Another New Bidder For Tribune Company - And Los Angeles Times!

So this new guy is not a newspaper man, thinks he can squeeze more profit out of the Tribune papers than the Tribune can... and he has been accused of accounting fraud.

The Devil we know is looking better and better...


November 13, 2006
Ex-Chairman of Insurer May Bid for Tribune
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chairman of the insurance giant American International Group, has become the latest wealthy mogul to express interest in the struggling newspaper industry.

Mr. Greenberg, 81, known as Hank, is considering a bid for the Tribune Company, people briefed on his plans said yesterday. Mr. Greenberg, these people said, has been quietly reaching out to investment bankers and lawyers about pursuing an offer.

He has also expressed interest in pursuing other newspapers and newspaper companies, these people said, including The Boston Globe and perhaps even Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

With that, Mr. Greenberg joins several other celebrities who are exploring investments in an industry that has been steadily losing readers and advertisers to the Internet.

Last week, two Los Angeles billionaires, Eli Broad and Ronald W. Burkle, made a surprise bid for all of the Tribune Company, whose assets include 11 newspapers, two dozen television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team. David Geffen, the co-founder of DreamWorks, the Hollywood studio, has been exploring the possibility of a bid for The Los Angeles Times. And John F. Welch Jr., the former chief executive of the General Electric Company, has been mulling a bid for The Boston Globe, a unit of The New York Times Company.

Having amassed more than $20 billion, Mr. Greenberg could prove to be a major force in the newspaper industry. People who have spoken with him recently suggest that his interest in the newspaper industry is sincere. "Hank is completely serious. He's looking to make his next big bet," one person who spoke with him said, cautioning that it was still early. "He likes to be a contrarian. He thinks many newspapers have strong brands and are being massively undervalued."

A spokesman for Mr. Greenberg declined to comment.

Beyond Mr. Greenberg's view that newspapers may be undervalued, it is unclear if his interest is simply as an investor or if he wants to take an active role in the editorial direction of newspapers.

Many of Mr. Greenberg's colleagues, including Mr. Broad, Mr. Geffen and Mr. Welch, appear to be interested in purchasing their local papers more for civic reasons than financial ones. Mr. Broad, for example, has told associates that he will be willing to accept lower profit margins to create a paper that benefits the community.

People close to Mr. Greenberg say he has also raised questions about the dual-class share structure of several newspapers, including the Times Company, where family members have control through a special class of stock.

Before Mr. Greenberg was ousted from A.I.G. last year under a cloud of suspicion about accounting issues, he was frequently interviewed in newspapers and on television and seemed to relish attention from the press. But since his troubles arose, he is said to have been frustrated with the way much of the news media has covered his travails and has in large part stayed away from publicity, with the exception of a few strategically timed interviews.

While Mr. Greenberg may pursue the Tribune Company and other papers alone, people close to him said he had also put out feelers about joining other investors. Mr. Greenberg already has a relationship with Mr. Broad, for example, as a result of Mr. Broad's sale of the insurance company SunAmerica to A.I.G. It could not be learned yesterday whether the two men had been in contact.

Mr. Greenberg has been looking for a next act since he was ousted from A.I.G. last year over questions about whether the company masked underwriting losses and faltering reserves with various sham transactions, including one with General Re, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway.

The New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, has filed a civil suit against Mr. Greenberg, accusing him of accounting tricks to hide problems at the company. Mr. Greenberg has denied the accusations. Mr. Spitzer recently dropped several of the civil charges in the suit.

LA Times Ever Popular Correcting the Corrections Feature Returns! And Still Can't Get It Right!

First, the first correction:

Disappearing cafeterias: An article in Friday's California section about the dwindling number of cafeterias in the Southland said that Gorky's Cafeteria was in Hollywood. It was in downtown Los Angeles.


Now the correcting the correction correction:

Disappearing cafeterias: An article in Friday's California section about the dwindling number of cafeterias in the Southland said Gorky's Cafeteria opened in Hollywood in 1983 and closed in the early '90s. A correction to that article that appeared on Monday's A2 said Gorky's was located downtown. The restaurant's first location, in downtown Los Angeles, opened in 1983. Both it and the cafeteria's Hollywood location closed in the early '90s.

NOW... stay tuned for the soon to be coming... corecting the correction correction of the correcting the correction correction:

As anyone who actually went to Gorky's downtown knows, it was NEVER called Gorky's Cafeteria. It was always either just Gorky's or Gorky's Cafe. But I do recall it possibly also being called Gorky's Russian Cafe and I seem to (maybe) recall Gorky's Cafe and Brewery.

But I never recall it ever being called Gorky's Cafeteria.

Ever.

UPDATE!

Checking my 17 - yes, 17! - out-of-date restaurant, shopping and other LA guidebooks from the Gorky's era - I found 17 variants of Gorky's Cafe (mainly just Gorky's or Gorky's Cafe) - and zero mentions of Gorky's Cafeteria.

Also GOOGLING Gorky's Cafeteria finds exactly one hit.

And, yes, it is the LA Times.

(Also, for the record, there were several Gorky's Cafe and Russian Brewery hits.)

Times New Front Page Design!

First response to the new front page of the Los Angeles Times; checked calendar to see if it was April Fool's Day.

Second response - went to local news stand to buy Sunday Times; left when saw out of Sunday Times. Checked second newstand; realized the cheesy paper at the first newstand was the Times.

Third response. My eyes hurt.

Fourth response. Vow to read Times on-line.

Eli Broad And Ron Burkle Offer To Buy Entire Tribune Empire!

The question is, do Broad and Burkle really want the entire package - or is this just a ploy to get the Tribune Companies to sell them the Los Angeles Times?

James Rainey
Times Staff Writer

10:25 AM PST, November 8, 2006

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and prominent investor Ron Burkle submitted a bid today to buy Tribune Co. , which owns the Los Angeles Times, KTLA Channel 5 and the Chicago Cubs.

Details about the offer and the price that the duo would be willing to pay remained unclear, but the Los Angeles-based businessmen have said for months that they wanted a local group to take control of The Times.

"Affiliates of the Broad Investment Company and [Burkle's] Yucaipa Companies have submitted a competitive bid for acquisition of the entire Tribune company," a source familiar with the offer said.

Broad declined to comment and Burkle could not be reached.

The offer comes the day after it was revealed that Times Editor Dean Baquet would leave his post, culminating a long-standing dispute between the editor and the paper's Chicago parent over proposed staff reductions. A month earlier, Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson was forced from his job, also largely related to his defiance of editorial staff cuts proposed by Chicago.

David Geffen, the entertainment mogul who is based in Los Angeles, has also expressed interest in acquiring the Los Angeles Times. He has talked about buying the paper himself rather than as part of a group.

In answer to my above question - buying the entire company does make sense if one wants to start a mini-media empire by using the Tribune as a starting platform. But their offering on the entire company also makes sense if they just want to buy the Times. By offering on the entire package, the people running the Tribune are faced with two options - either cut loose the Times - or lose their jobs.

For a more detailed look at how this might work - look at my post of September 2005:

http://lacowboy.blogspot.com/2005/09/david-geffen-wants-to-buy-la-times.html

Los Angeles Times Still Ignoring Los Angeles Election Results!

The results of the three propositions voted on by Los Angeles voters still can not be found on the front page of the Los Angeles Times website.

UPDATE! Finally found story on LA propositions buried in the middle of the California section:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-local8nov08,1,1275058.story?coll=la-headlines-california

Did Glenda Parker and Stan Jones Give Democrats Majority In US Senate?

Two unknown minor party conservative candidates - independent Glenda Parker in Virgina and Libertarian Stan Jones in Montanta only received about 36,000 votes between them (as of tonight), but they still each polled two or more times more than the existing winning margins polled by the Democratic candiates for each senate seat. So very likely if they had not been running, both of the Republican candidates would tonight be leading and the Senate might still be in Republican hands when all the votes are counted.

Also, the Green party did not field a candidate in either, which even further influenced the projected results.

But no matter what the eventual outcome of either of these races in the days to come, it makes you realize how much a just single individual with limited resources can still make a difference in our society and how just a comparative handful of voters can dramatically change national policy.

Nine Dead Election Links on LA Times Website!

Is there anything else that needs to be said?

Nope.

Update!

Dead links spring back to life at 1:40 AM. Still no word on three Los Angeles propositions.

LA Times Election Night Website DOA!

Not only does does the Los Angeles Times not have any... Los Angeles... coverage yet - but the links to both the state wide races and the state wide propositions have not worked for sometime.

Slate Corrects - And Yet - NOT Corrects - Witold Rybczynski Architectural Blunders!

http://www.slate.com/id/2151655

Correction, Nov. 2, 2006: This article originally identified the Californian architectural movement represented by Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Craig Ellwood as taking place during the 1960s. It is more accurate to locate it in the 1950s. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Witold Rybczynski is Slate's architecture critic.

To begin with, while the mention of the correction was made on November 2nd - it took several days after that before the article was actually corrected. Second, only one of the architects - Craig Ellwood - was part of the 1950's movement; the other two did influence that decade, though, but that was due to their work done earlier than the 1950's. Richard Neutra's actual breakthough decade was the ... 1920's.... and his most innovative work was done from 1920's until the 1940's. And Charles and Ray Eames's careers as architects ended in ... 1949. They did not have a single structure of any import built in the 1950's.

Far worse, though, is Rybczynski's uncorrected (and probably unthinking, dashed off with any thought) statement that West Coast cities such as Los Angeles lacked the architectural tradition that cities such as... Boston... had; a statement I can not imagine any creditable architectural historian even saying with a straight face, much less try to defend.

That statement of his is pure, unadultered bullshit and if Rybczynski does not realize this in quiet retrospect and if he still refuses to correct it, he probably should not be writing about architecture.

Why Change Was Needed At The Los Angeles Times

I will adddress later the forced resignation of Dean Baquet who worked hard to make the LA Times a better newspaper and how in many ways, he accomplished that.

But the major unsolved problem of the LA Times is that it simply refuses to be a paper that focuses on... Los Angeles. And that is depressingly clear when one looks at the LA Times website tonight. Long after the Daily News has full front page coverage on the two major propositions facing Los Angeles voters, there is still not a single word - or even a link - to any story covering the results of those Los Angeles races in the Los Angeles Times.

Unfortunately, even after all these months and all the critics telling him that - Dean Baquet never quite got that message.

One Of Those 'Is There ANYTHING The LA Times Didn't Get Wrong In The Article' Corrections!

At least the Los Angeles Times is honest to enough to admit in the below correction that they never bothered to actually talk with the people whom the article was about before they wrote it.

My favorite LA Times experience of this type was when a columnist (who is no longer with the paper) called to fact check a story about me at his editor's insistence since he had never spoken to me. But when I informed him he had all his facts dead wrong - he told me it was too late to do anything about it because the paper was about to go to press, which turned out to be a lie. He then altered one line slightly, but left all the untrue statements in his column. And, of course, no correction was ever made.

My second favorite experience was when a writer called to apologize when an editor (who had never met or talked to me) added an unflattering descriptive word before my name that was not only not what she had written and not her opinion of me, but which also contradicted everything she had written in the article.

November 4, 2006
'Blood Diamond': An article in the Oct. 10 Calendar section about controversy in the diamond industry over the film "Blood Diamond," to be released in mid-December, included references to the De Beers Group. De Beers was not given a reasonable amount of time to respond, contrary to The Times' policy.

The article referred to De Beers as a cartel that controls the majority of the world's diamonds. There are conflicting statistics over the percentages of diamonds mined and sold by various companies, and a De Beers spokesman says it does not mine and market the majority of the world's diamonds.

The article said De Beers was banned from operating in the U.S. for a decade because of antitrust violations, a reference that erroneously combined two 1994 legal challenges: The company was never banned but says its executives chose not to travel to the U.S. after a 1994 indictment charging De Beers and General Electric with industrial diamond price-fixing. De Beers pleaded guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to pay a $10-million criminal fine. Also, De Beers was accused of violating antitrust laws in a group of class-action lawsuits in 1994 that alleged U.S. consumers overpaid for diamonds; it settled those lawsuits for $250 million in 2005 without admitting liability.

The article also said that De Beers executive Jonathan Oppenheimer asked the "Blood Diamond" filmmakers to add a disclaimer stating that the events portrayed were fictional and that, under the Kimberley Process, so-called conflict diamonds now rarely end up on the market. This request came from the World Diamond Council, not from Oppenheimer or De Beers. The article suggested Oppenheimer was head of the De Beers Group when he expressed concerns about the film in September 2005 to diamond dealers and retailers at an industry convention in Cape Town, South Africa. At the time, he was head of a division, De Beers Consolidated Mines; he is currently a member of the company's board of directors.

The article stated that De Beers is exploring for diamonds on land in Botswana that was formerly occupied by the Kalahari Bushmen. That claim is made by Survival International on behalf of the Bushmen, who were relocated by the Botswanan government, which is partnered with De Beers in a diamond company called Debswana. A De Beers spokesman says that while it has explored in the Bushmen's former homeland in the past, it has never mined there and "today has no activity of any sort in the region."

The article also referred to a report released by the U.S. Government Accounting Office. Its name is the Government Accountability Office.

A letter from the De Beers Group providing that company's perspective was published in the Calendar section on Oct. 14 and can be read online at latimes.com/debeers. A letter from the World Diamond Council appears in today's Calendar section on Page E15.

Excellent Article On Gene Autry Museum Of The West In Sunday New York Times!

Cowboys and Indians Reconsidered: The Mythic West, Lassoed In by Reality
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

LOS ANGELES — Breakaway bottles used as props in fake saloon fights, posters for grade-B movies, a Hopalong Cassidy board game, Annie Oakley’s pistols, Gary Cooper’s toupee and a diorama of the O.K. Corral shootout: this is what you might expect to find in a museum founded by America’s Favorite Singing Cowboy, Gene Autry.

And here, at the Museum of the American West (formerly the Autry Museum of Western Heritage) in Griffith Park, nostalgic film buffs and aficionados of cowboy culture will find it all, much of it associated with an entertainer whose reputation was made with a guitar and a saddle, but whose greatest hit was a 1949 rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” that sold more than 30 million copies.

That is why it seemed so bizarre when, in 2003, the Autry Museum, with its $100 million endowment, absorbed the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, with its neglected world-class collection of 250,000 objects associated with once-flourishing tribes. This takeover caused much consternation. It wasn’t just the old cowboy-versus-Indian battle recurring in modern commercial form. It was the triumph of the phony cinematic West over its authentic past, with Hollywood’s stage sets winning out over relics so neglected through the decades that many had been assaulted by mold, mildew and insect infestation.

But something is needed other than these comfortable formulas to account for what the Museum of the American West has already become. In the next few years it has the potential to map out a new form of historical museum in the United States, one that is neither an intoxicated celebration of Western fantasy — turning itself into another stage set in a fictionalized drama — nor romanticized recompense for those who lost out in the conflict, as is now so often the case; sadly, the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington set the standard for a new indulgent, sentimental tone of Indian self-celebration.

The only problem is that this increasingly world class museum is buried in the wilds of Griffith Park (and near impossible to reach by public transportation) instead of being in the heart of the city where it would have some visibility. It is also a musuem that not a single person I know has ever been to - and I have only been to twice myself (and I was almost totally alone in the galleries each time). And now this mistake is about to be compounded by adding onto the complex at the existing site rather than expanding at a location where the public might actually find the museum.

Laurel Canyon Mountain Lion, I Mean... Bobcat - Returns!

Below is the latest comment on my Laurel Canyon Bobcat post:


The Bobcat is back at a new time! Two weeks ago, at 2pm, on a sunny day in Laurel Canyon I was sitting at my living room full length picture window blankly staring at the front yard and a grey with black markings bobcat with lynx like tufts on its ears came sauntering right on up the hill thru the yard directly to my window. Without the glass I could have petted it. It didn't hear or see me for some reason and I could see its yellow eyes processing the natural outdoors, while it was wrapped deeply in thought. I jumped up and went outside and it just walked away slowly down the driveway like it had not a care in the world. Realizing I was out there alone with a bobcat I looked around for a broom behind the car and when I came back it was gone~! Once again, a change in tactics of the cat, or was it a new replacement troop? Not sure. But its a mistake to accept the stereotyped information put out by various Bobcat sites. Look for other's personal experiences as there is more going on. The raw panic that came over me to make sure my pets were safe was really unpleasant. But they were ahead of me, sitting up on the flat roof hidden quietly watching. They too have adjusted their survival tactics, and now I must once again, adjust mine. We are all a bunch of animals still trapped in some ancient dance of predation and survival mistakenly thinking, in an age of suburban, citi-fied modernity that the old ways can't come back, but yes they can. And I won't even go into the four stalking and very mean racoons that come and throw themselves against the window and screen door at 2AM disappearing for a week everytime I chase them away. So now I have a boathorn to really surprise them next time they try and break in. Soon all this enlightened loving nature thing, and aren't these wild animals all so cute will be replaced with us all at each other's necks. Its amazing how one's pets can bring them right into the natural world. They have feelings about this just like I do except the human warrior has a broader and much more varied approach in battling the terror's of nature. They look at me in amazement when I confront nature and push it off one more time. Ultimately, nature never gives up though, and if it can't get us by quick surprise, it gets us in old age. Yes there is beauty there also, so many kinds, but then there is this other side that is incredibly cruel. If people only could really see just what this life actually is, really see, just maybe they would grow up and get it once and for all. For as a nation we live in a time of great external and self-imposed peril, all fruits of bad human judgement. Everyone wants to stand on top of the sand pile, good people and bad people and soon we will be in a world were nuclear proliferation will be in so many immature hands it will kill tens, hundreds, possibly millions of humans and animals and trees and plants and entire ecosystems all because of a series of interlocking bad judgements set in us by a nature that will surely limit our over-population in the only way it knows how. And we are playing right into its hands with each passing day. I know this to be true by the growing intolerance between people, even our own people. Just as native animals cannot break the yoke of predation and survival to control their numbers and keep the genetics of their species maximally tuned for foward evolution the same is happening to us. We don't see this because our species societies change the nature of the way things progress. Its a type of geologic time but in the mammalian paradigm with enriched uranium, plutonium, tritium, and if they could fusable cobalt so they could ignite iron and destroy our entire chemical periodic table. Then nature can start over and entropy can be preserved in an endless cycle of creation and destruction. Then nobody benifits, and all that has been built has been squandered and forgotten as if it never existed--all irrevicably erased. Unless we all take a proactive strong effort to open up the doors of real communication for a very long time, we are cooked. This is nature's way. It knows no other way. But we, humans the only species gifted with a decent chance at establishing real intelligence on our earth need to act now to stop the slide of our technologies into a giant global consuming war machine that will grind us up like veal patties. Robert Oppenheimer knew what he had unleashed on the world, and if he hadn't done it another surely would. And they are lining up from timbucktoo to poughkeepsie to get access to the bomb as its their only ticket to a proud culminating armegeddon. If a bobcat could drop a bomb on a cat it would. Sounds funny, kind of, but its exactly what we are doing.

The first post on this is at:

http://lacowboy.blogspot.com/2006/06/mountain-lion-or-just-really-big-bob.html

Slate's Witold Rybczynski Writes Single Stupidest Sentence In History Of Architectural Criticism!!

Normally reliable architecture critic Witold Rybczynski (and superb writer, to boot) has somehow coughed up a staggeringly inaccurate sentence that manages to get every single 'fact' in it dead wrong - and no one seems to have noticed! The overall story in SLATE concerns the lack of any kind of innovative architectural movements in San Francisco - and he's on his usually fairly firm ground there.

But then he tackles Los Angeles and fumbles... badly:

The West Coast suffered by comparison to the East Coast, though there have been at least two significant architectural movements in Los Angeles in recent years: the first in the 1960s, represented by Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Craig Ellwood, and the second today, dominated by Frank Gehry, who moved to the city when he was 17 and has become L.A.'s—and the country's—leading architect.

I mean - where do I begin? Well, to call Charles and Ray Eames part of the 1960's architecture movement is beyond lunacy when virtually every single significant building they created was designed - and built in... the 1940's. And Charles Eames started work as an architect in... 1930.

So what about Craig Ellwood? Well, he started in the 1940's and almost all of his masterpieces were done starting with the Hale House in 1949 between then and the late 1950's. By the early 1960's his career had peaked creatively and his firm was by then doing mostly corporate work until it closed in the 1970's. He was one of the quintessential 1950's architects.

And what about the claim that Richard Neutra was part of the 1960's architecture movement in Los Angeles? Well, you be the judge; Neutra attended architecture school during... World War I in Vienna - plus what many people consider his finest building was designed in Los Angeles in... 1927 and finished in 1929. Plus there was the minor problem that in the 1960's he was in his 70's and his finest work was done in the 1920's, the 1930's, the 1940's and the 1950's.

Part of the 1960's architecture movement?

Ironically, each of the named architects was a product of the 1920's Bauhaus/International style of architecture which reached its Los Angeles climax in the 1950's with the Case Study Houses and the almost exclusive use of the glass box in commerical office buildings; then in the 1960's, a variety of reactions to that style developed.

Still even more ironically, though, the only architect mentioned who can be legitimately described as being part of the 1960's movement is... Frank Gehry.

Gehry developed much of his style due to his interaction with the artists of that era. Gehry's use of provocative shapes and unusual materials was also already in evidence in his 1965 Danziger Studio and other designs of the era - plus he set up his office in 1967. He was a creative child of the 1960's in every way.

But Rybczynski is correct in that there was a significant 1960's - and 1970's - architecture movement in Los Angeles.

He just gets the names wrong.

Among the real members of that now fabled generation, besides Frank Gehey, were Cesar Pelli, Tony Lumdsen, Charles Moore, Craig Hodgetts, Tim Vreeland, Robert Mangurian, Thom Mayne, Peter De Bretteville, Ed Niles, Roland Coate, Frank Israel, Michael Rotondi, Coy Howard, Fred Fischer, Eric Owen Moss and many others.

The other flaw in the piece is an extreme example of East Coast myopia:

It's hard to know exactly why some cities develop an architectural sensibility. Clearly, having a local star serves to raise the level of public consciousness of good architecture. In the 1960s, Mies van der Rohe in Chicago and Louis Kahn in Philadelphia attracted and trained a generation of talented young architects from around the world, many of whom stayed to open their own offices. A strong architectural tradition helps, too. Chicago got a running start with Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham at the end of the 19^th century, Boston had H.H. Richardson, and during the Gilded Age New York City had McKim, Mead & White.

The West Coast suffered by comparison to the East Coast.....

Suffered by comparison??

What he neglects to mention is that in the early 20th Century, Los Angeles had an architectural tradition that equaled or exceeded any of those cities from 1910 to 1950. In addition, no other city in the world had as varied a list of architects - and architectural traditions - as did Los Angeles during that era.

Starting with the Japanese influenced bungalow styles of Greene and Greene and Alfred and Arthur Heineman and other craftsman architects, the Mission and Spanish style of numerous architects such as John Byer, the early modernism of Irving Gill, the unique style of Frank Lloyd Wright's LA homes, the Bauhaus informed houses of R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, rivalist stylists such as Myron Hunt, the older Roland Coate, Sumner Hunt, Paul Williams, Robert Stacy-Judd, S. Charles Lee and Wallace Neff and the ranch houses of Cliff May, the era came to a close with a parade of modernists who appeared in the 1930's and 1940's such as John Lautner, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Thornton M. Abell, Raphael Soriano, Pierre Koenig, Lloyd Wright, Walter Wurdeman, Rodney Walker, Charles Luckman, Douglas Honnold, John Rex, Thornton Ladd, Carl Maston, Gregory Ain, Welton Beckett, J. R. Davidson, William Pereira, Edward Killingsworth, Gordon Drake, Frederick E. Emmons, A. Quincy Jones and many, many others.

Again... suffered by comparison?

Comparison to... what?

Article On How To Improve LA Times - Gets Name Of Project -- WRONG!

On the front page of the OPINION section webpage - the headline is supposed to say that the old name of 'Manhattan Project' is now the 'Spring Street Prtoject. Alas - below is what the headline says:

Opinion L.A.: Manhattan Beach Project, we hardly knew ye. Welcome to the re-branded Spring Street Project.

Does not bode well for the future of this project....

What Part Of A Fourteen Year Old Male's Mind Did This Woman Not Understand?

Alexis Luz Garcia, 40, of Corona, was cited for a misdemeanor in May after she allegedly gave the boy, her neighbor, a full-frontal view as he played basketball in the yard next door.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of one year in jail and requires the defendant to register as a sex offender.

Garcia had complained to the boy that he was making too much noise as he played. When he didn't stop playing, she went out onto her sundeck.

"He looked up at her, she looked down at him, and she disrobed," Norton said.

The boy ran inside and told his parents, who complained to Garcia. When she threatened to do it every time he played basketball, his parents called police, Wyatt said.

All I can say that if a women threatened to disrobe everytime the guys I grew up with practiced basketball - we'd have all ended up on the Lakers.

Free Opera At The Place Theater Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday!

There are four more performances of a wonderfully sung production of Verdi's second opera, a rarely performed comic masterpiece. See below for details.

And if you go to will call - just say you are with the Brady Westwater party and say how many tickets you want - and they will be free! All I ask is that you donate in the box in the lobby after the opera whatever you feel like giving.

Lyric Opera of Los Angeles presents

Un Giorno di Regno (King for a Day)

by Giuseppe Verdi

September 1733. The rightful heir to the Polish throne, Stanislas, is in
hiding because of a War of Succession. When he decides to return, he
sets up a decoy in the person of a French officer to lodge at the castle
of Baron di Kelbar.

Meanwhile, the Baron di Kelbar has arranged alliances with important
members of Society by marrying off his daughter and his niece. But, to
their grief, the women have other loves.

On the day the real king is maneuvering to regain his throne, the false
king is maneuvering to block the arranged marriages and deliver the
women to their true loves.

This is a 19th century comic opera replete with mix-ups and
misunderstandings. The story was so popular that Verdi was commissioned
to make a new musical setting of this existing text. In only his second
opera, we hear the young Verdi begin to emerge from contemporary musical
models to forge the language that was to become his own.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Performed in Italian with English Supertitles

Director - Arthur Freeman * Conductor - Robert Sage
with the LOLA Opera Orchestra & Chorus

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

PERFORMANCE DATES/TIMES
(4 performances remaining)

* Wednesday, October 11 - 7:30pm

* Friday, October 13 - 7:30pm
* Saturday, October 14 - 2:00pm

* Saturday, October 14 - 7:30pm

Performances are taking place at the historic DOWNTOWN PALACE THEATRE,
630 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, 90014

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ticket Prices range from $15-$60
Visit our website to purchase your tickets, or buy yours at the door
http://www.lyricoperala.org
800.471.9515

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Cast
(see website for each artists performance dates)

Aram Barsamian - Cavaliere Belfiore
Roberto Gomez - Cavaliere Belfiore
Joyce May-Tobin - la Marchesa del Poggio
Rebecca Sjowall - la Marchesa del Poggio
Matthew King - Edoardo
Patrick Layton - Edoardo
Amber Erwin - Giulietta di Kelbar

Adrien Roberts - Giulietta di Kelbar

William Goldin - Barone di Kelbar
Cale Olson - il Signor la Rocca

Bruce Wright - il Signor la Rocca

Is New Los Angeles Times Publisher - David Hiller - The Best Of All Possible Worlds?

While not wanting to put too much of a Panglossian... gloss... on the situation - it is possible that what happened today is the best possible thing that could have happened to the Los Angeles Times.

But, first a word about the dead.

Jeff Johnson knew he would likely be fired when he publicly backed Dean Baquet in refusing to make the staff cuts the Tribune headquarters had ordered. But he still made his stand with Dean. He came here a dyed in the Brooks Brotthers suit company man - but left the Los Angeles Times a genuine journalistic hero.

Now for the good news.

Every person I know in Chicago has nothing but not just good - but great things to say about David Hiller. And while he can not be expected to go native as fast as Jeff Johnson did, with the LAT's staff's suspicion and anger towards the Tribune right now - it is impossible for Hiller to start his tenure with the massive cuts that had been previously demanded of Johnson.

Additionally, Hiller has a lot more leverage with Chicago than Johnson ever did. Hiller led their showcase property and is rumored headed towards running the entire show.

He is not expendable. He can not be fired as easily as was Johnson. So if he decides that these proposed cuts will hurt more than they will help - he is in a lot stronger postion to enforce his opinion.

Michael A. Hiltzik
Times Staff Writer

October 6, 2006

... Hiller, 53, is described by friends and former colleagues as a personable, funny and intellectually engaged executive who understands journalistic traditions. But he is not shy about stating that the challenge for newspapers is to do "the absolute best job you can for readers and online customers and still be a strong business."

In the industry's quest to balance economic concerns, investor demands and journalistic mandates, Hiller now occupies one of the hot seats. The Chicago native and Harvard-trained attorney took over Thursday as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, following the resignation of Jeffrey M. Johnson, who had publicly questioned the strategy of parent Tribune Co.

And...

Hiller has been a rising star at Tribune, most recently occupying the publisher's chair at the Chicago Tribune after serving as senior vice president for development and subsequently as head of Tribune Interactive, where he was responsible for the company's Internet strategy.

His background has been varied, including a stint as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, two years at the Reagan Justice Department (where his colleagues included current Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani) and work as a lawyer at the Chicago firm Sidley & Austin, where his assignments included first fighting, then settling, the landmark federal antitrust case against AT&T that resulted in the telecommunications giant's 1984 breakup.

And...

Along the way, Hiller acquired a cadre of admiring colleagues and devoted friends.

"He's a man with catholic interests," said John Zeglis, a former partner at Sidley & Austin who later became AT&T's general counsel and then chief executive of AT&T Wireless.

Hiller, Zeglis and several friends kept up an annual tradition of backpacking in the Rockies or other wilderness areas at which Hiller characteristically displayed the campcraft he learned as an Eagle Scout and maintained the group's travel journal.

"We'd notice that he'd read newspapers cover to cover, even before he got into that business," Zeglis recalled...

And....

At the Chicago Tribune, where he became publisher in November 2004, Hiller quickly became a familiar figure in the newsroom — not the most natural haunt for a publisher. He arrived on election night that year and spent hours observing the operation at a time when a newsroom is at its most frenzied, and later sponsored a series of well-appreciated brown-bag lunches for staff members at which "no questions were off-limits," said Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski.

"We didn't always see eye to eye on things, but he was comfortable with disagreement," Lipinski added.

Whether, or how much, Hiller will stand between The Times newsroom and what newsroom employees see as Tribune Co.'s unrelenting demand for cost cuts is unclear. Tribune editors note that his engaging personality and his sensitivity to newsroom culture don't obscure the fact that he is unmistakably a corporate manager.

"At the end of the day, he's a business guy," said one newsroom executive who asked not to be named. "On budget issues, he'll make the decisions he has to make as part of management."

That said, a Tribune newsroom source noted that in reducing costs, Hiller tended to try to avoid cutting personnel, instead seeking operational savings elsewhere, "and that was appreciated by the staff...

Now there are those at the Times who feel that this change is merely a short term turnaround to put some lipstick on the pig by cutting costs, raising net income - and then selling the LA Times.

But I don't think so.

I can not imagine the Tribune selling the Times when it brings in the revenue it still commands nor can I imagine David Hiller taking this job if it was just to conduct a close out sale.

Under Johnson, Baquet and Martinez - the Times has dramatically improved in the past two years. Now with a publisher with more clout in Chicago at the helm and one willing to explore more ways for the paper to engage the public along with more creative ways of cutting costs - he just might be the person to not just finish turning around the LA Times creatively, but also - finally - financially.

Chicago Tribune Coverage Of Los Angeles Times Turmoil!

Pretty straight coverage at the Chicago Tribune on the LA Times defenestration of Jeff Johnson:

L.A. Times publisher asked to resign

Chicago Tribune publisher stepping in

Tribune media columnist

October 5, 2006, 2:04 PM CDT

Jeff Johnson is out as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, asked to resign today by Chicago-based Tribune Co. a month after he publicly backed Times Editor Dean Baquet's defiant protests against the parent company's demand for staff reductions.

Tribune Publishing President Scott Smith said Chicago Tribune Publisher David Hiller has replaced Johnson as publisher and president at the Times. Smith, a former Chicago Tribune publisher, will temporarily supervise that paper's operations in addition to all of Tribune Co. publishing concerns.

"Jeff and I agreed that this change is best at this time because Tribune and Times executives need to be aligned on how to shape our future," Smith said in a statement. "We thank Jeff for his leadership of important advances at the Times and his significant contributions during his Tribune career."

Later, in a note to Chicago Tribune staff, Smith said, "The strong management teams in place at the Chicago Tribune and the publishing group will allow me to effectively oversee both."

Whether Baquet will remain in charge of the Times newsroom was uncertain, though Times employees suggested it would be difficult for him to stay if Hiller asked for the same staff cuts that Johnson resisted.

Now below, it seems they are referring to the LAOBSERVED:

Baquet was meeting with senior executives at the paper, as word of Johnson's exit leaked out. One Times newsroom source said he heard Baquet would stay.

Lastly:

Tribune last month announced that it would consider restructuring the company, potentially selling assets or breaking the media conglomerate into pieces. Tribune bought the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co. in 2000.

Dean Baquet To Remain Editor Of LA Times!

LAOBSERVED reports that LA Times Editor Dean Baquet and new Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller sniffed each other's butts over coffee this morning, liked what they smelled and agreed to work together:

Baquet staying

Kevin Roderick

Times editor Dean Baquet told an editors meeting at 11:30 that he can work with new publisher David Hiller. Baquet had coffee with Hiller this morning and apparently was told to make his strongest case for the Times fending off deep newsroom cuts. Hiller is expected to address editors this afternoon.

But can Andrés Martinez work with Hiller? I've no reason to think not, but the publisher of the Los Angeles Times directly oversees the editorial and op-ed page editor. It was Johnson who encouraged Michael Kinsley to leave, installed Martinez and signed-off on (or more) the removal of longtime columnist Robert Scheer and reinvention of the editorial page and the Current section.

Check it out: Mark Lacter has background on Hiller at LA Biz Observed.

Edited post

And Just Who The Hell Is This David Hiller - New Publisher Of The Los Angeles Times?

Well, according to the Washington correspondent of The Nation - new LA Times publisher David Hiller at least isn't totally the spawn of Satan. Some quotes from a panel discussion they both served on:

John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation, followed with an account of the responsibilities of the press in a democracy, harkening back to the writings of the Founding Fathers and the conception of the media as an “essential check and balance on executive excess, especially during war.”

And...

David D. Hiller—president, publisher, and CEO of the Tribune—defended his paper’s independence from the government, citing the Tribune’s history as an “equal-opportunity discomforter.” He emphasized that accessibility to free news on the internet is pressuring newspaper business models.

And...

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper lauded by Nichols for its “robust conservatism [in its editorials] in a time of neoconservative drift,” as opposed to the “crooks, conners, and thieves who currently use the name.” Nichols also lauded the Tribune for its expose journalism on such issues as the death penalty, and Warren reiterated the Tribune’s commitment as a government watchdog.

Hiller would seem to fit the mode of a social liberal who is conservative on economic issues (he clerked for Justice Stewart at one time) and that would fit in quite well with the new LA Times of Jeff Johnson and Dean Baquet.

Wikipedia also seems to be impressed by the Tribune's move to the center:

Apart from electoral endorsements, the Tribune has taken on a centrist editorial position in recent years. It has, for example, criticized the Bush administration's record on civil liberties, the environment, and many portions of its foreign policy. At the same time, it has remained economically conservative, being widely skeptical of increasing the minimum wage and entitlement spending. In many ways, this has given the modern Tribune editorial page a libertarian bent.

At the local level, the Tribune has long been -- and remained -- the chief antagonist of the Chicago Democratic Machine, particularly the system of patronage. It has written dozens of editorials criticizing former Cook County Board President John Stroger, for example, and while it has endorsed Mayor Richard M. Daley, it has been strongly critical of hiring policies and other allegedly corrupt deals, including the Hired Truck Program, in his administration. The newspaper has also devoted considerable reporting resources to investigating the machine, running large investigative pieces on irregularities in campaign finances, the delivery of city services, and governmental contracting.

Other hopeful signs (and... admittedly.... we are grasping for straws here...) are that he was in charge of interactive media and also recently oversaw their Hispanic - Chicago-speak for Latino - media.

http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?id=13942

Tribune Publishing's David Hiller Expands Responsibilities, Group CFO Jerry Agema Promoted

PR Newswire

CHICAGO, Dec. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Tribune Publishing today announced that David Hiller, president/interactive and senior vice president/publishing, will expand his responsibilities to include oversight of The Baltimore Sun and Tribune Publishing's Hispanic media. In addition, Jerry Agema, vice president/administration and chief financial officer, has been promoted to senior vice president, effective immediately. Agema will continue in his role in administration and finance, and will also oversee strategy and development, human resources and technology within the publishing group.

"David and Jerry are two of the most talented and experienced individuals in Tribune Publishing," said Jack Fuller, Tribune Publishing president.

Hiller is currently responsible for Tribune Interactive, Tribune Classified Services, Tribune Media Service, The Hartford Courant and CLTV. His expanded role will add responsibility for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sun and Tribune Publishing's Hispanic media division that coordinates group activities among the company's Spanish-language newspapers, including the New York and Chicago editions of Hoy.

Hiller was appointed senior vice president/publishing in February 2003, and president of Tribune Interactive in May 2000. From 1993 to 2000, Hiller served as Tribune Company senior vice president/development, with responsibility for strategic planning, acquisitions and new-venture investments. He was Tribune's vice president/general counsel from 1988 to 1993...

Los Angeles Times Publisher - FIRED! Jeff Johnson Out!

LAOBSERVED.COM has the story:

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2006/10/johnson_fired_as_times_pu.php

Just when the gradual improvements at the Los Angeles Times have reached a critical mass point and the paper is once again not only worth reading to find out what is happening in this city - but mandatory reading for anyone who cares about Los Angeles - one of the two people most respsonsible for this happening has been fired by the Chicago Tribune's bean counters.

Now the only question is - will the Tribune's death wish for the Los Angeles Times be completed if Dean Baquet now resigns?

UPDATE!

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-100506johnson,0,3972238.story?coll=la-home-headlines

LA Times reports that David Hiller new publisher of Los Angeles Times. Still no word if Dean Baquet will quit.

James Rainey
Times Staff Writer

11:20 AM PDT, October 5, 2006

The Tribune Co. forced out Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson this morning, a little more than a month after he defied the media conglomerate's demands for staff cuts that he suggested could damage the newspaper.

Tribune Publishing President Scott C. Smith was huddling with top managers at the newspaper and was expected to announce after the meeting that David Hiller, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, would immediately replace Johnson as chief executive at the 125-year-old newspaper. Hiller would become the 12th publisher of The Times.

Hiller was expected to ask Times Editor Dean Baquet to stay on the job, despite the editor's sharp protests against further job cuts by the Chicago-based parent corporation. Friends of Baquet said the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist had not yet decided to remain with the paper....

Suck.Com Comes To LATimes.Com!

Tim Cavanaugh most recently of REASON, but most noteworthy for his tenure at the pioneering (1995 - 2001) , fabled and never since equaled media site of www.suck.com - is now running the opinion section of the LA Time's website. This was reported today by FishBowlLA, one of the few worthy successors to the old Suck.

Tim was, for those not old enough to recall the early days of original online (and hopefully... advertiser supported) free content, was the infamous ... BarTel D'Arcy... before he left for Reason. Once there, he then shamelessly purloined Suck's 'Hit and Run' feature for only slightly less evil purposes.

And despite Suck's occasional and thoroughly misguided comments about my personalty and writing qualities - which I am certain were, of course, only meant in the most ironic of ways.... its wit and intelligence and irreverance - which can still be read courtsey of GOOGLE - is as fresh today as it was back in the days of the first internet boom.

Now if the Times can only get former Suck illustrator and artist extraordinaire - Terry Colon- to come onboard - profitable advertiser supported free on-line content might no longer be an oxymoron.

http://www.suck.com/fish/contributors/cavanaugh/

Trona May Be Hell On Earth - But It's Still One Up On Los Angeles!

Once a prosperous and tidy company town with desert vistas, Trona is in decline, cherishing its memories but living with crime and blight.

By David Kelly
Times Staff Writer

October 4, 2006

TRONA, Calif. — Fed up with the crime, congestion and cost of Orange County, Fred Hermon went looking for a place where he could be alone, a place so remote, so unappealing that few would ever want to live there.

His strategy was simple: Locate the popular, pricey towns on a map and move steadily outward. That's where he found Trona.

When he searched the Internet for information, the word "hell" kept popping up — 'Is Trona Anywhere Near Hell?," "Where the Hell Is Trona?," "Long, Lonely Ride Through Hell."

Hermon didn't actually expect to find perdition as he descended through Poison Canyon into Trona three years ago, but the smell of sulfur, the blast-furnace heat and barren landscape made it feel uncomfortably close.

A real estate agent showed him a neighborhood with block after block of burned-out homes.

"I said, 'Oh my God, no,' " he recalled. "Another area looked like Los Angeles after the riots.

Pretty bad - huh? But even Trona has one thing Los Angeles for all its attractions does not have - a musuem dedicated to its history.

The pride of Trona is the Old Guest House Museum, a shrine to the town and the minerals that made it. There are old photos of John W. Searles. His violin sits behind glass. Small bottles of potash, borax and fly ash are displayed, along with maps, history books and assorted mining and railroad paraphernalia.

Margaret Brush, 79, is curator and the town's most energetic promoter. She recently won funding for a kiosk along the road to Death Valley offering information about Trona.

"We needed something to attract people to Trona and to our museum," she said.

So if even Trona can support its own museum - why can not the City of Los Angeles?

Eric Garcetti Saves Hollywood Landmark!

City Council President Eric Garcetti found a way to allow a major development to go forward at Hollywood and Vine while also allowing a part of Hollywood's increasingly vanishing history to be saved. Hopefully, this will establish a precedent in requiring new projects to incorporate hisoric buildings within their developments rather than just taking the expendient route of bulldozing our past.

One upcoming example would be to save the old Workman Building, which is now the current MJ JHiggins Gallery Building, on Main Street by building the new police garage around the last 1890's commerical building left on that part of South Main Street.

Hollywood Luggage Shop Won't Have to Pack Its Bags

Owner wins his fight against the plan to raze his luggage store, so a massive development at Hollywood and Vine will be built around the 1928 landmark.

By Bob Pool
Times Staff Writer

September 28, 2006

Hollywood's luggage king refused to pack his bags and go when Los Angeles officials tried to seize his 60-year-old family business to make room for a high-end hotel development.

Shopkeeper Robert Blue fought back by blasting the city's use of eminent domain with a mocking billboard atop his Bernard Luggage store on Vine Street just south of Hollywood Boulevard.

Then he filed a lawsuit alleging a violation of his right to due process, and in the process became a symbol of what some residents considered Hollywood redevelopment run amok.

And on Wednesday the luggage man bagged a victory.

The city and Community Redevelopment Agency leaders announced that Blue's business will stay — and the largest commercial development in Hollywood history will literally be built around the historic 1928 building containing his valises, suitcases, trunks and travel accessories.

The planned $500-million Hollywood and Vine project will include a glitzy, 300-room luxury W Hotel and 150 condominiums, 375 modern apartment units and 61,500 square feet of upscale retail space.

Tucked into it will be the Bernard Luggage building, set back from the street an additional 12 feet and restored to its original, vaguely Spanish Colonial Revival glory.

Architects changed the plans for the sprawling development to notch in the building, which will be bordered on two sides by the new construction.

Blue, 46, will retain permanent ownership and use of the one-story, 5,475-square-foot structure, originally called the Herman Building.

The structure cannot compete with Hollywood's more glamorous architectural landmarks like the El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and Capitol Records building.

But fans see it a symbol of Hollywood's golden era. It was designed by architect Carl Jules Weyl, who also drew the plans for the now-destroyed Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant next door. Weyl went on to win an Academy Award for art direction on the 1938 Errol Flynn-Olivia de Havilland classic "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

"This is a proud day for Los Angeles!" Blue shouted over the noise of a 12-story crane parked a few steps away on Vine Street. It was hoisting building materials onto the roof of a former Broadway department store building that is being converted into posh condominium units in another city-sanctioned redevelopment project.

The fate of the luggage store had become an issue of much debate in Hollywood, which is in the midst of a major revitalization and building boom. Hollywood and Sunset boulevards, both symbols of decay in the early 1990s, have seen a string of new retail and housing projects rise in the last few years as the neighborhood has become a hip destination again.

But some merchants and community activists have expressed concern that rebirth has come at the expense of Hollywood's past, including several movie houses and TV studios. Preservationists have battled to save the Florentine Gardens, the Hollywood Palladium and CBS Columbia Square.

Blue credited Hollywood-area City Councilman Eric Garcetti for setting up negotiations with developers and the city's redevelopment agency that led to Wednesday's breakthrough. But he still got in a dig at eminent domain.

Such government land seizure should be reserved for public projects, not commercial developments like the one that will rise around his tiny shop, he suggested. "You can't always count on a good City Council president" being there to help the small property owner, Blue said....

LA Alternative Article on Neighborhood Councils....

Now that the LA Alternative Press is about to be no more - I assume it's on-line back stories will soon vanish; so here is the article it did awhile back on neighborhood councils...

While L.A.’s neighborhood councils cry that City Hall is leaving them in the dust, others complain that election delays, infighting and conflicts with the city have slowed up the neighborhood council movement. The battle for the future of neighborhood councils is now in session.
by Seth Meyer
illustration by Dan May

Who would want to move into a neighborhood where drug dealers-50 of them in a row-sit in front of your building?” says Brady Westwater, president of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council, as he walks past the intersection of Spring and 5th streets. “An art gallery, and that’s about it. Artists think it’s edgy.”

Westwater is a fixture of downtown-on the streets and at City Hall. The fourth generation in his family to live on Spring Street, he’s not only the president of DLANC, but also chairman of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Congress, an umbrella group that has served to unite neighborhood councils from across L.A. since they were created in 1999 by the revamped city charter. Neighborhood councils, it was decided, would be a way for those with no experience in government to participate in decisions affecting their neighborhoods. People like Brady Westwater.

A wiry man with short silver hair, he wears a black T-shirt, black jeans and black cowboy boots as he strides from one gallery to the next, greeting owners, discussing upcoming meetings, and digging for the good candy in their candy dishes.

In 2004, the downtown neighborhood council’s Art Committee conceived of Gallery Row: an area of empty retail spaces and drug dens that would be converted into art galleries. Westwater and the council began looking for spaces and encouraging galleries to move in. What started with five galleries has grown to 27. Nowadays, the Downtown Art Walk is bustling every second Tuesday of each month when galleries open their doors from noon to 9 p.m. With the galleries came small boutique stores and restaurants, and suddenly a forgotten strip of urban blight looked more like a burgeoning art scene.

“People were kind of curious to come downtown, and their understanding was that it was scary as shit,” says Bert Green, director of Bert Green Fine Art located at 5th and Main. “And they weren’t really far off, actually. A lot of people came down here and flipped out. But in a two-year period, it has completely transformed. It’s still rough around the edges, and there’s some crazy stuff that goes on, but mostly people come down here and now they remark how cleaned-up it is.”

“Everybody who’s moving in downtown, people who are doing the neighborhood council, people who live in the lofts, we are forming a very tight and very connected community. We all know each other,” Green says.

Proponents of neighborhood councils would say this is exactly what they were designed to do: bring more people into local government, improve neighborhood conditions, and create a more connected community.

Neighborhood improvements like this, both big and small, have grown out of neighborhood councils throughout Los Angeles. A DWP rate increase was trumped. A deal was made with Adelphia cable to provide an affordable basic cable rate for low-income residents. Trees have been planted, parks cleaned up, port-o-potties installed and gym equipment purchased. Streets have been widened, graffiti removed, noise pollution abated and sidewalks repaired.

If you knew nothing else about neighborhood councils, it would seem that these independent little bodies of grassroots democracy are thriving, having accomplished much in the six years since their creation. But conflicts with the city over election procedures and the right to weigh in on important issues before they are decided by the City Council have slowed progress to a standstill in several neighborhood councils. Some neighborhood council leaders contend that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is attempting to limit the powers of the councils, and that he has installed one of his own “Antonio-istas” as interim general manager for the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, which oversees neighborhood councils. Others warn that neighborhood councils are turning into ineffective extensions of the city’s bureaucracy because of restrictive, newly imposed election procedures and rigid guidelines that govern their meetings.

“We’re just baffled why it’s become so adversarial,” says Westwater. “Why we can’t sit in a room together and work out the election procedures. There’s no communication between us and DONE right now. And if there’s no communication, how do you solve problems?”

The entire system of nearly 90 neighborhood councils stands at a crossroads while the charter-mandated 912 Commission begins a year-long process of reviewing the system and making recommendations to the City Council.

The battle for the future of neighborhood councils is now in session. On one side is a group of neighborhood council advocates who firmly believe in their ability to empower those who traditionally had no say in their government. DONE should be facilitators only, they say, supporting and assisting neighborhood councils, rather than mandating strict guidelines or punishing the councils that make mistakes.

On the other side sits DONE and the city, who say neighborhood councils are advisory, and that they do not have as much power as some might believe. They say civility, both toward each other and toward DONE, remains an issue, and that in order for the neighborhood councils to be effective, outreach within the neighborhoods aimed at recruiting more, diverse stakeholders must be achieved.

Mountain Bikes and Twinkies

It was 1992, before the Rodney King Riots,” says Greg Nelson, former general manager of DONE, as he recalls his neighborhood council epiphany. “I was riding my mountain bike to the top of this mountain in Orange County. It was like a mile high. I got up there, and was sitting under a tree up there enjoying the view and my Twinkie.”

It sounds almost like divine intervention. Nelson wanted to figure out a way to improve many of the social problems Los Angeles was experiencing after the Carter Administration-and the federal dollars associated with it-was replaced by Reagan’s failed trickle-down economics. And it hit him.

“The answer was you have to get more people involved in both doing good things to help their neighborhoods and to hold their elected officials accountable,” Nelson says. “And the only real way to do that is to give people a meaningful role.”

Nelson went to the library and was surprised to find that three Tufts professors had written a book about successful neighborhood councils in other cities, including St. Paul, Minn. and Dayton, Ohio.

“At first I was ticked off because I thought it was my idea. Then I thought, ‘Well, now I don’t have to sell this wild-eyed idea because it’s actually been done in other cities.’ But the problem was, can something like this work in L.A.?”

Nelson sold the idea to his boss, then Councilman Joel Wachs. He liked it so much that he made it the centerpiece of his bid for mayor.

Wachs lost to Richard Riordan, but he didn’t forget about Nelson’s idea. An opportunity to revive the neighborhood council premise arose later, when Riordan began squabbling with City Council, prompting the mayor to propose a rewrite of the city charter in hopes of gaining more power. A Charter Reform Commission was formed, and Wachs and Nelson set out to sell it on the merits of neighborhood councils.

Riordan realized that in order to get the new charter passed, he needed the neighborhood council initiative. “The rest of the charter was boring,” says Nelson. “The mayor’s office knew that they needed to give it some sex appeal.”

Also motivating some to support the neighborhood council model was the fear of secession created by the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and others, and the hopes that neighborhood councils could hold the city together.

The charter passed in 1999, laying the broad and nebulous groundwork for a system of independent neighborhood councils. Things moved slowly at first, as DONE struggled to invent itself and find the best way of assisting in the formation of the councils.

In 2001 everything changed when Jim Hahn became mayor and hired Nelson as the new DONE general manager. Hahn also allocated $50,000 a year for each certified council to use for neighborhood projects.

Nelson saw neighborhood councils as “public lobbyists” that would hopefully someday be as influential as highly paid special interest lobbyists.

“I envisioned that the neighborhood councils would educate themselves to the point that they were knowledgeable, responsible and creditable within their own neighborhoods, so that the local councilman had no choice but to listen to them,” Nelson says.

The primary concern at this time was building and certifying neighborhood councils, leaving neighborhood leaders to experiment with the best way to run their councils. While this experimentation allowed some neighborhood councils with past experience in homeowner or advisory groups to thrive, it created vicious infighting for others as they attempted to organize many different neighborhood factions around one table. Several neighborhood councils, including Lincoln Heights, had to call the police to break up heated arguments.

“Some folks were showing up, and they accused some of the old board members of stealing from the neighborhood council and using the money for personal benefit,” says David Galaviz, the current president of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council. “A fistfight almost broke out…we had our meetings at the senior citizen center in Lincoln Heights. The person who ran it came in and said, ‘Everybody out, you’re not welcome here anymore.”

“I never thought I would find myself quoting Donald Rumsfeld, but democracy is messy,” Nelson says. “And the way that this thing came together so fast guaranteed that it was going to be messy.”

What’s Good In the ‘Hood

It’s difficult to label the neighborhood council system as a success or a failure-even now, more than six years in. Some councils have excelled at creating diverse boards, serving their constituents and offering the city council constructive input on issues important to them. However, others continue to be bogged down by election mishaps and infighting over what their priorities should be.

Neighborhood councils are currently struggling to figure out their role in city government. This development period has been pockmarked with contentious interactions between the councils, DONE and the City Council. Where in the beginning councils were free to run their own elections, now strict requirements mandated by the January 2005 citywide election procedures, and the rigid enforcement of these rules by DONE, has soured many on the efficacy of the system. This has left some stakeholders wondering just what DONE’s role is: a facilitator that assists through difficult times, or an enforcer who punishes when councils make mistakes?

According to the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Congress, 39 elections-nearly half of all the neighborhood councils-have been delayed or cancelled. While there have never been this many election problems before at one time, this is not the first time neighborhood councils have experienced such issues.

Anyone who is a stakeholder in the neighborhood has the right to vote in an election; this is any person who lives, works, owns property or runs a business in the neighborhood. But the ambiguity of the term in the early years led to some interesting problems. In one instance, a candidate was rumored to bring an entire high-school class to cast ballots. And in Venice, a woman famously marked a ballot on behalf of her dog.

“Two years ago we decided our next project was to make the election process easier,” says Nelson. “We came up with some standardized citywide election procedures that gave neighborhood councils the widest variety of ways to pick their leaders, but said whatever method you take, here are the things you must do to ensure that it’s fair and open.”

The City Council adopted election procedures in January 2005, but because of glitches and delays, they didn’t take effect until the start of this year, Nelson says. “What we were trying to do in the department was make sure the neighborhood councils knew what they needed to do without being heavy-handed about it.”

Nelson retired earlier this year, and Lisa Sarno, a former city council staffer to Mayor Villaraigosa, became the interim general manager in April.

“When Lisa Sarno became the general manager, she had a different approach, says Nelson. “I think her words were, ‘We have to bite the bullet. We’re just going to make them comply to the letter of the law, and if they don’t they’ll just have to delay their elections and put them off to another day.’”

While DONE has shouldered much of the criticism for the election delays, Sarno says the neighborhood councils knew that the election guidelines were going to be put into place.

“The election procedures were not just recently presented to the neighborhood councils,” she says. “This is actually something that was crafted by a committee of neighborhood council representatives and has been out there for over a year and a half. The department informed and relayed to neighborhood councils over the course of several months that the citywide procedures would become effective early this year.”

Sarno says there’s no specific entity that was at fault for the delays. “When you enact something that’s new, it’s never a good time,” she says. “There’s always going to be challenges in making a transition to a new policy.”

Jason Lyon, vice-chair for the 912 commission and Silver Lake Neighborhood Council member, says that while DONE has tried to pin the election debacle on the neighborhood councils, it’s DONE’s job to correct those problems and get the councils organized. “If DONE sees that they’re not together with paperwork, that project coordinator ought to be jumping in and saying, ‘We’ve got to get this together.’ And that’s not happening.”

City Council President Eric Garcetti says that neighborhood councils have a right to be upset, but that DONE raises very important issues about fair elections. “You can’t let the ‘perfect’ be the enemy of the ‘good,’” he says. “And I hope that we can resolve that so we don’t chase people away from that entry point of participation, which is those elections.”

Earlier this year, Councilmen Dennis Zine and Garcetti proposed a moratorium on all neighborhood council elections until DONE and the councils could resolve the problem.

Lyon says the moratorium is a good idea. “At the time Zine called for the moratorium, DONE did not have the staffing in place to implement their part of the rules. There were no independent election administrators, I think there are now three, which still isn’t enough for 87 neighborhood councils.”

Sarno says that five independent election administrators to assist the councils in running their elections now exist, and four more are in the pipeline. According to her, the moratorium is not needed.

“Many of our neighborhood councils have already adhered to our citywide election procedures,” she says. The best thing we can do is work with them to see what we have to change, and get through this election cycle so we can move on to the next year, Sarno says.

“We’ve already looked into next year, and we’re not going to experience the situation again.”

“I never dreamed people would be so frustrated that the department was oppressive, that they were being forced to follow the rules,” says Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who has long been a proponent of neighborhood councils. “I never envisioned neighborhood councils like that. I really saw them as being sort of a liberated organization that behaved differently than other organizations in the city of Los Angeles, and I feel like that hasn’t happened.”

N.C v. C.C

As neighborhood councils begin to learn how best to wield their power, one area of contention revolves around a charter mandate that requires the councils’ input before important decisions are made by the City Council. This doesn’t always happen, leaving some neighborhood councils to believe that they are purposefully being left out of the process. A controversial ethics reform/term limit extension proposal rushed through the council last week is the latest example.

According to several neighborhood council advocates, the city council lumped together the two issues and pushed them through the council in an attempt to bypass the neighborhood councils and Ethics Commission and to disguise the true nature of the proposal. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo told the Daily News, “The people of Los Angeles have been cheated.”

Nelson says Lyon contacted Garcetti to write the opposition argument for the proposal, and was initially told he was too late before the councilman reversed his position and appointed Lyon and Jeff Jacobberger, a stakeholder in the Mid-City West Neighborhood Council, to write the argument, which was submitted to the council on Monday.

Nelson considers this a victory for neighborhood councils, not because all neighborhood councils oppose the measure, but because it demonstrates what can happen when neighborhood councils work. “This is a big turning point for neighborhood councils, and I think it will be an action that will unify them because hopefully they now have found a common foe, which is the proposal and the way it got on the ballot,” Nelson told the Daily News.

But Garcetti says media interpretations of the situation are askew, and does not see how this can be interpreted as a victory for neighborhood councils. “The Daily News wrote as if [Lyon] had been told, ‘No, you can’t do it,’ and then turning it into a symbolic victory for the neighborhood councils,” Garcetti says. “I couldn’t disagree more. I mean, this is a couple individuals who happen to be with neighborhood councils; there’s a ton of people in neighborhood councils that are for this, who have written us and want to be a part of the argument on the other side.”

One reason that neighborhood council notification has been a problem is because of the vastly different speeds at which the two groups move. “I think the neighborhood councils are experiencing just how huge the volume and how rapid the velocity of city government is and has to be,” Garcetti says. “If somebody ever wants to find that there’s not enough process, they can do it consistently on anything. We vote on probably 400 to 500 different items between committees and full council every week.”

Dr. Robert Gelfand of Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council says because councils meet usually once a month, they cannot weigh in on issues in a timely matter; items that require a vote must be referred to the appropriate committee before it is put on the agenda, meaning the quickest turnaround time for a resolution is 30 days.

“On Monday morning, we read about something that’s going to be put on the Thursday agenda,” Gelfand said. “Well, we’re not going to have a meeting that week, and even if we were, we couldn’t put it on the agenda because of the Brown Act and its requirement of 72 hours notice. Neighborhood councils have been wrestling with this for five years.”

Many in neighborhood councils see DONE as the main culprit for the problems in neighborhood councils. They say that election templates are constantly shifting, that election officials are sparse at best, and that low employee morale leads to rapid turnover within the department.

“The biggest problem is that they (DONE) don’t have enough people working in the field with us,” says Westwater.

Independent election officers are supposed to help plan elections and make sure election procedures are in accordance with the city and the council’s own bylaws.

“We’ve had one election administrator to handle everything until recently, so the guy’s having a nervous breakdown. So you miss one date, if he’s not available for 90 days, you have to add another 90 days because there’s only one person available.”

Lyon says he’s concerned with the morale level within DONE. “We’re literally on our fourth project coordinator in four months,” he says. “One was reassigned, two quit because they were miserable, and we have a new one who seems committed and great.”

“Council members have long said that (DONE field deputy) is the hardest job in politics here,” says Garcetti. “You’re out late, you’re running around different places, it’s a seven-days-a-week thing.”

Sarno asserts morale has improved since she got there. “We actually have had folks…that have been offered positions (outside the department) who have declined because they want to stay within the department because they see the new direction that it’s going in,” she says.

The main criticisms of neighborhood councils revolve around a few key issues: that more outreach must be done to increase diversity on the councils and make sure that all constituents are represented, and that neighborhood councils need to learn how to better work with each other and the city at large.

“I believe that our neighborhood councils need to be inclusive of renters, of seniors and of the youth,” says Sarno. “I think everyone needs to do a better job of incorporating those voices into our neighborhood councils.”

“This is a city on the move that really embraces everybody, and we’ve got to make sure neighborhood councils reflect that,” says Garcetti. He also says that while a lot of people have made huge sacrifices, participation rates still were not what “any vibrant democracy should have.”

“Apathy and lack of participation and exclusion of huge chunks of the population are a part of the political system in America,” says Lyon. “So the idea that we would have somehow figured out how to fix that in seven years is unrealistic. I do think the neighborhood councils in theory are perfect for addressing those problems.”

Newly discouraging for the councils is a tabled proposal written by Lyon that would have allowed neighborhood councils to introduce policy motions in City Council. Both the Education and Neighborhood Committee and the Rules and Elections Committee had approved it, but on Aug. 17 City Council refused to grant neighborhood leaders that policy power.

Dun Dun DONE…

What does the future hold for neighborhood councils? The 912 Commission is just underway, and no one, not even the commissioners, really know what’s going to happen. Also in progress is the search for a new, permanent general manager of DONE. The Education and Neighborhoods Committee has held several forums for the public to discuss what they would like in a new general manager, and the consensus seems to be someone who will fight for the neighborhood councils.

“For me the number one quality is that this person isn’t a bureaucrat,” says Hahn. “A general manager who has the guts to fight City Hall.”

Hahn also suggested at the Educations and Neighborhoods meeting last Monday that a sort of “junior Brown Act” might alleviate some of the constrictive guidelines that prohibit the councils from being more successful. “I think it sometimes prevents them from being relevant on certain issues,” she said. “We move pretty fast at the City Council.”

There are signs that neighborhood councils are improving. Remember Lincoln Heights, the neighborhood council that almost turned into a brawl? Since Galaviz became president, the council has done a complete 180-degree turn, electing a new board and getting together a quorum for the first time in a year and a half. They’ve even allocated funds for a Lincoln Heights holiday parade and the fireworks display for this year’s Fourth of July celebration.

In the meantime, disenchanted neighborhood council-ers and frustrated DONE-ites might want to take a page out of Nelson’s book: Go for a mountain bike ride, and treat yourself to a Twinkie. Who knows, maybe the solution to all the problems rests in neighborhood councils’ original, cream-filled catalyst. LAA

ABC's Nightline Host Martin Bashir Is A Fucking Idiot!

Why is it that so many arrogant, pompous twits from New York or London insist on mispronouncing - Los Angeles? Then when you get a Brit who lives in New York and reads lines on late night TV for a living, I guess the intellectual inability to correctly pronounce Los Angeles is preordained.

But can't anyone at ABC let him know he is mispronouncing the name of the second largest city in the country?

Three Skid Row Editorials Today! Two By Me - One By LA Times!

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-compromise20sep20,0,3933682.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

First my LAT's Op-Ed, with typo's corrected:

Handing Skid Row to Drug Pushers

The city's plan to legalize overnight sidewalk encampments protects the dealers who prey on skid row's homeless.

By Brady Westwater
BRADY WESTWATER is a neighborhood council activist and writer for citywatchla.com.

September 20, 2006

AS SOON AS this morning, the most vulnerable homeless of Los Angeles — those who live on the sidewalks of skid row — could be handed over as sacrificial offerings to Southern California's worst drug lords. If the City Council approves a secretly negotiated settlement with the ACLU today, the sidewalks of skid row will be turned into private property between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. for anyone — including drug dealers — who claims to be homeless.

The council discussion will be held behind closed doors, and the details will be unveiled only after the fact. So unless the City Council musters the political courage to reject this compromise, the people of Los Angeles will lose control of their own streets to a federal judge.
I've seen drug dealing and violent crime in my neighborhood near skid row explode since April. That's when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the ACLU's widely ridiculed legal argument that enforcing a city ordinance against sleeping on sidewalks is "cruel and unusual punishment" if the person claims to be homeless. The result was the "privatization" of the streets because police agreed not to intrude on anyone in a street tent between a specified period of time each day.

The case, and subsequent mediation that led to what's being voted on today, rests on the ACLU's claim that the homeless are forced to sleep on sidewalks because there's nowhere else for them to go. But, to begin with, there are empty beds every night on skid row, despite the teams of people who go out not just asking but begging people to come into the shelters.

Second, anyone who does not wish to use a shelter can find public and private places to sleep discreetly. I have been homeless (because of a dopamine malfunction that I still battle), so I know this firsthand. I also know, though, that many on skid row are too medically ill, mentally ill or drug addicted to care for themselves or to make the right decisions in their lives. And it is these people who will suffer most by being herded into one small ghetto along with the drug dealers who prey on them.

Because of the now-discredited policy of containment, skid row is the only place where the homeless have access to seven free hot meals a day, free showers, free haircuts, free clothes and free medical care. That concentration has created a market — and legal cover — for drug pushers.

Legalizing encampments will only make it harder to get the homeless off the streets, while making their lives more dangerous. During the police-free hours every night, the tents will offer private office space for dealers and pimps, and the police will be powerless to intervene. During the day, these tents will be folded up and leaned against a fence until the clock strikes 9 p.m.

The tragedy is that the city attorney has advised that an appeal of the 9th Circuit decision would be easily winnable, because the constitutional argument is shoddy and because the judge was never shown that there are empty beds on skid row every night. Keeping this bad decision on the books opens up the likelihood that someone will use the same legal reasoning to erect tent cities on the sidewalks of Venice, Hollywood or anywhere else a homeless "advocate" can complain about insufficient shelter beds.

Part of the concern about anti-camping laws comes from fear of indiscriminate sweeps. Yet no one today is arrested just for sleeping on the sidewalk; you have to commit another, far more serious crime. The jail system doesn't have the capacity to process legitimate criminals, let alone homeless roundups. Worries over potential police abuses and protecting the property rights of the true homeless — both of which are important — can and should be addressed by passing specific city laws.

But we cannot afford to sign a settlement that locks the city — forever — into a process that will create permanently protected havens for drug dealers. We can't let the ACLU forcibly privatize public sidewalks for anyone who wishes to live on them.

The side effects of this case have already been devastating to the residents of skid row. It is obscene that the City Council can even think of allowing the sovereignty of our public spaces to be sacrificed behind closed doors, thus endangering the lives of those who are unable to protect themselves. The city's right to protect all its citizens must be defended in court, and if any settlement is to be done, the City Council must insist that it be done in public, with informed public debate.

To do otherwise is a terrible betrayal of the citizens of Los Angeles.

Then the LAT's Editorial:

EDITORIALS

Unsettling Skid Row

City Council should approve the enforcement guidelines, but keep its legal options open.

September 20, 2006

ALL LEGAL SETTLEMENTS ARE IMPERFECT, even to the parties that agree to them. But the city's proposed settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union over how the police can enforce the law on skid row gives away too much — in practice and in principle — and brings the city too little in return.

The compromise, which goes before the City Council today for a vote, has much to like — especially across-the-board support from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Police Chief William J. Bratton and the ACLU. The latter two have been feuding for nearly four years over how best to alleviate crime and homelessness downtown. The ACLU won a decision in April in federal court that the city's ordinance against sleeping on sidewalks amounted to cruel and unusual punishment when enforced on skid row.

Since then, the police have essentially thrown up their hands, and the area has devolved into even more chaos, while a court-appointed mediator has worked with the two sides to craft a settlement. It is tempting to see the compromise as a last-chance effort to get the parties on the same page.

The deal would allow crime-ridden skid row a looser set of laws than the rest of the city, allowing for sleeping on public sidewalks between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. This double standard would be acceptable if the city could continue its legal challenge against the court decision, but the terms of the settlement require that the appeal be dropped. Because there is no guarantee the ACLU or other parties won't use the precedent of this case to challenge enforcement elsewhere in the city, that's a compromise too far — especially when it's unclear that the deal will improve the culture of lawlessness downtown.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes skid row, has introduced a thoughtful alternative. Essentially, her proposal would accept the settlement's terms but continue the city's appeal, while also continuing work on drafting a sleeping ordinance that all or most parties can tolerate. Whereas the current settlement is a leap of faith with no safety valve if it fails to work as promised, Perry's plan would allow both sides to reassess in several months' time.

Bratton contends that ditching the appeal and agreeing to the nighttime exception is worth it. He would finally have a clear legal tool to help bring the area under control and persuade treatment-resistant street dwellers to accept housing and services.

Maybe so. But it's also possible that this experiment won't work and that the homeless and the criminals they attract will find they can survive just fine with their tents up only at night. Then the city will be left with an inadequate tool, a homeless problem as bad as before — and no legal options.

Solving this dispute will not solve skid row's homeless problem. As Bratton said earlier this week, the police "are not the solution to the problems of skid row. It is a much larger social and societal issue." But it's also true that no progress can be made on skid row until crime is brought under control.

Later, will link to www.citywatchla.com for third editorial....

Misleading Headline on LA Times Internet Site!

The article itself not make the below mistake - but the article also does not describe why the below headline on the front page of the LA Times website this morning is dead wrong.

11th-Hour Bills Quietly Become Law

By Evan Halper

State lawmakers may make big changes late in the game. Watchdog groups don't have time to counter.

In reality, none of these laws passed at the last minute without any public - and often - legislative - oversight (like Prop R was recently passed by the Los Angeles City Council without anyone actually reading it) - will become law until either the Arnold signs them or allows them to become law without his signature. And many of the worst will likely be vetoed by Arnold.

And even then - they do not become law until next year.