino district by connect Pacoima to Downey in one district for Latinos and Agoura Hills and Long Beach for a white district.
Nothing like racial gerrymandering to engender hope that the next generation of supervisors will be devoted to public service and not self-service like the current one.
Since none of these three plans is likely to get the four votes needed for adoption, the question of drawing up new districts will go to the other three county election officials — District Attorney Steve Cooley, Sheriff Lee Baca and Assessor John Noguez.
Ironically, Baca is a Latino elected by voters who showed race isn’t what counts and Noguez is Latino and gay, which shows race and sexual orientation aren’t what the majority of voters are considering and suggests the preoccupations with divisive issues of so many people in high office are out of step with the tolerant values of the electorate.
If your own sensibility can handle further irony, there is the bungling incompetence of Noguez’s office and the State Board of Equalization which have allowed the world’s largest beermaker, Belgium’s InBev, to pay a lousy $18,000 a year since it bought Anheuser-Busch in 2008 for $52 billion on three million square feet of land and the Budweiser brewery in Van Nuys.
That works out to a penny a square foot instead of a minimum of 44 cents a square foot or $1.3 million the company should be paying to the county since the property should have been reassessed at the time of the sale, Alana Samuels reports in the LA Times..
Noguez, who actually claims he has a staff member checking newspapers for property sales, blamed the company for not notifying his office of the highly publicized change of ownership. “We might need someone monitoring the TV news as well as the Internet,” he offered feebly.
Then, he back-tracked from that silly explanation to blaming the Board of Equalization and the complexity of the laws and regulations he was elected to enforce — an argument that appears to have some validity because of numerous loopholes in the law and the failure of government officials to do their jobs.
“Counties are losing millions of dollars on these loopholes, there’s no
question,” San Francisco County Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting said.
Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Assn., estimated the state could raise $2 billion if officials did their jobs properly and closed the loopholes.
“The whole system makes so little sense, but if you’re going to actually
have the system right, you have to have extensive paperwork and
reporting requirements,” he said. “It’s an absurd way to run a tax
system.”
How can this happen? Are we all guilty, or do we deserve this kind of government because we are so stupid? Abraham Lincoln said in Columbus, Ohio on Sepptember 16, 1859:
“Public opinion in this country is everything.”
What say you, do you care enough to fght back, to make a difference? It all depends on us.
Surprisingly insightful many thanks, I do believe your current readers may possibly want a great deal more items like that carry on the great effort.
Well it looks like there were some allegations against Noguez that news media should have looked into
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_16370424?source=rss
But of course this would be way too much to expect from the so-called journalists in LA. Also him being gay and Latino – almost a tri-fecta.
Shark fin ban is low hanging fruit. Good, but easy. No shade of gray in the big scheme of things.
As is Koretz’s attempt to get rid of plastic bags in LA City. The easy stuff. None of these jokers wants to do the hard stuff – the real work.
Lieweke, the Mafia Don of AEG is promising to the blind, deaf and dumb in LA & the State a “carbon neutral” stadium. I guess he believes all of us are as corrupt as our electeds.
A “carbon neutral” stadium? I can’t wait for the EIR to explain what this means. The term “green” is so bandied about in LA that it has almost lost all meaning. Just a reminder that there is no such thing as being carbon neutral, an impossibility to accomplish by anyone. The initiative that launched the recent “green” movement was primarily to reduce global warming and greenhouse gas emissions to improve air quality. To accomplsh this are dozens of measures with reduction of energy being the foremost. Our energy as understood by consumers is electric consumption that comes mainly from coal-fired plants that emit greenhouse gases. Will sticking solar panels on the stadium roof neutralize all the power consumption? What about the 41+, 24/7 billboards & the jumbotrons in the stadium & other power consumption? We want the EIR to provide us with power consumption numbers and how their additional usage will affect the power bills of other consumers.
Another issue is transportation, as in 70,000+ people driving to the stadium for a game. AEG claims that 10% will take public transportation. Sure! Even if we believe them, that are still 63,000 people driving cars to the “carbon neutral” stadium emitting gases. And, let’s not ignore that the congested 110 freeway is also a lifeline for the San Gabriel Valley to LAX & the westside. Don’t know when AEG found the freeway to be desolate. It is almost as bad on weekends as on weekdays. So now we can add the emissions of thousands of cars at an almost standstill, when they emit the most gases, anytime there is a football game. And, don’t for a moment believe that the stadium is only for football games. There will be dozens of other events. The air quality will be horrendous & we’d like to see air quality measurements in the EIR, not only for those stuck on freeways but on residents who already suffer from bad air quality due to their living in proximity to freeways. Environmental health is a serious issue about reducing emissions.
Another huge factor in “green” is reduction of water consumption. Within the context of the stadium, we’d like the EIR to discuss how many millions of gallons of water will be consumed to keep the field green & how many will be consumed by the patrons and their effect on water rates in LA.
Another factor in “green” is Waste reduction. This is just as complex and difficult to reduce to a simplistic explanation. It will suffice to touch upon a couple of points. A perfectly good convention centre will be demolished and transported to landfills via thousands of truck trips. The EIR needs to quantify this in its impact to air quality, traffic, landfills and production of materials & their similar impacts to build the stadium & the convention centre. How much waste will be generated by the 70,000 people and who will pay for their disposal as landfills continue to fill up. In other words, it is the rest of consumers who will help pay the additional costs.
The point here is that being green is far more complexed than what we have reduced it to. No EIR will do justice to all the environmental damage caused by such a stadium. AEG knows it & is the reason why they are making it difficult to be challenged. I’d have more respect for Lieweke if he’d just admit that he is a mafia don who with AEG money can buy all the political whores in our city & state and the leagl system too than wrapping himself in a green mantle.
Anonymous on September 7, 2011 4:32 PM,
Wow, at least Tim Lieweke has a public record out there. You seem to attack him and all we have is “Anonymous”. Must be nice not to put yourself out there–
AEG is going to do a full EIR for an NFL. You can still contest it. The bill, which includes no exemption from environmental laws, would allow legal challenges to the stadium’s environmental impact report to be heard immediately in the California Court of Appeal, which would then come to a decision within 175 days.
Let me ask, do you live in DTLA? Because I do and everyone I know wants this. Also, businesses from large to small want this.
DTLA is a ghost town on the weekends. During an average work weekday there are about 500K car visits in and out of DTLA (DTLA Newspaper is the source).
Also, please remember the County of LA did vote for a mass transit spending bill in 2008. In DTLA we already have the Blue Line (Long Beach) and Expo Line (Culver City-2012 and Santa Monica 2015) directly serving Chick Hern/Pico Station right next to the Farmers Field Site. Red Line (Valley and North Hollywood), Purple Line (K-Town), Goldine (Pasadena, 210, and right now further out on the 210 by 2015-16), plus the Goldline does serve East LA where you can do a free park and ride.
Lets not forget Union Station with direct connections to Metrolink and Amtrak. And AEG already has a direct ticket buying function with Metrolink. When you buys tickets to an AEG event you can also purchase discounted Metrolink tickets.
They should set up a Hollywood Bowl like direct Bus system. Also, Monday Night Football games do concern me, as the traffic is much different (yet that is one game a year).
AEG can easily get over 10K on Mass Transit. That is 58K (according to AEG’s website, Farmers will be 68K seats). Most football fans come in four. So say 4 to a car you have about 15K cars trips (rounded up of course). This site has already 32K parking spots in a 15 minute walk.
This can get done, yet once again, I am concerned with Monday Night Football. Hope to see the EIR address that.
NO DOUBT MAYOR SAM HAS CLOUT…
LOOK AT LA32′S BOUT:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/09/neighborhood_council_evicted.php
CAN WE HEAR THEM SHOUT?
NOT BY MY SNOUT…BECAUSE MAYOR SAM DOES WITHOUT “ANONYMOUS’s” DOUBT…
THERE MUST BE A DROUGHT WHEN “ANONYMOUS” CAN’T SPOUT OR POUT. THANKS MAYOR SAM FOR YOUR BLACKOUT! WHAT HAPPEN TO THE BOY SCOUT, MAYOR SAM? IS HE DOWN AND OUT? HAS HE SOLD OUT?
OVER AND OUT!
By Anonymous on September 7, 2011 9:18 PM,
TYPING WITH CAPS ON MAKES EVERYTHING MORE IMPORTANT.
“Wow, at least Tim Lieweke has a public record out there. You seem to attack him and all we have is “Anonymous”. Must be nice not to put yourself out there–”
If I was going to make millions by fleecing LA taxpayers, I’d be out there too.
Anonymous on September 8, 2011 1:01 AM
We live in America–
Live it up, before it lives you up, son.
Yeah, and I believe Tim doesn’t have a College Degree–Yet I am sure you do.
Gary no doubt is an AEG pr spin guy monitoring the blogs. For every time someone says “we all want it, I can find 1,000′s that don’t but our media is so corrupt they are yet to report the facts. I give major Kudos to LA Weekly for being the lone newspaper reporting the TRUTH.
Blade Runner Stadium
http://www.laweekly.com/2011-09-15/news/farmers-field-or-blade-runner-stadium/
LA Weekly has another story by Jill Stewart on the corruption of the billboards no one told the public about. I saw a headline on a nat’l site that said “Not Everyone Likes LA.” I hope Majestic blows these fools away. How corrupt our politicians are who took money from AEG and have been Timmy Lieweke’s bitches since. How can ONE man have this much power in our City unless he is as corrupt, under handed, unethical, unprofessional, and the biggest THUG
Anonymous on September 8, 2011 12:52 PM,
Nope. Just a man who loves good development. I live in DTLA and would be happy to go around DTLA with you anytime and talk with the residents and businesses (big and small) who support this project.
Love the mug slinging on Big Timmy…Thanks for the hating. Makes you very powerful.
Gary, you clearly don’t care about taxpayers being ripped off. You appear to be as corrupt as your hero Big Timmy.
Anonymous on September 8, 2011 2:09 PM,
Nope, care very much about taxpayers for the USA, state of California, and the County and City of LA. I am one.
Wonder why businesses of all sizes are leaving our state and heading to Texas? Lets really get the the root of the issue now, Mr/Mrs Anonymous of why we are in trouble. It isn’t AEG–They at least have stuck around.
Gary, why is it that national web sites are even asking why AEG is the only developer who got the fast track treatment? Do you not think its a conflict of interest for the politicians who voted for this deal and received AEG money? You haven’t mentioned the report that came out just last week that this deal is not in the best favor of taxpayers.
LA Times..Analyst casts doubt on economic benefit of downtown LA Stadium
What about the billboards scam that was part of the deal that wasn’t available to the public and now our neighborhoods are going to be flooded with LED lights.
Anonymous on September 8, 2011 2:44 PM,
I know is Microsoft came in and spent 40 Million and that doesn’t happen without LA Live. The Gamers Convention, same. Staples Center is the only facility in the US that has 4 Pro Teams. Shall we chat about all the non-AEG development in DTLA? Four to Five new hotels. Redevelopment of the Wilshire Grand. New Target being built. Small and large businesses love Staples, LA Live, and the possible new Farmers Field.
Where else in Southern California is there more PRIVATE infusion of CAPITAL? (and we can just look at non-AEG developments of you wish).
Love Monday morning Quarterbacks. People who don’t have the guts to get it done themselves.
Microsoft spent 40 million dollars in less than a week! Gary do you understand the power of nonsensical statistics & the paid whores who’ll twist the numbers any which way their clients want. If I had the time, ie. unpaid vs paid, I’d show you that those numbers are BS. But hey, as long as we have gullibles like you, a marketer’s dream, why bother.
As for why businesses are leaving LA, look no further than the AEG deal. The traffic, quality of life issues with broken infrastructure and high business taxes, which exempt the AEGs of the world make other legitimate businesses leave the city.
Ok Anonymous on September 8, 2011 3:19 PM,
You are the Oracle. I look to Anonymous whenever I need good business advice.
Just because, you have a moniker “Gary Dell’abte”, it makes you no less anonymous. Give us your correct name, email address and phone number, & I’ll be happy to contact you with good business advice, not that it was your purpose here.
Meet me in DTLA at LA Sunday at 9 AM. Cool? Would be happy to meet you.
Genuinely illuminating bless you, There’s no doubt that your subscribers would likely want more writing along these lines maintain the excellent effort.
3:33 p.m, you are a friggin pscho. Maybe, LAPD should meet you downtown.
Anonymous on September 8, 2011 4:30 PM,
Nope, someone is looking for my phone number, address to contact me here. LAPD can come over anytime. They deserve a pay raise and more respect in our society.
Oddball: [looking at aerial pics of the a remaining bridge] Beautiful.
Moriarty: suppose the bridge ain’t there?
Oddball: [groans] Don’t hit me with them negative waves so early in the morning. Think the bridge will be there and it will be there. It’s a mother, beautiful bridge, and it’s gonna be there. Ok?
Oddball: [Later: Oddball is looking through binoculars at the bridge] Still up!
Oddball: [planes fly and bomb the bridge] … No it ain’t. See what sending out them negative waves did, Moriarty?
Moriarty: That ain’t my fault, Oddball, I’ve done nothing but have good thoughts about that damn bridge ever since we left!
Crapgame: Then make a DEAL!
Big Joe: What kind of deal?
Crapgame: A DEAL, deal! Maybe the guy’s a Republican. “Business is business,” right?
Big Joe: Look, Mac, you and us? We’re just soldiers, right? We don’t even know what this war’s all about. All we do is we fight and we die and for what? We don’t get anything out of it. In about a half an hour the whole American army’s gonna be comin’ down that road. Why don’t you do yourself a great, big fat favor, huh? And get the hell outta here?
German tank commander: I have orders. This bank isn’t to fall into the hands of the American army.
Kelly: Sergeant, this bank’s not gonna fall into the hands of the American army. It’s gonna fall in our hands. You see, we’re just a private enterprise operation.
German tank commander: You… the American army!
Oddball: No, baby, we ain’t.
—Kelly’s Heroes 1970
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Dell%27Abate – Obviously not the real McCoy but another dishonest person like Leiweke who by claiming “Carbon Neutrality” has lost any credibility.
Thanks to former CurbedLA Real Estate Development blog writer, Dakota Smith. Curbed has gone downhill since she left.
Gary since you have put yourself out there to support AEG then answer many of us who want to know if this is such a great deal for our City and not one dime of taxpayer money will be spent why isn’t Philip Anshultz guaranteeing the bond????
They just passed the AEG billed. Thank you–
That bill passing was a criminal act. Every politico who voted for it should be arrested for interfering with the superior site for the stadium in Grand Crossing.
I enjoy being able to tailgate before a game with friends and family, tossing a ball around before going to a game. Downtown LA will not have the adequate space for tailgating, only overpriced parking garages. Even if it did have wide open parking lots, I wouldn’t feel safe in that neighborhood, surrounded by poors.
People WE still have a voice. I say we should BOYCOTT AEG, LA Live, the Hotels etc. all under little Timmy Lieweke. That bill passing goes to show the thug Mentality and strong arm politics a developer can use. When you have idiots like Padilla and the other corrupt politician Perez who didn’t want to disclose his budget but was made to, you know the people are in trouble. We can still show our opposition to this NFL Stadium by protesting if an NFL team ever comes. WE have a right by law to speak out. Post on every web site you find that AEG are nothing more then thugs in suits.