Results tagged “ron kaye” from Ron Kaye L.A.

Councilman Jose Huizar, who is spearheading an effort to examine campaign and election reform for the City of Los Angeles, will moderate an Election Reform forum Thursday at 8 a.m. .  In March, a similar panel discussed Campaign Finance Reform; the City's Ethics Commission is issuing a report based off of recommendations from that forum.

WHO:             Councilmember José Huizar; Kathay Feng, Common Cause; Ron Kaye, RonKayeLA.com and the Saving LA Project; Antonio Gonzalez, Southwest Voter Registration & Education Project and the Willie C. Velasquez Institute; David Holtzman, League of Women Voters; Darry Sragow, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP; Holly Wolcott, Office of the City Clerk, City of Los Angeles

WHAT:          "Election Reform in Los Angeles: Idle, Moving Back or Moving Forward?"  An Exploration of Voting By Mail, Ranked Choice Voting and Changing Election Dates 

WHEN:          8 a.m.-10 a.m., Thursday, June 10, 2010

WHERE:        City Council Chambers

This is my blog and I can say anything I want.

That was the attitude I took when I started this adventure after I was sent out to pasture by the Daily News, the newspaper I loved for 23 years and where I found success and fulfillment.

It's two years later now and this is my 69th birthday. I've got no regrets. This is the freest and happiest time of life and this is still my blog and I've said a lot of things I felt like saying and wanted to say.

This is a selfish thing I'm doing. Whether anybody reads what I write, whether it has any impact, matters far less to me than the actual act of describing what I know and what I believe in public in my own voice.

It's hard to believe I've posted nearly 1,000 articles, most too long-winded and self-indulgent and over-the-top but I enjoyed doing them all. They all came right from my heart, right or wrong.

Personally, I've found the thousands of comments -- supportive, critical or irrelevant -- far more interesting than anything I've written. They are part of the public conversation that raises the consciousness of all of us.

I've learned a lot from all of you and learned a lot about myself, about how far I've come in being able to speak the truth I see and how far I have to go.

In a broader sense, this is the time I always dreamed would someday come, when real change is possible, when the long-term failure of our political parties and powerful institutions is exposed for all to see and we can begin to have the kind of public conversation about who we are as individuals and as a society, and how we rebuild our city and our nation to better reflect and serve us.

LA is my story, my passion, my love.

We can fix LA and bring true democracy to our city. We cannot do much directly about all the world's problems but we can change LA, and if we do, it will serve as a beacon to others to stand up for what they believe and they want their communities to be like.

We don't have to agree on everything or anything for that matter except to respect their right of all us to be heard and to have a chance to affect the policies by which we are governed.

Much of the criticism leveled at what I write is that it is overstated, intentionally provocative, polemical, to throw words at it. Many think the journalism should not be overlaid with point of view and the commentary should encourage a civil civic conversation.

If the crises we are facing were not so serious, if they were merely problems and challenges, I would agree.

My vision is much darker. Radical changes are occurring in the economy, the environment is threatened by overpopulation and over-consumption, and ancient hatreds have inflamed violence and war.

I am endlessly surprised by how many can look at what is happening and still seem so comfortable with what is going on as if simple tinkering will fix things.

My own view is that I am part of a generation that has taken more than it has given, that has too often turned selfishness and greed into virtues, that has looked at wealth as proof of success as a person.

So be it. I prefer to remain a provocateur, to inform and incite people to action and not just engage in endless talk, to subscribe to a tenet of journalism that holds the mission is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

Anyway, I am thankful that anyone is paying attention and grateful to have connected with so many remarkable people who have fought for their beliefs and worked so hard for so long in the face of the indifference of so many.

Thank you all.
 

It's my pleasure to be a weekly commentator with actress Debra Skelton on "The Filter with Fred Roggin," an experiment in reinventing local TV news. It's broadcast Monday-Thursday on NBC's digital station  Channel 225 at 7:30 p.m. Starting soon, the best segments from the week's shows will be aired on Channel 4 at 11:30 p.m. Sundays. You can see other past shows at NBCFilter on YouTube.

Here's the segment from Tuesday night on the DWP story.
 

Full Disclosure Network® presents a unique television interview with Ron Kaye, former Los Angeles Daily News Editor (1984-2008) as a part of an on-going cable TV series covering the criminal persecution of attorney Richard I. Fine  who has been in solitary "coercive confinement" in the Los Angeles County since March 4, 2009.

Full Disclosure Network's® nine minute video preview of the one hour interview with Ron Kaye is featured here. The complete interview is to be released soon on cable TV stations in major cities across the nation, and online. In this interview Ron Kaye shares his observations regarding the treatment of Richard Fine and the political circumstances in City and County of Los Angeles that have fostered abuse of the justice system and individual civil rights.

Click here to watch the video.

I spent all my life struggling to put into words what I believe, what I feel, the truth as I see it. I thought somehow that is what it meant to be an American.

I wrote and edited tens of thousands of stories but it's only been in the last two years working for love and not money that I began to find my voice as me.

On Monday, I came close during my two minutes in front of the Council Budget Committee and later during a two-minute segment on the NBC news show "The Filter with Fred Roggin" (re-broadcast Tuesday at 11:30 a.m.).

You can believe anything you want but this is what I believe.

"The Filter with Fred Roggin" is being broadcast for the first time on Channel 4 today at 11:30 a.m. (after a six-month test on digital cable) and as luck would have it Jack Weiss and I wound up as facing off as competing commentators in the opening segment.

The fast-paced, innovative news show is broadcast live at 7:30 p.m. on NBC's digital Channel 225 Monday-Thursday and for now is being re-broadcast the following morning on Channel 4.

I thought you might be amused to how the man I called "Public Enemy No. 1" during the City Attorney's race (imagine what he's called me) and I performed.

When you get immersed in the news, digging inside the details and connecting the dots to try to see what's really going on behind the scenes, there's a point at which all the storylines start coming together and blurring.

It starts making perfect sense, or none at all.

I knew I had reached that point when I started writing a piece with the headline "The End of the World is Coming...So What Are We Going to Do About It."

It was like quicksand, swallowing me up into a dark void from which there was no exit. It remains unfinished like the one mocking the mayor for his fiddling while his city burns and the one taking DWP figurehead David Freeman to task for his congenial deflections of the deepening scandal in what used to be a public utility and now has become a private monopoly.

Talk about beating dead horses. If you don't know by now that they are two among many of our civic and political leaders who have betrayed the public trust and their own ideals, you will never know.

I didn't come this far to succumb to a bleak depression just because maniacs are killing cops and soldiers and innocent men, women and children all over the place and the planet is poisoned and running our of air and water and the era of American Imperialism and Materialism is coming to end.

I just needed a week of over-indulgence in the name of Thanksgiving to rejuvenate me and restore my belief that the escalation in tension and conflict on all levels today is a creative opportunity to make things better with greater liberty and justice for all.

The center isn't holding in a way that hasn't occurred since the 1960s and I do believe the worse things get, the better they can become.

I got to the first event of my 50th high school class reunion when the cocktail party was already in full swing in a hotel party room jammed with some 300 elderly people.

There was no line at the bar.

Drinks were cheap so I got a double and scanned the crowd, spotting an old girlfriend. Like 90 percent of us, she wasn't skinny like she was back in 1959 when we graduated from Cleveland Heights High School.

She had run off to New York at 21, eventually married and raised a family while running an antique business with her husband and now lived in Florida where they relocated and were still working.

Life was good, prosperity, happiness, family and friends. The room was filled with people whose lives were everything they were supposed to be for a generation that came of age in the 1950s when rock-and-roll and the space age were being born, when ordinary people suddenly could buy houses and cars and kids were expected to go to college.

It seemed like nearly everyone in the class of 600 did go to college. The room was filled with doctors and lawyers and accountants and realtors and insurance agents, teachers and therapists of all types, engineers and executives and entrepreneurs, even a few writers and artists and musicians.

It didn't matter whether they got all A's or all C's in high school. They had grown up in a middle class suburb and now were rich or at least upper middle class. They had scattered all over the country, more in California than anywhere else, and had traveled the world.

There were exceptions like one friend who grew up a pool stick in his hand and a deck of cards in his pocket. He had gone through hard times gambling his way into bankruptcy and blowing up a couple of marriages before straightening himself out 15 years ago with the help of Gamblers Anonymous where he was now a star helping others. He started his own insurance business, married again and now was a devoted grandfather to 14, retired, sober and happy.

I'm sure there were others who had struggles among those who were absent and beneath the surface of those who were present.

But the face we all put forward was the one of a generation whose dreams had come true -- true enough anyway even if they didn't quite fit all the pictures we held in our minds when we were young.

The Memory Book is filled with stories of marriages that have lasted more than 40 years, of loving grandparents, of adventurous travel, of happiness and success. It is the story of America in the post-World War II era of exploding wealth and hyper-consumerism, when father knew best and mom stayed home and took care of everyone's needs.

By the time we got to college there was the "pill" and rebellion against conformity, social inequality and war but ours was a time of relative innocence and the lives of my classmates reflect that.

We are old now, retired or semi-retired for the most part, the pre-boomer generation with long life expectancies. Our children are gifted with greater affluence and even better educations than we had.

Our parents were the greatest generation, no doubt, overcoming the Great Depression and lack of education to achieve the middle class. We were the luckiest generation, spoiled and indulged, educated and liberated from many of the cultural restraints of the past.

As I skimmed the surface of long-dormant friendships that dated back to grade school, I kept searching for some answers to my own sense of self, then and now, and to who we had become. At times I felt like the same awkward, shy adolescent I was
back then.

I didn't have any moments of epiphany and don't think I found anything profound. Most of my classmates have become like the rich, protective of our wealth and status, desirous of perpetuating what our families have achieved.

But there was an undercurrent of something else in play, a sense of adventure that ran through most people's lives as they followed their dreams wherever they led them. I'm sure there are some people for whom life has turned out badly but 90 percent of my class is still alive and kicking, younger and more vital than our 68 years of age might seem, often deeply involved in charities and community groups.

On the plane home I ruminated about my belief that we're undergoing a fundamental change in American society that goes far deeper than just another economic recession. I couldn't help wondering about how the lives of all those grandchildren will turn out in a world where economic growth has slowed and opportunity for material success become limited.

Two nights of partying with old friends and acquaintances gave me hope that there's more to us than just preserving what we've attained. We are younger than our years and have much to give after spending the prime of our time looking after ourselves.

Once we believed you shouldn't trust anyone over 30. Now, we probably shouldn't trust anyone under 30. Our lives have taught us how to change with the times and maybe, just maybe, we will see how lucky we've been, how much we have to give back to help create a new America where everyone has the same opportunities that we in the Heights High Class of '59 have had.

Exactly one year ago Saturday I was fired as Editor of the Daily News, the newspaper I devoted 23 years of my life to. and like everybody else who worked there during that time, endured just about everything imaginable to be able to keep my job and put out the best newspaper I could for myself, the organization and the San Fernando Valley.

I got no regrets.

The Daily News was the best thing that ever happened to me. I found success, and met my wife there. Together, we found true happiness and saw our son grow up strong and smart.

Without a doubt, this was the best year of my life. I found my voice as a writer, for better and worse, blogging whatever I wanted after a career of struggling to express myself under the constraints of corporate journalism.

And best of all, I got to connect to thousands of people all across the city who just like me were frustrated that the LA of their dreams was in reality a city going to hell.

While I'd been closeted in a newsroom taking pride in being part of a newspaper that stood up for the community and exposed wrongdoing in high places, these community activists were doing the hard work by joining Neighborhood Councils and neighborhood associations, business and political groups and service clubs.

They did good works for their communities and went to City Hall to plead their cases in the minute or two allotted to them. They studied the records and sat through endless hours of public meetings.

As a newsman, I found they knew more about what was going in our city than the entire news media. I came to realize that we in the news media spent nearly all our time covering government and government officials when the real stories of this city were out in the neighborhoods among the people where the decisions of government touched the lives of the people.

Often, I've said that if I had a staff or four or five good reporters today I could tell better stories, more important stories, more human stories, than I could with a newsroom of journalists.

The newsroom I left behind is now barely half the size it was when I was fired. I don't see how it can survive and that breaks my heart because of the pain it causes my colleagues and for the loss it means to the community.

Ever since I arrived in LA in 1980 as part of the traveling road show of an Indian guru, I've grappled with the tantalizing mystery of this place. If Chicago is the city of big shoulders, LA is the city of lovely shoulders, beautful but dangerous.

I've grappled over and over with the anything goes, anything is possible nature of LA, with its myths of stardom and freedom without bounds.

Only now, after a year without the armor of a job, a year as just another ordinary citizen fighting City Hall, am I getting a glimmer of what LA is really about.

It's as simple as happiness.

All the struggles and handwringing, all the lawsuits and protests, are about the failure of our city leaders to provide the environment we need to find our own happiness.

That, of course, means different things to different people, different things in different neighborhoods.

In a city of extreme diversity, a city of extremes, we have a government that panders to the poor without actually helping them, that enriches the rich without making the city better, that gives sweetheart deals to the special interests without serving the general interest.

We are segmented instead of unified. We are played against each other instead of being brought together. We are at war with a city that destroys a community farm in South LA, green-lights digital billboards all over West LA, gives lip service to the Valley and ignores East LA.

It isn't good enough anymore. We must do better before it's too late.

We are being gouged for our money every time we turn around from trash fees to parking meters. We get too little in return. We are about to get even less as the mayor proposes slashing our services and raising our fees to paper over his $1 billion budget deficit without solving any problems. In fact, he will make them worse.

I don't think he'll get away with it. The financial hole is too deep and certain to get worse. The global economic crisis insures that.

People are waking up. We saw that in the recent election. We'll see it again in the May 19 election when voters examine a series of state tax and spending measure that don't address what's broken and as they consider local runoff election candidates like Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich in the City Attorney race and David "Ty" Vahedi in Council District 5 and Tina Park in the Community College Board contest -- people who can make a positive difference.

Something big is going on and we need something big to change the course of history for our city.

This is our LA and we are going to take it back. My year as an ordinary citizen has convinced me it can happen. I have no illusions that it will happen overnight or be easy. But change is coming.

That's what I believe anyway as I start my second year as a blogger and ordinary citizen.

Part One:



Part Two: