Why L.A. Conservatives should LOVE Laura Chick...

[I've attached a column from Rick Orlov that should really open the eyes of L.A. City residents and show them that not all Democrats are fiscally irresponsible. L.A. Controller Laura Chick is an admirable defender of the citizens of Los Angeles, and the Democratic elitists know it!]

Open debate sought on privatization

By Rick Orlov, Columnist

Updated: 12/28/2008 09:40:47 PM PST

City Controller Laura Chick has six months left in office. And, as she
made clear this past week, she will not go quietly.

Chick remains uncertain whether she will try for a return to the City
Council, take a job at a university or go into private enterprise. One
thing you can probably bet on is that she won't become a lobbyist seeking
favors from city officials.

In the past few months, she has taken on, again, her main nemesis, City
Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, the City Council and most recently, Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa. Her latest action is blowing the lid off what she said was a
confidential effort - Chick called it Chicago-style politics - to study privatizing
city services. "What is needed", Chick said, "is an open debate in which the public can hear all the arguments and decide how it wants the city to go."

Villaraigosa was quick to acknowledge the study being done by Mike Keeley,
one-time budget director to former Mayor Richard Riordan - who was the first
to propose privatizing city services, including the sale of Los Angeles
International Airport and naming rights to city buildings. The latter deal
fell apart when it was proposed to sell the name of the Central Library to
cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris. Ironically, the Central Library
building was named after Riordan when he left office.

Villaraigosa spokesman Matt Szabo said Keeley is providing "strategic
counsel on budget issues and to spearhead public-private partnership
efforts." City unions are prepared to fight off the latest proposal - much as they
did 15 years ago.

For the moment, Szabo said the mayor is looking at privatizing the
management of city parking lots and parking meters. A recommendation is
expected in January or February.

But it also has others on alert.

Golfers, in particular, are concerned about what will happen to the city
courses - where fees already have gone up dramatically for residents and
nonresidents, who are now on a two-tiered system of payments.

The desire for secrecy is also costing the mayor and City Council as they
prepare to ask voter support for Proposition B, the solar initiative on the
March 3 ballot. The City Council put the measure through on a fast track, without disclosing to the public and some council members a critical report on the measure
- which warns that the costly program, now estimated at $3 billion, might not
be practical given the limited number of solar panel manufacturers in the country.

City Council President Eric Garcetti downplayed the significance of the
report as he insisted he used its concerns to question officials on how it
could be improved and to address the concerns raised. And he was forced to later release the review to the public and his fellow council members.

Of course, it happened on a week when the City Council was in recess, with
many members out of town. So there was no major political penalty paid by
Villaraigosa or Garcetti. The biggest question that has been unanswered is why the measure is even on the ballot, since the basic job could be adopted by the DWP and its board.

Villaraigosa and Garcetti will be seeing a lot of each other over the next several weeks. The two, who served as California co-chairmen of the campaign of
President-elect Barack Obama, are both heading back to Washington, D.C., to
attend the inauguration. Garcetti supported Obama from the start, while
Villaraigosa came on after Sen. Hillary Clinton lost the nomination.

Other local officials who are planning to attend the event include new
county Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, California co-chairman for Obama;
Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina, and Councilwoman Janice Hahn.
A number of state legislators also are said to want to go - but no one knows
if they will have a state budget fix adopted by then.

Rick Orlov's column appears Mondays. For a daily political fix, check
out the Daily News' Sausage Factory blog at insidesocal.com/politics.

rick.orlov@dailynews.com
213-978-0390

City Hall Political Machine Tries to Intimidate Activist Community

[Ron Kaye is the former Editor of the Los Angeles Daily News, and one of those standing up to the latest ploy within the City of Los Angeles. Plan to hear A LOT more about Proposition B and my efforts to defeat it in March]


Lawsuit Seeks to Squelch Public Debate on Solar Energy Fraud

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his team of lobbyists, strategists and pay-to-play cronies have sued the eight people who signed the No. on Prop. B ballot argument -- an attempt at intimidation under the guise of law.

This measure isn't about solar energy and has nothing to do with the largest solar energy initiative ever undertaken. The City Council and mayor could initiate that by their own actions. This is solely about paying blackmail to the DWP and its IBEW union which have blocked solar projects for a decade and would have exclusivity on large-scale projects under this measure.

The Solar Eight -- Jack Humphreville, Soledad Garcia, Humberto Camacho, Kristine Lee, Nick Patsaouras, Joe Pulido, James O'Sullivan and me -- will not be silenced by this tactic.

But our lives have made difficult as we need to respond in court on Tuesday to the allegations that are ballot argument is false and misleading. We were unable to find a lawyer knowledgeable in city election law because this was dropped on us during Christmas week but Noel Weiss, candidate for City Attorney, has now volunteered to provide us help in putting together our pleading. The next hearing in court is Jan. 8.

Stephen Kaufman's law firm, which represents the mayor, eight City Council members and a host of other political figures, is handling the case for the City Hall political machine for the named plaintiff, Mitchell Schwartz, a high-powered environmental lobbyist.

This isn't just an attempt to squelch the Solar Eight or the debate over this phony ballot measure but a direct assault on everyone's right to freedom of speech and to participate in the political and electoral process.

We need support from Neighborhood Councils, homeowner and resident groups, service clubs, churches and every individual who cares about L.A. This is a defining moment. We need to come together and stop the political machine that is destroying the city. If we won't fight as one against these tactics and this dirty deal, I don't know that we ever will.

The March 3 primary gives us the chance to change L.A., to elect candidates to the City Controller's and City Attorney's offices who can stand for the community. Villaraigosa, Wendy Greuel and Jack Weiss along with the 15 obedient council members will have nothing in their way if they prevail in this election.

I have written about it today and over several days recently. Here are the links to copy and paste:

http://ronkayela.com/2008/12/prop-b-is-for-bribery-and-blac.html
http://ronkayela.com/2008/12/sunshine-on-solar-fraud-the-ci.html
http://ronkayela.com/2008/12/laura-chick-chicagostyle-polit.html
http://ronkayela.com/2008/12/scenario-for-dictatorship-los.html
http://ronkayela.com/2008/12/las-solar-energy-fraud-is-this.html
http://ronkayela.com/2008/12/las-solar-energy-fraud-is-this.html
http://ronkayela.com/2008/12/the-secret-solar-plan-document.html
http://ronkayela.com/2008/12/the-city-hall-political-machin.html

Support the Solar Eight. Support the efforts to make this a great city and get rid of Chicago-style corruption.

ronkayela.com


cell 818-621-8349
office 818-704-8418

Jerry Brown: California's Panderer General

The “shift” of Attorney General Jerry Brown to oppose the decision of California voters, mostly Black & Hispanic majorities who voted for Proposition 8, is pandering to the far-left at its best.

Minority voters, who represent a large portion of both the religious faithful and patriotic segments of California’s citizenry, stood up for their beliefs just as they voted for “change”. What they did not count on was the lack of “change” in the rhetoric and special-interest pandering by Democratic officials, of which AG Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown is one of the best. Brown actually tried to change the wording of this proposition to increase its chances of not passing; even then, it passed with strong support from minority voters. It would likely have passed by a stronger majority had Brown left the wording alone.

This “shift” by AG Brown is nothing more than failing to carry out his duties to support the will of the citizens of California even if that will does not agree with the principles of Brown’s far-left agenda. Jerry Brown is choosing far-left partisan loyalties over his responsibilities as Attorney General. Brown’s secular principles, brought forward from his hippie days, are not in touch with today’s values of California’s voters, especially those of our strong minority families.

Meanwhile, my experience with the protesters of Proposition 8 (and of the Iraq War) has been almost totally absent of any minority representation on the protester side. This is an issue Democrats will face in future state elections, including their gubernatorial primary in June 2010. Can religiously faithful and patriotic minority voters support a gubernatorial nominee who rendered their vote for traditional marriage irrelevant because he “now” discovered that the proposition was unconstitutional to begin with? Does Jerry Brown believe California voters are that dumb? Are we?

RPLAC: "Change" for the sake of "change"

To begin, I want to be on record that I warned the former Executive Board that moving the Republican Party of Los Angeles County (RPLAC) Organizational Meeting to the same day as the USC-UCLA game, the SEC Championship game and, most importantly, the Army-Navy game would be bad luck! Up until the night before, I was still undecided on whether I was going to attend. I know for sure of at least three newly-elected members who chose the Rose Bowl over the Reagan Building, where the meeting was held. I personally took a lot of flack from fellow Navy alumni, even though we trounced Army 34-0, for choosing politics over tradition.

But what happened on December 6th at this normally routine meeting was anything but routine!

The purpose of the Organizational Meeting is to set up the county committees, the district-level officers, and the county executive board officers for the next term, 2008-2010. For the previous six years, Chairwoman Linda Boyd & her husband, California Republican Party Vice-Chair for L.A., Doug Boyd, had been well-prepared to get the full body of central committee members quickly through an agenda of setting up the necessary committees, running the members through each of three sets of district elections (assembly, state senate, and congressional district committees), and then introducing their slate of "endorsed" board officer candidates to be approved by the body. Each of the past three meetings, (2002, 2004 & 2006), there were a small group of disgruntled members, primarily unelected state office nominees, that tried to organize enough to challenge the Boyds for one or more of the board positions. Each time, the Boyds have been far more organized & ensured a strong majority of attendees to the meeting were supportive of their agenda. I have been very impressed with both Linda & Doug, and have been blessed to have learned much about both Republican politics & Los Angeles County from them. They are extremely smart and tuned in to some of the key political issues. Unfortunately, their intelligence was equally matched by their egos, and they far underestimated the amount of change and dissatisfaction those of us on the local levels were seeing within the Republican Party. By choosing to ignore the opportunities to bring in some of these new & younger faces to our team, the Boyds unwittingly gave that opportunity to one of their long-time rivals, Carl Davis, himself a former RPLAC chairmam. Carl Davis and I have talked about key issues, and I also consider him a smart & valuable resource. But his unilateral mission to get back at the Boyds for removing him from power has been a prime mover for him in all he does.

This year, Carl Davis organized some key groups under a common motive to remove Linda and her supporters.

To start, the alliance of opposers included not only more state-level nominees (who are often called "sacrificial lambs" in L.A. County for obvious reasons), but an increased number of new Republicans, including Log Cabin Republicans & supporters from the Ron Paul presidential campaign. Our own local committee has a few new members from this group, and I made it a point to both welcome these new, enthusiastic members and to try and mentor them in the basics of the party structure. All of these groups bring new perspectives, lessons learned from their struggles, as well as some concerns they want to see addressed. Only through open dialogue will we be able to find the common ground opportunities for all of us; the lack of this open dialogue between the June primary electing these new members & the December organizational meeting is what led to what I like to call the "restructuring".

The first thing this group did was ask for help from former RPLAC Second Vice-Chair Al Han to run for the temporary chairman role at the meeting. This is the person who basically runs the restructuring until a new county chairman is officially elected. I have often talked about the reputation of Al Han as being extremely supportive and fair of the democratic process, whatever those results yield. Al does not come to meetings with an agenda, so much as a desire to bring out topics of discussion and see what the democratic process yields. Because the Boyd loyalists had a predetermined agenda that had no room for variety, Al Han's election to the temporary chair role was a serious blow, as well as a warning for the rest of the meeting.

I won't go into every detail of the meeting, but the truly shocking moment came when the Boyd loyalists staged an attempt to have the meeting quorum removed, thereby making the meeting results null and void. Out of the established attendance of 119 members, the Boyds attempted to have 50 members walk out in order to get below the by-laws required quorum of 70 members. Unfortunately for them, only about 35 or so took the hint/bait when they first removed themselves from the board nominations and then walked out. So a new board, led by new chairman Glen Forsch, has taken over the county party and will soon release their agenda for the next term. One of our own members from the 54th AD, Lydia Gutierrez, was elected First Vice Chair. I will post an assessment in January of the new board, after a planned January meeting between them with all of us new AD chairs.

I will also post an update very soon of your new 54th Assembly District members, including your new executive board and some key areas we hope you'll be interested in getting involved in.

I want to finish this posting by stating that fellow committee member Al Han performed his role at the organizational meeting as the temporary chairman the way that most Republican voters would have wanted him to perform. Republicans in both Los Angeles and throughout California are tired of the same agendas and strategies that have made us a permanent minority party. We are not entirely impatient, but we need to see some progress and activism to show us that our elected leaders and representatives have not settled for the status quo. Whether this is what Linda and Doug actually did in Los Angeles County is not relevant; this was, and still is, the perception of the majority of Republicans in Los Angeles, and they need to see a renewed effort to challenge the liberal, union elitists who only represent their special interests while waging dishonest marketing campaigns to dumb down the voting population.

Al Han has been a fighter for re-educating these voters and ensuring they turn out for key elections. If the new county executive board takes on these noble objectives and creates a positive change in Los Angeles County, they can expect a long tenure of both respect and influence within the party. If any of the new board members instead tries to bring in their own personal agendas to "change" the platform of the party, provide support solely for their own chosen candidates, and otherwise engage in physical or verbal conduct that would bring disrepute to the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, they will very soon find themselves in the same or worse position than the Boyds were.

Republicans want positive change, but this time, we're not willing to wait six more years to see it.