Tag Archives: news

Let’s Lay Off the Mayor & Council — Who Needs Them?

Posted on March 9, 2010 by

Imagine the scenes at the Pacific Dining Car and in the back rooms of City Hall in the next few days as the nation’s highest paid municipal officials and their armies of staffers, each with their taxpayer-supplied Priuses, back slap … Continue reading →

Posted in City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Face Facts: The Economy Isn’t Coming Back to ‘Normal’, A ‘New Normal’ Is Evolving and We Must Change Before It’s Too Late

Posted on March 7, 2010 by

Put aside for the moment, if you can, City Hall’s well-documented mismanagement, its failure to respond to its budget crisis until it was completely out of control and its sweetheart deals with unions, contractors, consultants and developers. A good case … Continue reading →

Posted in City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Antonio’s Budget Fairy Tale –

Posted on February 28, 2010 by

It is a sign of the times that the mayor has actually been forced to engage the public in discussions, preliminary as they might be, about how LA is going to survive as a city even as it brings spending … Continue reading →

Posted in City Hall, Community Activists, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , | 16 Comments

Somebody Has Got to Pay for This DWP Outrage

Posted on February 27, 2010 by

EDITOR’S NOTE: Read the consultant’s report recommending massive DWP electricity rate hikes at OurLA.org. You don’t know nothing if you didn’t know this was coming: Massive DWP rate hikes.   How else did you think they were going bail out … Continue reading →

Posted in City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

City Parking Sell-off Fiasco: Full Report

Posted on February 2, 2010 by

City Hall’s plan to privatize 10 parking structures to cover its $208 million deficit without having to go into bankruptcy hit a snag Tuesday – the biggest tax scofflaws in the city are parking lot operators. For years, city officials … Continue reading →

Posted in City Hall, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , | 15 Comments

Loyalty Counts to Bill Bratton: Just Ask Jack Weiss and Michael Berkow

Posted on January 27, 2010 by

This one calls for a drum roll or two. Jack Weiss, the ex-Councilman drummed out of office for doing such a poor job, and former Deputy LAPD Chief Michael Berkow, drummed out of town for his philandering ways, have landed … Continue reading →

Posted in Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , | 19 Comments

2009: Turning Point in the Struggle for Democracy

Posted on December 31, 2009 by

My last political engagement of 2009 came on the second last day of year, breakfast with state Sen. Gloria Romero. The subject was educating our children by mandating that parents – all parents everywhere in California – have the power … Continue reading →

Posted in City Hall, Community Activists, Hot Topics, LAUSD, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , , | 39 Comments

The Granny Flat Gambit: Vigilance and the Struggle for Self-Governance

Posted on December 19, 2009 by

“A people cannot have the consciousness of being self-governing unless they attend themselves to the things over against their doors.” — Benjamin Ide Wheeler. Those immortal words of the autocratic president of the University of California 100 years ago do … Continue reading →

Posted in City Hall, Community Activists, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 37 Comments

Less Talk, More Action: Saturday’s NC Action Summit Videos

Posted on October 3, 2009 by

About 60 community activists, most of them members of Neighborhood Councils, met Saturday at LA City College in the first NC Action Summit — an alternative to next week’s Congress of Neighborhood Councils sponsored by the city and dominated by … Continue reading →

Posted in City Hall, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Day of Reckoning: Begging, Borrowing and Now Stealing — City Hall’s Exercise in Futility

Posted on September 13, 2009 by

Corner-Hooked: When the corner of a pocket prevents shooting the cue ball in a straight path directly to an object ball, the cue ball is corner-hooked — EasyPoolTutor.com At 1 p.m. today, Councilman Bernard Parks and his Budget Committee will … Continue reading →

Posted in City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments