Author: Ron Kaye

Janice Hahn’s little conflict of interest problem in deciding to step in as the unbiased mediator of a dispute between Gambol Industries and LA Harbor officials over a $50 million shipbuilding project offers a window into the way City Hall so often does business.

It’s not what you know but who you know.

In the Councilwoman’s case, the person she knows and knows well is Gwen Butterfield, president and CEO of Butterfield Communication, a public relations firm. They have been friends a long time, good enough friends that acquaintances say Janice was maid-of-honor at Gwen’s wedding.

When Hahn was sworn into office on July 1, 2001, at the same time her brother Jim was sworn in as Mayor, it was Butterfield who the LA Times found worthy as voice of the community to put the event into perspective.

“I think it is truly history in the making,” said Gwen Butterfield, close friend and campaign +volunteer for Janice Hahn. “She’s so excited . . . to have her brother swearing her in.”

Butterfield’s own life took a decided turn upwards with the arrival of Janice became chair of the powerful  committee that oversees the Harbor Department.

She’s doing a lot of business and has been a registered City Hall lobbyist for the last six years, with five clients showing up on her disclosure statement.

It should come as no surprise that are all about the Harbor: Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway, Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club, Pacific L.A. Marine Terminal, LLC, Wallenius Wilhelmsenn Logistics and most of all, Gambol Industries which port insiders say has made her a very well-to-do woman, turning a modest living as a community organizer and part-time advocate into a PR/lobbying business with a half-million-dollars in billings.

The friendship also has been good for the Hahn’s fund-raising efforts.

In breaking the story on Hahn’s conflict-of-interest, Art Marroquin of the Daily Breeze reported
Gambol’s president, Robert Stein, contributed $6,500 to Hahn’s lieutenant governor campaign account last October and $500 to her City Council officeholder’s account last August.

“Additionally, the Los Angeles-based law firm of Jeffer, Mangels, Butler and Marmaro is representing Gambol Industries in the ongoing negotiations with the port and contributed $5,000 to Hahn’s campaign for lieutenant governor last September.”

“That’s $!2,000 worth of conflict,” the Daily Breeze editorialized after Hahn reluctantly backed out of serving a mediator for the Gambol proposal which Harbor officials opposed because it would seriously delay a critical dredging proposal.

“The perception — one of bias — would be everything. Always there, it would cast a pall not only over the deal at the port but also over the support and opposition she has in the Harbor Area communities where she is best known. And that would cast shadows over her own future ambitions, which are, right now, pretty big. “

Butterfield herself has contributed nearly $13,000 over the years to Hahn and more than half a dozen other Butterfield clients have been equally generous in backing Hahn’s political ambitions generously, according to city ethics records.

Like so much of what goes on the threads of relationships and the role of money casts a shadow over so much of what goes on. They call it “access” — the access routinely denied the public or limited to two minutes of public comment — but really it’s corruption whether it’s just in appearance, whether it’s criminal or not.

In this case, the threads reach the LA Conservancy, which too benefited from Gambol’s money, and sent to bat for the company in its fight with the Harbor Department.

Back in January 2009, the Conservancy’s Michael Buhler urged the Harbor Commission in an email letter to
delay the $96 million dredging project to reconsider its rejection of
the berths Gambol wants as part of this historical preservation zone.

“The
Southwest Marine Shipyard , including the slipways proposed to be
filled with contaminated dredge spoils, is the last remaining link to
Terminal Island’s significant role in the World War II emergency
shipbuilding program,” he said.

Harbor officials rejected the arguments for
delay showing that a study was already conducted to protect the parts
of the shipyard that were worthy of protection on the National Register
of Historic places.

Three months later on April 14, 2009, Hahn, in her official capacity, wrote the commission in response to the Environmental Impact Report urging delay and further study.

“This
project certainly deserves some further consideration and review by the
Part, and for that reason request that the Board delay its action on
the Channel Deepening EJR, and request staff to look at alternatives
that may Include a partial fill of those slips, In addition, I hope
that the Board will take another look at using this location for
economic opportunities including this proposal by Gambol Industries,”
she wrote.

Harbor officials also rejected
her efforts, noting: “The site is currently secured by a caretaker,
Gambol, whose duties include site security and promoting the site for
use by the movie industry as an interim use.”

Gambol’s proposal
just two months earlier, after the EIR was released and the comment
period closed, included a long series of steps and proposed uses —
“commercial fishing, filming, and handling liquid bulk, along with
using the site as a shipyard ” — that would lead to long delays in the
dredging plan needed to allow large container ships to enter the inner
harbor.

By summer, under pressure from Hahn and threat of a
lawsuit from Gambol, Harbor officials agreed to a mediation process to
resolve the dispute and see if both plans could work.

With that
Memorandum of Understanding about to expire, Hahn stepped in as the
impartial mediator and almost got away with it — until the Daily
Breeze exposed her conflict of interest.
 
The Cunningham Report,
which closely follows port area issues, said the Corps of Engineers is
ready to start the dredging project by the end of the month.

With
Hahn recusing herself and unable to directly influence the process,
Gambol is on its own with whatever other political influence or legal
strategies it has at its disposal.

In the grand scheme of things
where City Hall lobbyists and influence peddlers have such unlimited
access to elected officials, their staffs and top bureaucrats, the
fight over the Southwest Marine Shipyard is small potatoes.

The limits on public disclosure of documents, calendards and contacts limits our ability to see very far below the surface.

But
the images we do get of what really goes on ought to wake people up to
the need for full disclosure in real time and public access that is at
least equal to that of those seeking personal advantages.  

EDITOR’S NOTE: For your viewing pleasure, here’s City Council President Eric Garcetti’s entire acting performance on today’s episode of “All My Children.” Tomorrow, it’s the mayor himself, will he cut a back room deal?

One of the great advantages of being a dog columnist is that there are lots of dogs out there willing to help me out.

Many of my four-legged friends are fans – I think frequent commenter G. Shepard has the hots for me – and a few are terrific sources.

Very Important people have dogs, or have ex-beauty queen turned TV news reporter girlfriends with dogs. (I try to get Lu Parker and the adorable Monkey in every post.)

And I’m not saying Monkey’s my source, although there is some concern in Getty House about Antonio messing around this week with Susan Lucci in Wednesday’s episode of “All My Children,” but I have come into possession of a portion of the script that wasn’t used.

As everyone knows, Lucci, who’s been on the show longer than Antonio’s been alive, plays Erika Kane.

Woof!

Antonio and Jay Carson, his chief deputy mayor and former HIllary Clinton presidential campaign spokesman, enter Confusion, a new club in Pine Valley.  Erika Kane, the club’s aging, but still beautiful owner, is talking to a group on the other side of the crowded room.

Antonio:  Give me a breath strip.

Carson:   What flavor?

Antonio:  What did Clinton like?

Carson:  He liked red.

Antonio: I’ll have red then.

Carson mutters to himself as he rummages through his expensive leather shoulder bag, finds the cinnamon breath strips and hands them to the mayor.

Antonio: (Looking around) Remind me why we’re here?

Carson:  We’re here because we’re stuck in freaking Pine Valley for a National Conference of Mayors meeting and this is the only place in town with decent wine. (Under his breath)  At least Clinton went to decent cities.

Antonio: I heard that! Listen, you don’t work for him anymore.  You work for me now.

Carson:  I know. But if Hillary hadn’t screwed up Iowa, I’d be in the White House with The Man!
 
Antonio: He wasn’t running.

Carson:  That’s how much you know, Tony.

Antonio:  I’ve told you a hundred times … don’t call me Tony!

Erika Kane notices Antonio and Carson, excuses herself from her guests and walks across the room to greet them.  She extends her hand to Carson.

Erika:  (Enthusiastically) Hello, mayor!  I’m Erika Kane.  Welcome to Confusion.

Carson:  Uhh, hello, Miss Kane, but I’m not the mayor. (Looking at Antonio) This is Mayor Villaraigosa.

Erika:  Oh, I’m sorry. (Shaking Antonio’s hand) Hello, Mayor Villa-rah-ag-ro-rossa.  Welcome to Confusion!

Antonio:  I’m not confused. Who said I was confused?

Erika:  No, mayor.  The club. It’s called Confusion.  I’m so glad you could join us.

Antonio: Can I see a wine list?

Carson: (Again, under his breath) Jesus, what have I done?

Erika:  What did you say?

Carson:  (Surprised she heard him) Uh, can I get a steak well done?

Erika: Of course.  Let me get a waiter. I’ll be right back.

Erika leaves the men and walks toward the bar.

Antonio:  How old you figure she is?

Carson:  I don’t know. Maybe 60.  She’s had a lot of work.

Antonio:  Tall, too.

Carson: (Rolling his eyes) I guess it’s all relative.

Antonio: Think she’ll comp the wine?

Carson:  Who knows?  If not, we’ll just tell Kaufman it was a
campaign event.

Antonio: I’m not paying.  I’m dealing with an expensive divorce
you know.

Carson: I heard.

Antonio: Clinton ever think about getting divorced?

Carson: Certainly not before the last election.

Antonio: He’s a wild guy.  We used to spend a lot of time at
Burkle’s.

Carson:  I know. He told me. You really make it from the roof
into the pool?

Antonio:  God, we had fun. I loved being a consultant.

Carson:  No city budgets to worry about.

Antonio: Think they’ve got a good red?

I guess Lu Parker’s PR firm forgot to send the release to Bruno. I wonder why?

I had to read in the former Green Sheet this morning that It Girl Public Relations – gosh, I hope the “it’ part isn’t a typo – is out trying to stir up some media interest in our mayor’s latest TV newshound girlfriend.

Wait a doggone minute!  Who’s covered her and her adorable pup, Monkey, more closely than me?

But noooooo, I have to find out about the PR campaign from City Hall Dean (a nice way of saying  “really old”) Rick Orlov:

“In a letter to try to get a feature story on Parker, It Girl talks about her having been a Miss USA, her animal rights activism, her work as a KTLA television reporter, actress and author, and, oh by the way, how she has convinced her boyfriend-mayor to have meatless Mondays.
“Accompanying the pitch were several pictures of Parker, including one with Villaraigosa and her dog”

Meatless Mondays? I’ve already covered that part of the kennel, and, by the way, how do we know Antonio’s even sticking to it?  He has been known to cheat, if you get what I mean.

And by the way, I’m told Lu first suggested “Wineless Wednesdays” to our mayor, but he just laughed at that idea.

Not eating dead animals is one thing – it prevents him from becoming Mayor Pudgaraigosa — but vintage dead grapes, especially in incredibly expensive bottles bought by billionaire pals, are another thing entirely.

If the folks at It Girl PR still want to pitch me, I’m available.

I suggest they play up the Monkey angle for obvious reasons, invite me to lunch, promise to bring along Lu, Monkey and Antonio, schedule it for a Monday at a great steakhouse like the The Palm and make the mayor eat just broccoli.

I’ll bring a photographer.

Woof!

The clock is ticking on the mayor’s plan to gut city services and sell its assets, and every day the City Council dawdles revenue falls and the budget deficit grows by nearly $340,000.

On Saturday, activists at the Saving LA Project meeting discussed the issue of what is in the best interests of the community as a whole and the city’s workforce and reached a consensus.

No Layoffs of city workers, because every worker eliminated from the general fund or transferred to the Harbor, Airport or DWP means less service for the city’s four million residents, the people who pay the bills.

No Payoffs like the early retirement plan that is getting rid of nearly 3,000 senior city staff or the kind of deals our elected officials cut with contributors and special interests, deals that have allowed billboards, pot shops and over-sized developments to pop up everywhere.

No Selloffs of parking lots and meters, the zoo, golf courses, the convention center, airports, even the power system they are now talking about — deals that based on past performance will surely benefit the few at the expense of the many.

The budget plan put forward by the CAO’s office on instructions of the mayor and Council leadership is nothing but a hodgepodge of gimmicks that punish city workers and slash city services in order to cook the books so they can borrow billions to have the cash to get through this financial year and next.

The so-called restructuring plan — like the ERIP and layoff strategies — is nothing but a shotgun approach to effective and efficient government.

There is no coherent logic to the strategy, no details of what they really intend to do, no idea of how it impacts departments and the ability to provide basic services. Parks, libraries, planning, building code enforcement will be decimated. The City Attorney’s ability to prosecute criminals, solve neighborhood problems and defend the city against nearly $1 billion in lawsuits, mainly of the frivolous, will be undermined.

There are no negotiations with the unions or effort to implement their cost-saving strategies.

There is no engagement of community leaders or respect being shown to the public or their needs.

There is no plan, just a desperate attempt to defer cleaning up the budgetary mess they created in the vain hope that somehow a miracle will save them from wrath of the people.

There is another way.

Bring community, union and business leaders to the table and come up with real solutions that actually solve the fundamental problems and get LA moving forward again.

Those are the views of SLAP activists and many others I have spoken with.

My own view is that city workers in all departments need to take a step back financially and the public needs to take a step forward to provide a new revenue source for two or three years to bring the budget into balance without destroying our human capital, our services infrastructure.

I have run this idea past dozens of people in the political and civic culture of LA and the response is unanimous: No one will support higher taxes because they don’t trust the city’s leadership.

That I think goes to the heart of the matter. The financial troubles facing LA are simply the monetary manifestation of the loss of confidence and trust in our leaders.

The only real solution is to bring us all together to find a consensus. It may involve unions’ and the community giving ground but it will produce a transparent strategy that will create a new spirit of LA, mutual respect and trust.

The alternative is to see more jobs disappear, the value of property and businesses continue to decline and the acceleration of middle class flight.

Stop the nonsense. Let your voice be heard. We want real solutions, not gimmicks.

No matter how bleak the future looks, LA City Council members still live in a champagne and caviar world where money is no object.

There’s little things coming up today as they diligently show up to work every day to get their marching orders on the plan to stave off bankruptcy.

Little things like authorizing $576 in overtime for city workers for a an AQMD meeting at Van Nuys City Hall and $72,,340 in back pay to 14 DWP workers who somehow got left out of all the lump sum cash payments, bonuses and handsome raises bestowed on the nation’s best paid utility workers.

No doubt each of these lucky 14 getting an average of $5,000 each is indispensable to the DWP’s functioning no matter how high the rates go, no matter how many libraries and parks close, no matter how basic services are gutted.

What would we do without these people: Administrative Intern (3 yrs. college), Administrative Intern (4 yrs. College), Cashier Water and Power, Construction Inspector, Engineering Specialist, Law Clerk. Occupational Trainee I, Occupational Trainee II, Records Management Officer, Relief Retirement Worker, Senior Personnel Analyst I, Senior Personnel Analyst II, Seasonal Meter Reader, Student Engineer I (1 yr. Eng. Edu.), Student Engineer II (2 yrs. Eng. Edu.), Student Engineer III (3 yrs. Eng. Edu.), Student Engineer IV (Sr. Eng. Student), Student Professional Worker, Student Trainee Worker, Student Worker.

You can bet your bottom dollar, or more precisely pay your last dollar to the DWP, that hundreds if not thousands of jobs like these will be filled in the coming months at the DWP, Harbor and Airport by city workers paid from the general fund who are seeing their jobs being “eliminated” — what City Hall calls “layoffs.”

But the boondoggle of boondoggles — at least for today — is Councilmen Bill Rosendahl’s and Paul Koretz’s proposal to spend $30 million to build a two-mile bike path from “Temescal Canyon Beach parking lot to Coastline Drive to provide a breathtaking view of the ocean and allow bicyclists to avoid riding on Pacific Coast Highway.”

To hell with public safety, with the needs of the disabled, youth programs and everything else, the Council today wants to spend $15 million a mile for “a breathtaking view” of the ocean for cyclists.

This is the “Bikepath to Nowhere” –– Sarah Palin and her fellow Alaskans would be proud that their “Bridge to Nowhere” has company.

What could they be thinking when cycling enthusiasts have proposed Backbone Bikeway Network that would cost $28,000 a mile to provide a vast connected system of safe bike paths that would serve tens of thousands of cyclists, but they can’t get to first base.

Rosendahl and Koretz, in their Westside elitism, prefer to commit the City of Los Angeles to make this Bikepath to Nowhere a key part of the legislative agenda.

Their goal is to extend the “Marvin Braude Beach Bike Path runs approximately 19 miles along the beach and ends at Potrero Canyon and continues as an asphalt path toward the Bel Air Bay Club.”

Isn’t that enough beautiful coastal scenery for bikers? Or do they think that instead of joining gangs because their neighborhood parks that are closed, inner-city kids will ride their fancy bikes out to the beach to catch two more miles of ocean vistas?

But why quibble about priorities when “with the concurrence of the Mayor …  the City of Los Angeles hereby includes in its 2009-2010 Federal Legislative Program SPONSORSHIP andlor SUPPORT for legislation or administrative action to provide funding to extend the Marvin Braude Bike Path,” as the Councilmen put it in their motion.

Things like this don’t just come out of the blue.

They happen with the full concurrence of the bureaucracy after study and thought. In this case, it’s Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller whose endorsement make the unthinkable so thinkable.

You can be sure this matter will be dispensed with and move forward quickly so the Council can give its full attention to privatizing everything they can, finding jobs for every city worker, raising every tax, rate, fee and fine they can and borrowing against the future to pay for current expenses like the massive liability claims the city faces for incompetent leadership and management..

Thursday night’s SoCal Connected hosted by Val Zavala led with Judy Muller’s report on LA’s budget crisis. Jack Humphreville and I provided the community voices. Here’s the video:

This dog once had what you people call “puppy love” for Janice Hahn.

When I was, indeed, just a pup, I’d hang out at the port with those tough longshoremen, who didn’t care that I wasn’t all that cute. They were pretty ugly, too.

Janice lives in San Pedro and represents it on the City Council. I’d see her around town.  She was always just soooo nice – very perky! — and so well groomed, something I couldn’t say for all the women down there.  Tattoos on women have been stylish in San Pedro since WWII.

Now, I’m heartbroken.  But because I’m not really housebroken, I’m going to come out and say it:  Janice Hahn may be the dumbest person to ever hold office in Los Angeles – and if you know your LA history, that’s pretty freaking scary.

Earlier this week, I got on her for trying to pull a fast one with her City Council/Lieutenant Governor’s campaign web sites.  Then I teased her for posing in a newspaper photo with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who isn’t exactly the kind of guy you want endorsing you in a Democratic primary for statewide office.

But both of those are small kibble compared to the dumb-ass doozy detailed today in the Daily Breeze. Get a load of the first three paragraphs of Art Marroquin’s story:

“The president of a ship-building business donated at least $7,000 to Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who was expected this month to mediate a dispute between the company and the Port of Los Angeles.

“Hahn was set to step in as an impartial arbitrator amid the ongoing debate between port officials and Long Beach-based Gambol Industries, which has tried since last spring to open a $50 million shipyard on Terminal Island.

“Gambol’s president, Robert Stein, contributed $6,500 to Hahn’s lieutenant governor campaign account last October and another $500 to her City Council officeholder’s account last August, according to online state and city filing records.”

Yes, you read it right!  Janice took all this dough – and then figured nobody would blink if she decided the fate of this guy’s $50 million (!!!) project.  A call from a reporter inspired her to change her mind.

When this dog called her out publicly on the web site screw up, her staff politely explained it was just an innocent mistake: all this Internet stuff is just sooooo confusing.

I suppose ethics is way too confusing, too.  Gosh, there are just soooooo many rules. And the appearance of a conflict being as bad as conflict, well, forget it.  There are just soooooo many confusing words.

Woof!

The City Council is meeting every day now to wring their hands and cry “Woe is us” as if the global recession, the abysmal failure of their colleagues in Sacramento or some act of God were responsible for the calamity facing LA.

The closest anyone at City Hall has come to taking any responsibility is when the mayor inadvertently slipped up Tuesday and admitted during his Council appearance: “We all took too long. They took too long in their negotiations, and saying ‘no’ to virtually everything. We took too long in not making a tough decision.”

It’s hard to believe anyone could tell so many lies around one little half-truth in so few words.
Took too long? Three years isn’t too long, it’s an eternity when housing prices have been dropping by 40 percent and thousands of people are losing their homes, when hundreds of thousands of residents are losing their jobs, when businesses are going bankrupt by the hundreds, when the lines are going around the block at food banks.

Let’s be clear, the unions didn’t take too long. They negotiated for a year with city officials before a sweetheart deal was cut for early retirements. They didn’t say ‘no’ to virtually everything. They proposed dozens of ways to cut costs and raise revenues.

It’s the mayor and Council who didn’t say ‘no’ to virtually anything.
They were told over and over in public and in private by city budget experts that revenues were falling sharply over a long period of time and wouldn’t recover for many years.

The mayor knew with absolute certainty that the ERIP deal he signed on June 26 was unaffordable. And so did the Council. They knew the budget deficit would only get worse year after year, growing to more than $1 billion with more than $10 billion in bills coming due for pensions.

They knew in August just how bad the retirement deal was and spent the next six weeks cutting another deal with the unions that was even worse, promising to make them whole financially within five years for giving $78 million in concessions to close a $500 million deficit.

Just how bad it was is only coming out now thanks to the letter the unions sent to the mayor and council on Wednesday. In the face of looming catastrophe, they promised the workers the moon and stars to give them a fig leaf to cover the shame of their failed leadership.

Their failure to act decisively stalled any savings for months as the deficit grew by $1 million a day to $2 million a day even as revenue estimates were shockingly off the mark by huge factors.

Now, the mayor has the nerve to claim they didn’t realize there was a problem until December. It’s just another lie.

The biggest lie of all is that they “waited too long in not making a tough decision.”
 
They still haven’t given the slightest indication they intend to make any tough decisions.

They are still taking the easy way out.

They are pretending to lay off workers when the deal they cut in September requires them to be transferred to special funds and proprietary departments whether their services are needed or they are qualified for the jobs.

They are preparing to borrow billions of dollars that mortgage the city’s future even as they sell off parking structures, parking meters, the zoo, convention center, Ontario Airport and everything else they can, stripping the city of its future revenue sources.

They are scheming to raise taxes, fees and rates and even strip the public of basic civil liberties turning every kind of violation and citation into an administrative action that denies the right to a trial.

This would be the stuff of farce if the consequences were not so tragic.

Gutting public services, punishing the poor, driving away good jobs — we are on the road to becoming a city of stark contrasts between rich and poor, subsidized luxury hotels and entertainment districts and slums, a city without a middle class, a failed city.

We all share in responsibility for this with our indifference and apathy, our ignorance and our selfishness. Business interests,  the community, the disabled, the artsy crowd — they are all lined up begging to protect their own interests just like the unions.

They are playing right into the hands of the mayor and Council who will do anything to avoid taking responsibility for the harm they have caused.

They are shameless and incompetent. They are liars and self-servers. They have betrayed the public trust and the public is complicit.

Woe is us.

(Editor’s Note: This article was submitted to the LA Times Opinion Page Editor a week ago but still has not gotten a response rejecting or accepting it, so it’s yours for free)

To paraphrase President Obama in his State of the
Union
speech, democracy in a city of four million people can be noisy and
messy and
complicated.

That was evident this (last) week in Los
Angeles in a way that we have rarely seen as people
from all over the city, from all walks of life, paraded before the City
Council
to plead their case for their jobs, for funding for their causes, for
understanding of their needs.

It was noisy and messy and surely the financial and
spiritual crisis facing the city is complicated.

But the earnestness and passion of the disabled, of
neighborhood
activists, of environmentalists, of city workers, of lovers of art and
culture,
of youth, of the LGBT community and so many others was a demonstration
of the
underlying vitality of the people and their yearning for a city that
works for
them.

Their energy is the fertile ground on which great cities
grow. It is the
grassroots of democracy, a complex web of often competing needs, values
and
interests that, if nurtured, can bloom into a community enriched by
their
diversity.

It’s the nurturing that’s the problem in Los
Angeles and always has been.

This is a city that throughout its history has been run from
the top
down by elites that have looked down at those below and patronizingly
decided
what was best for them and, of course, for themselves.

The Times in its editorial on the outcry of so many people
before the
Council expressed this noblesse oblige attitude
by chiding them for thinking only of themselves when the city is in dire
straits,
having started the “new fiscal year — irresponsibly and, more to
the
point, illegally — in debt and insolvent.”

The editorial suggests that a “successful” Los
Angeles rely on private fund-raising and volunteerism
as a “model for providing quality-of-life programs instead of support
from the
city.

With that, the Times gives a blanket endorsement to
the
proposal to restructure city government, eliminate thousands of city
workers
who provide services to the public and drastically reduce funding for
programs
like Neighborhood Councils, human services and arts and culture.

The irony is that most of the money for these
efforts does
come from donations and most of the work is done by thousands or
ordinary
people volunteering endless hours in the service of others and their
communities.

City government should be in a support role for
these
efforts but more often than not, it is the obstacle in their way.

Instead of bringing this vast army of volunteers to
the
table of power and working with them to integrate their efforts with
available
resources, the city has brushed them off with little more than lip
service.

City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana in his
meticulously detailed reports to the Council and mayor demonstrated that
overspending and poor management over many years has brought the city to
the
brink of bankruptcy.

In his public comments to the Council, he warned
that his
three-year plan to slash spending, reorganize the bureaucracy and sell
valuable city assets is just the beginning.

The impact of the recession and the city’s
financial crisis
is likely to last seven to 10 years, he said, and more cuts in funding
and more
job eliminations are inevitable.

There is no way out of this crisis without the good
will of
the people and that is what is missing.

The people have lost confidence in City Hall. The
hundreds
of people who have gone to City Hall to beg for mercy for their causes
are fed
up with begging for crumbs. They are demanding a full role in developing
the
policies and implementing the programs they care so passionately about.

It’s a noisy, messy and complicated way to do
business. It’s
called democracy, an idea that is alien to the civic and political
culture of Los
Angeles. But it’s an idea whose time has come.

And it’s the only way out of this crisis, the only
way the
city can pull together and flourish for years to come.

Stuff happens in life sometimes that opens your eyes to what’s really going on in this evolving new world order.

My PC crashed Friday, sending me into a panic. When I finally got my wits about me and figured out how to restore it, I found I had lost numerous files I hadn’t backed up. And then I botched the reinstall so I lost my wireless connection to my laptop and made matters worse trying to fix it and lost all Internet service.

After the Super Bowl, I called Time Warner Cable for support and a wonderful woman in a faraway country spent 90 minutes on the phone with me before finally deciding a serviceman would have to come to my house to fix it.

So I poured another martini and tried to go through the steps again only to find I needed support to reprogram my cable modem. It took several tries, but the next woman I spoke to got both my PC and my laptop worked directly off the cable modem.

Being obsessed at that point, I decided to try to fix my Linksys router myself and blew out the connection, leading to a third call to yet another woman in the Phillippines, India, Pakistan, somewhere in Asia I was sure.

By dawn’s early light, I called Linksys and talked to Manoush in Pakistan who spent more than an hour going through one procedure after another until Voila!, I was wirelessly connected — except gotomypc.com still didn’t work.

That led to a fairly short call to gotomypc support where a nice young woman somewhere, maybe even in America but I doubt it, assured me it was my Norton Firewall that was the problem.

Enter Pritam Prasad, the Norton support woman I reached on the phone. She didn’t just guide me through the long laborious process, she took over control of my PC and spent an hour uninstalling, upgrading, reconfiguring and suddenly I was connected, fully restored.

Every person I spoke with was courteous, respectful, caring, smart, knowledgeable  and you can bet working for a fifth, a tenth, a 20th of what any of us would expect, a better class of workers than any of us would be.

I bring this up because Tezozomoc, brilliant leader of the South Central Farmers, has been pointing out of late that this isn’t a recession we are going through but a major economic restructuring to the realities of the global economy. America has lost control of the means of production, the very heart of capitalism and the growth of wealth.

If you know your Karl Marx, you know how important it is to own the means of production and to have the skills that come with that ownership:

 “The class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the
same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means
of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time
over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally
speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are
subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal
expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material
relationships grasped as ideas.”

I bring this all up out of my
egotistical compulsion to share my last 72 hours of computer anguish (I
know buy a Mac) and to make what I think is a larger point about what’s
at stake here in the battle to save LA.

The City Council began
consideration, such as its members consider what they are doing, on
Tuesday of a far-reaching,  long-range plan to remake city government as
if it were a generation ago when America still owned the means of
production and had the military and monetary power to enforce its will.

The
Council’s real and oft-stated goal, is to preserve as many city jobs at
the highest wages and benefits possible by slashing services to the
public and selling off the city’s assets and future revenue streams to
their best friends and supporters.

Being people who have never
really achieved anything in their lives beyond conniving their way into
elective office, they are incapable of seeing the futility of what they
are trying to do.

Time has passed them by. They, and the way they
think, are obsolete.

Look at the inefficiencies in accounting
where they miss their estimates by 300 percent and systems don’t talk to
one another. Or IT. Or customer service. We could outsource thousands of
city jobs to Asia at a fraction of the cost to people who aren’t
expecting lavish pensions or benefits, people who are willing to work
hard and be nice while doing it.

I’m not saying that’s what we
should do. I am saying city workers need to understand the reality that
many of them are replaceable just as multitudes of American workers have
been replaced.

At the least they ought to note that much of
their own wealth in their pension funds is invested in India and China
and elsewhere and that those investments are pushing other Americans out
of their jobs, the same people who are being taxed to death to keep
public employees in theirs.

There has to be a balance, a
recognition that the generation coming of age today will not have the
same deal that so many of us have come to take as a birthright.

We
have to change, change our definitions of work, success, happiness. We
have to devolve government structurally and create a true participatory
democracy where we have greater control of the world around us, a
greater voice in the decisions that affect our lives. That is what the
Battle of Los Angeles is about.

Such thinking is anathema to the
elitist mentality of City Hall. They speak the language of liberalism
but they practice a kind of feudalism where certain classes are endowed
with special rights and powers and the rest of us are nothing but peons.

I
can’t help thinking that in today’s world, it might be easier to
outsource the City Council to India where we could get smarter and more
effective people governing us. And they would do it for the living wage,
no pensions, not the highest salaries of any municipal official in
America.

The mayor can speak for himself and so can the city financial consultants.
The crisis could come to head this summer unless a long series of measures proposed by City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana because massive borrowings will be needed to get through next fiscal year.

Without sharp cuts in costs, investors will demand higher interest rates. They are looking at the reserve fund and what steps are being taken to reduce spending.

“All the investors we watch want to make they’re catching a falling knife,” one consultant quoted a bond underwriter as saying.