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You got to feel for Walter Moore. Maybe he should just call himself "Wally" and dress up and act like Rodney Dangerfield who plays an obnoxious talk show host in a 1997 movie that at least got some reviews.

Whatever your politics, you ought to support Moore at least getting looked at by the local media, having his public fund-raising events at least get a brief notice and at least have examined why his constituency  is so aroused by Jamiel's Law which would crack down on illegal immigrants in gangs.

But poor Walter gets totally ignored in the media -- except for radio talk show hosts like Doug McIntyre on KABC and blogs like Mayor Sam.

Moore held a fund-raiser at Cal State Northridge on Saturday and 300 people showed up so he can get a crowd. He raised about 10 bucks a piece from them to put his campaign warchest at $107,000 so he'll qualify for city matching funds. But he got no press coverage. Stories written about the upcoming mayoral election.state Antonio Villaraigosa as the only announced candidate and refer to the fortune he's raising for his campaign and the possibility that billionaire developer Rick Caruso who's vacationing in Italy is the only possible serious candidate who might challenge him.

In the eyes of the media, it's a coronation, not an election.

This isn't new. Across the country, the corporate media are complicit with the vast machinery of big government, big money and big politics. It's been that way a long time, ever since half the papers in the country went out of business in the 1950s  and 1960s because of  their inability to compete with television.

All that was left of a once free and vibrant press was corporate ownership of mostly monopoly newspapers. Gone were the 12 papers in New York, the eight in L.A. with a variety of owners and a variety of politics, styles and points of view. Instead, what we got was journalism that reduced politics to on the one hand this and the other hand that as if there were only two ways to see any issue. The result was apathy, alienation, the loss of freedom of expression and the vital public conversations that lead to compromise and progress.

Some think it's all an overt conspiracy but that wasn't my experience in my 44 years in newspapers and publications of various types in many parts of the country.

What there was and is today is a conspiracy of consciousness, a shared belief of journalists that what they're told by the vast army of political operatives and politicians -- and what they tell each other -- is the American political reality, that the political reality inside the world they operate in is the political reality of  Americans.

That is the big lie.

(This article was written for Nina Royal's North Valley Reporter and published in the current issue distributed this weekend.)

All across Los Angeles, thousands of people -- many of whom I've gotten to know over the years -- have been fighting City Hall to preserve, protect or improve their neighborhoods.

These are often long, drawn-out struggles that test their endurance, their ability to organize and mobilize their neighbors whether it's to get a streetlight or crosswalk, stop or modify a development, crack down on criminals and nuisances or the hundreds of other issues that come up from time to time.

Often, they are treated with arrogance bordering on contempt, drowned in meaningless lip service, beset with bureaucratic obstacles or overwhelmed by the clout of insiders -- the developers, contractors or the influence peddlers who posture as lobbyists, lawyers, p.r. types or consultants of one type of another. And, of course, there's the unions.

I don't honestly know how so many never give up and stay true to their cause.

I've been fighting City Hall too out of my own sense of right and wrong but I was also paid for it as an editor at the Daily News. Now that I'm retired from that role and blogging and involved as a community activist I can speak openly about my motivation and personal beliefs.

Like most of the people who don't get involved, I could go on just fine and look the other way and pretend not to see the giant flashing billboard around the corner, the megastore down the street, the McMansion at the corner or the failure of my neighborhood schools.

In fact, I do that in a lot of ways but what I can't stomach is what has happened to L.A. during the last 30 years, an era in which city government has become owned and paid for by special interests who have no sense of purpose beyond their own greed.

The result is L.A. is at the tipping point.

That's the slogan we've come up with for the Bastille Day rally at City Hall at noon July 14.

It is meant to launch a new era in L.A., to give birth to a democratic movement that empowers the people and the communities to solve the growing problems caused by a failing educational system and a failing government.

The battle for a greater Los Angeles will not be won through pleading for our leaders to solve the city's problems or through a series of reforms or at the ballot box.

It can only be won through people power. Thousands of people across the city have worked hard to make their communities better and become angry and frustrated by the lip service, the indifference, the arrogance, of a system taken hostage by special interests.

The Saving L.A. Project -- S.L.A.P. -- is organizing a rally for July 14, Bastille Day, the moment the French Revolution began, to launch a movement that will bring together people who love L.A. and want to see change. The protest will start at noon at the South Lawn of City Hall.

Already, people from San Pedro to Sunland-Tujunga and many neighborhoods between them have committed to come to the rally and dump their grievances at City Hall and demand redress.

It is the start of something big. In numbers there is strength and by forming a coalition of concerned citizens we can make a difference, something dozens of local community groups have been unable to achieve over decades of struggling.

Take Back L.A. -- Demand A Great City. That's the theme of the protest. And greatness is our goal.

Great schools where every child is given the opportunity to learn and realize their full potential.

Great neighborhoods, free of gangs and the constant menace of violence, where families can live in safety.

Great businesses that add to the quality of life and provide great jobs.

We must confront the traffic congestion now by finding solutions that give people the choice between walking, biking, busing or driving from place to place.

We must become partners in every development to make sure that every project enhances the quality of our lives.

L.A. is a great place and now it must become a great city before it is too late.

The path we are being led down is the road to ruin, a city of rich and poor. A great city is built around the middle class and offers opportunity to all to achieve that It is not built out of mansions in guarded enclaves and slums under the control of hoodlums.

The people of the city must become full partners with the government in deciding how L.A. moves forward and that can only be achieved by having the power to help or hurt our political leaders. For too long, developers, contractors and public employee unions have held all the power and the residents of L.A. are left begging for what they believe will protect or improve their lives.

The Saving L.A. Project will change that  by forming a united front. We don't have to agree on everything. We just need to support each other in our efforts to make our communities better and our city greater.

Come to the Bastille Day rally. Join hands with your neighbors. This is the birth of real democracy in L.A. where the people are the bosses and the politicians and bureaucrats are the public servants.

What a day -- a David Nahai twosome.
 
So under siege over how much water he's using for his 6,000 square-foot mansion in the hills, DWP General Manager David Nahai came clean today in the Daily News -- twice as much water and more than three times as much electricity than the average ratepayer.

So much for his passion for the environment and conservation and piping toilet water treated repeatedly with toxic chemicals to the homes of the little people.

My head is still spinning from all the p.r. spinning Nahai is doing to turn his ostentatious consumption of precious resources into a virtue -- an opportunity to lecture us on what we should be doing to reduce water and power use. Credit Alan Middlestaedt at Witness L.A. for raising the issue.

Call Nahai irresponsible: "Your gardener sets the sprinkler and it goes off at night, you're sleeping, and the bill comes along and you pay it," he said.

But don't call him elitist: "Yes, it may be that I'm blessed with having more assets than some and less than others, but I'm constantly mindful of those people within the city who aren't as able to fend for themselves," he said. "Contrary to the thought that I'm making some kind of elitist statement here, I'm opening up my private life and I'm saying, `Here is what I've discovered and here's what I want to do to reduce both my usage and my expenditures. Can you do the same?'"

Actually, I can and I didn't have the privilege of his supposedly understaffed department sending out a team to audit my lifestyle.

Like Nahai, I have low-flush toilets and I recirculate water in my pool and I have a low-energy, low water consuming washing machiine. Unlike him, I have other low energy appliances as well. You could fit five of my houses inside his so you can bet I don't have anywhere near the amount of light bulbs or air conditioning use.

Here's an idea: Instead of gouging the little people with endless rate hikes, what if we  determine the average residential use of water and power and start charging people sharply higher rates when they go above that. And for people like Nahai maybe we should charge five to 10 times the average rate.

June 30 is the end of the six-month reporting period for candidates running in next year's city elections.

In an effort to scare away challengers, Antonio Villaraigosa has pulled out all stops to raise so much money from every quarter -- New York, Chicago, San Francisco, maybe even Israel -- that he's certain to haul in quite a bundle.

The one who guesses closest to the exact dollar amount the mayor has raised will win five coupons for double-doubles at IN-N-OUT.  All you need to do is sign up now (on the promo onthe right) to volunteer, participate or just stay informed about the Saving L.A. Protest at City Hall at noon on July 14, Bastille Day and email your guess to ANTONIOCASH@AOL.COM.

The deadline is midnight Friday June 27. All entries must include your email address and at least a first name. I'll be the judge (on this one you can trust me).

And just for fun go to Mayor Sam's blog and check out the brilliant campaign bumper stickers for possible mayoral candidates. For some reason, the only announced challenger, Walter Moore, is so far left out so check him out at his site.

Antonio, won't you please come home?

I don't begrudge you enjoying the perks of office like a totally unnecessary $250,000 junket to Israel paid for with huge rate and fee hikes you imposed on me and my neighbors.

Some of us like myself have lost our jobs; others live in dread of losing theirs. We're all paying nearly $5 for gas and higher prices to put food on the table, to get our garbage picked up, for water and power for our houses, which are worth two-thirds what they were just a short while ago.

But I got to question why you ran around the country supporting a candidate for president you didn't even like that much and it pisses me off seeing you jet-setting around to raise millions of dollars from people who want a piece of the action in L.A. -- money intended to make next year's mayoral election meaningless because you chased away the strongest challengers.

Do you really think your job is to be the King of L.A. and our ambassador to the world?

You somehow created a $500 million deficit while the city treasury swelled from one of the biggest housing and economic booms in history.

You promised to take over the failing public school system and turn it around and when your plan fizzled you turned to a backdoor takeover on the back of a previously failed LAUSD superintendent just to save face.

You boast of how violent crime has fallen but the credit goes to the police chief appointed by the previous mayor and to the people of this city who demanded massive reform of a militaristic police force and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to bring it about.

And now you have the nerve to tell us not to wonder why you're everywhere but here because you're a big shot mayor of a big time city, not the mayor of "some small town in desert somewhere."

Actually, a lot of people in L.A. do feel like they live in a small town somewhere in the desert, a neighborhood with a look and feel they like, an identity and sense of place that they're fighting to preserve against the onslaught of overdevelopment and unplanned urbanization that you and your colleagues are backing.

Don't get me wrong, I love you, man. I admire your charm and personality, and how you treat everybody like they're a friend you care about. I know you know what's the right thing to do.

But we didn't hire you just so you can party with the cool people and wear expensive suits and drink fine wines. We elected you mayor to do the job for us, to stand up to those who seek only their own advantage.

It's not enough to run around town sweet-talking us and spinning the truth about what's happening to the city.

We want leadership to fix our schools, to get traffic moving, to attract good jobs, to make our  neighborhoods more livable and more environmentally sensitive. We want the heavy hand of the law to come down hard on the gangsters who rule over so many neighborhoods and we want programs that keep out kids from becoming hoodlums.

We're fed up with the arrogance of power and the smug pretentions of elites that don't give a damn about the struggles of the middle class or the people struggling to get to the middle class.

We want a government that treats us with respect and respects our values, not a government that wastes our money manipulating us for the benefit of narrow interests.

We want a seat at the table of power so that our voices are heard and responded to.

Antonio, won't you please come home and get to work at the job of being mayor and starting fixing what's broken. Stand up for the people and the people will go to work with you to begin to make L.A. the great city it could become.

My only qualification for the job of deciphering L.A. Times stories that do their best to obscure the truth about what the hell is going on in this town might be the two years I studied Sanskrit in college, a dead language much like that often used by the city's dominant news source.

"L.A. generosity flows in Mid-City..City puts up millions to see real estate group CIM finish Midtown Crossing development"

Those are the headlines above a story today at the bottom of the California section. The story backs in softy to an account of how CIM Group, a well-connected Westside developer that has flourished in the last 15 years often with the help of its City Hall connections.It isn't mentioned on the front page of latimes.com and can only be found two clicks later well down on the website's local news page.

Eventually, we learn CIM has projects, some in serious trouble, that the city and city employee pension funds have been throwing good money after bad at, particularly the Midtown Crossing project at Pico and San Vicente.

Despite misgivings of its members, the Community Redevelopment Agency recently called for the city to up its subsidy from $5 million to $14 million in the project. You can bet the mayor along with Councilman Herb Wesson who has been very helpful to CIM twisted a few arms to get that vote.

What's astonishing about this story is that near the end of it we learn why we the taxpayers are giving away our money to rich developers.

"Redevelopment officials argue that without the subsidy CIM Group would achieve a financial return of only 7 % on its project -- lower than typical developments. Still unclear is how much advertising revenue the company would obtain by winning approval of the special sign district."

The sign district, being sought by CIM pal Herb Wesson, would allow the company to make a lot of money because the site could have signage that "display 'supergraphics' -- vinyl advertisements permitted by city law only in special cases."

So there you have it: They're going to give away our money to fat-cat developers who aren't satisfied by a 7 % return on their investment in order for them to make 20 % on a project that will create a lot of low-paying retail jobs and poison the visual environment with hideous signage that encourages materialistic obsession.

Of course, that's just the interpretation of a failed Sanskrit scholar whose headline across the top of the paper's front page might have read:

"CITY HALL GIVEAWAY...Taxpayer money goes to boost developer's profits"

I have long mocked the idea that all the campaign money and favors bestowed on politicians brought special interests what has been euphemistically called "access."

Developers, contractors, anyone wanting to profit from government get to meet privately (i.e. secretly) with elected officials, their staffs and the bureaucracy and gather information not publicly available and to set the terms of the discussion by conveying what is in their self-interest before anyone else has a say.

This is usually done for these special interests by lobbyists, lawyers, public relations experts, consultants and political strategists who have long relationships with the government officials, relationships that are both personal and professional, and enriched by the flow of political money and advice, both free and paid for.

Most of these contacts and the business transactions they involve never even bubble to the surface, never even become public knowledge. And when they do, it is far down the road. At the point ordinary citizens become aware of what's going on, the game is up. With limited  knowledge of the fine details, relatively inexperienced at such games, the public is easily dismissed as NIMBYs, easily beaten

I knew this was a great injustice. But until I got down on the ground as a community activist myself in the last two months I didn't know just how great an injustice it is.

In hearing first-hand the frustration of community groups who just want a legitimate voice in the political process, a seat at the table of power, I got angry, angry enough to decide something dramatic had to be done to change the situation.

That's why I called for the Saving L.A. Protest at noon on July 14 at City Hall, to take the first step in creating a citywide coalition of concerned citizens who would be able to mobilize to change the rules of engagement at City Hall, to change the way the process works, to make government accountable to the people.

It's a tall order I know. But the system has grown so arrogant and abusive that we need what my friend Teddy says is a Boston Tea Party to ignite the public's emotions and get something going.

Just look at how Steve Sugerman, a onetime deputy mayor, and Richard Alatorre, a longtime elected official  -- admitted felons who were convicted for crimes involving public corruption -- are getting rich operating deep inside City Hall \. They have total access to the mayor and everyone else while the public comes with hat hand to be ignored during their two-minutes before the City Council or double-talked when they try to get information.

Former Fleishman-Hillard p.r. executive Sugerman pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge, saying he thought his boss Doug Dowie wanted him to overbill the Department of Water and Power yet he's the point man earning a fortune peddling his influence for the massive Playa Vista development, the Southwest Museum and other clients with city busiiness.

He's registered as a lobbyist but claims most of his income doesn't come from actually peddling influence directly to the pols; it comes from helping clients manipulate the political process so you, the people, aren't entitled to know that.

And Jack Weiss -- the wannabe top city law enforcement officer as City Attorney -- thinks nothing of having Sugerman host a recent fund-raiser for him. We'll never really know how much was raised at the event because the biannual reports don't show anything but the date the check was written, not who attended the event and when the deal was cut.

I know now I will not be alone in a Bastille Day protest at City Hall.

So many others have stepped forward and said they too are fed up with the arrogance and failure of our city government that I know there will be a decent crowd at high noon on the 14th of July.

The question is whether there will be enough decent people to become an army that storms the bastille and shakes the foundation of L.A.'s corrupt political culture.

Saving L.A. -- that's the mission. Celebrating L.A. the place and demanding that it becomes a city, a real city where we all come together around a vision of something greater than ourselves, a great city.

We are at the tipping point. Too much greed. Too much poverty. Too many problems left  unsolved. Bad schools, over-development, traffic congestion, neighborhoods held hostage by gangs, official indifference to the values of the people, fragmented and weak communities -- L.A. teeters on the brink.

It doesn't have to be that way. We can have great schools and great neighborhoods, great streets and great parks, great busineses and great jobs. We can be greener and safer.We can be happier.

But we will never achieve that when all the leadership gives us is choices between paying twice for garbage collection or fewer cops, between power outages and water shortages and higher rates, between something bad and something worse.

City Hall has more than enough money to solve the city's problems. But too much is given away in sweetheart contracts and giveaways to developers and contractors for no purpose other than to maintain the system of failure. Too much is spent in ways that don't matter and too little on ways that would make our lives better and our communities more livable.

We need to spend our money smarter to create the kind of choices people want and the city needs. We need to raise the standards and create the kind of a city where we can choose to walk or ride a bike or take a bus or drive when we leave our homes to go to work or play. We need to able to choose between a good public school or a good charter school. We need good choices, not choices between the lesser of two evils.

The  leadership of this city is incapable of real change. It will take the people. It will take you to step forward and get the revolution started by joining the Saving L.A. Protest and make it a S.L.A.P. in the face of our elected officials, a wakeup call that the rules are changing, that the people are taking over.

I'm just a voice in the crowd. But people are stepping forward who have spent years working in the trenches to make their neighborhoods better, who know how to organize and make this happen. It will take more people to pull this off, to volunteer and turn this into something big and the start of something bigger.

So let me know if you're coming, if you want to help figure out how we make this protest a celebration of the spirit of L.A.'s people and their hopes for the future. We don't need to get mad to get even. We can come together and party and if there's enough of us there, they'll get the message.

This city belongs to you and me. So let's take our gripes and grievances down to City Hall and leave them there as a petition for redress. Every neighborhood, every group has their own set of issues, their own values. We don't need to agree on anything except our right to a government that serves us, not special interests, and our respect for each other's right to be empowered to affect public policy.

This S.L.A.P. in City Hall's face can be the beginning, the dawning of a new L.A. Come join the party!
 


 

One of the things you need to understand about the way City Hall works is that nothing is at  it seems.

The public story you read about is invented to obscure what really goes on behind the scenes. That's where armies of political operatives, public relations staffers, consultants and a host of others work to cut backroom deals and make up stories suitable for public consumption.

By suitable for public consumption, I mean stories that keep the masses docile, confused, weak, apathetic, defeated. So while I rail against the corruption of City Hall, the real problem is us. We're so decent we're gullible. We can't believe that the system is so corrupt that nobody can stay honest after just a short time in office.

There are a few current events worth looking at again to try to figure out what really is going on.

One of my favorites is the Department of Water and Power's grandstand media play to put 400,000 black plastic balls iinto the century-old Ivanhoe Reservoir in Silver Lake to keep sunlight from turning chlorine and bromide into carcinogenic bromates that pose a serious health hazard. "For quality of water for all of Los Angeles!," cried the ever effervescent Councilman Tom LaBonge as the ball plopped.

Sounds like a clever idea to keep our drinking water healthy right? But wait a minute, what if the public theater hid the truth about what's happened in the past?

if it's so dangerous today, what about in the past when the same problem existed and there were no black balls keeping the sun out? Was poisoned water served up on our tap?