Monthly Archives: July 2019

LAPD, Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Council, Public Records Act Pragmatics

News About My CPRA Suit Against The City Of Los Angeles Concerning Emails Between CD1 And LAPD — The City Has Abandoned Its Exemption Claims And Provided More Than 200 Pages Of Records — Which Is Good News On The Prevailing Party Front — And At Least One Of The Newly Released Emails Is Exceedingly Important — Not To Mention Appalling — Shows Gil Cedillo’s Deputy District Director Jose Rodriguez Calling In A Homeless Encampment Sweep — In February 2019 — At The Explicit Behest Of Sociopathic Developer Trammell Crow — Because The Mere Presence Of Displaceable Homeless Human Beings Was Interfering With A Project Schedule — Senior Vice President And Failed Screen Actor Alex Valente Has A Lot To Answer For — As Does Gil Freaking Cedillo — And Jose Rodriguez — And Everyone Else Involved In This Abuse Of Municipal Power

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There are two parts to today’s story. First, recall that last month I was forced by the arbitrary, pointless, and utterly inscrutable intransigence of Gil Cedillo‘s Senior Policy Deputy Mel Ilomin to file yet another writ petition against the City of Los Angeles seeking to enforce compliance with the California Public Records Act. And I have some excellent news about this, which is that yesterday the City completely abandoned its indefensible exemption claims and produced more than 200 pages of material responsive to the request at issue. It came to me in two PDFs, which you can get copies of here:

★ CPRA emails part 1.pdf

★ CPRA emails part 2.pdf

You might recall that Ilomin, completely backstopped by ought-to-know-better Deputy City Attorney Strefan Fauble, had claimed that every single one of these emails was exempt due to that putative deliberative process nonsense that the City of Los Angeles loves so well. And I won’t belabor the details, but if you read through the yield, you’ll see that this exemption claim was entirely unfounded, indefensible, just utter nonsense. For instance, a nontrivial number of these emails are widely published announcements that there will be mobile showers available on various dates at Lincoln Park which, whatever the hell they may be, aren’t exempt from production under any theory acceptable to even the marginally sane.

And there’s some other reasonably interesting material in there, about some of which I might write at some point. But there is also one exceedingly important record, which is this February 2019 email conversation between Cedillo’s Deputy District Director Jose Rodriguez and a long list of LAPD officers, LAHSA staffers, and others, scheduling a sweep of homeless encampments along Llewellyn Street in Chinatown for the explicitly stated reason that they were impeding construction on a huge housing development owned by the Trammell Crow Company, done at the request of Trammell Crow’s senior vice president Alex Valente.

Now, you might recall an instance where an encampment was swept for no better reason than that Eric Garcetti was making a political appearance in the area later. This incident was reported in the Los Angeles Times and evoked the following quasi-denial from Garcetti’s spokesman Alex Comisar, who said it did “not reflect the mayor’s approach to interacting with Angelenos experiencing homelessness.” And this same tired implausible story of utter compassion is told by everyone involved with homelessness no matter how messed up their motives actually are. Our City officials, just ask them, do not use the vast municipal power entrusted to them to fuck up the lives of the unhoused for petty stupid venal purposes.

Even, no doubt, Gil Cedillo will tell you what a goddamned humanitarian he is on these lines. And yet when we look at what he does, what they all do, well, here is Cedillo’s staff arranging for homeless human beings to be displaced from their community just because some sociopathic zillionaire didn’t want his damned construction project to be held up. And the sweep did take place. In fact, on the very next day, February 26, 2019, as reported by Joanna Swan on Twitter, because that’s where the City’s priorities are, what their actions are, no matter what their empty words might suggest. Read a transcription below, and if you haven’t done so already, look into Services Not Sweeps.
Continue reading News About My CPRA Suit Against The City Of Los Angeles Concerning Emails Between CD1 And LAPD — The City Has Abandoned Its Exemption Claims And Provided More Than 200 Pages Of Records — Which Is Good News On The Prevailing Party Front — And At Least One Of The Newly Released Emails Is Exceedingly Important — Not To Mention Appalling — Shows Gil Cedillo’s Deputy District Director Jose Rodriguez Calling In A Homeless Encampment Sweep — In February 2019 — At The Explicit Behest Of Sociopathic Developer Trammell Crow — Because The Mere Presence Of Displaceable Homeless Human Beings Was Interfering With A Project Schedule — Senior Vice President And Failed Screen Actor Alex Valente Has A Lot To Answer For — As Does Gil Freaking Cedillo — And Jose Rodriguez — And Everyone Else Involved In This Abuse Of Municipal Power →

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LAUSD

Sakshi Jain — Supreme Commander And Founding Spirit Of GANAS Academy — The Little Charter That Couldn’t — Hired A Guy Named Ed In May 2019 To Recruit Students For Her School — Cause Evidently They Weren’t Busting Down Her Doors Trying To Get In — And Per The Contract — Which Naturally I Have A Copy Of Here — Ed Was To Collect $850 Per Student Signed Up — Yes — You Read That Right — Eight — Hundred — And — Fifty — Dollars — Per Recruited Student — So Much For The Vaunted Efficiency Of Charter Schools

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Somehow, even though it makes no freaking sense whatsoever, we are continually asked by innumerable mobs of kool-aid-drunken pro-charter ideologues to believe that somehow their damnable publicly funded private schools are more efficient1 than publicly run public schools. Thus, the argument goes, we are lucky to be able to funnel public money and other valuable assets to them for their supernaturally efficient use in the pursuit of what they’re pleased to present as public goods.

But just logically, theoretically, even without reference to facts, how could this possibly be true? Like how does it make sense to pay the supreme commander of some random charter school out in Northwest Zillionaireville a significant fraction of a zillion dollars in exchange for her skilled elite commandery when we’re already paying Austin Freaking Beutner an equally significant fraction of a zillion dollars for his equally elite equally skilled commanderistic talents? How many damn commanders do we even need?

In any case, that’s the theoretical no-facts-needed version of the anti-charter-efficiency argument. But, as you no doubt know, the very point of this blog, the one thing that sets it apart from your average raving Internet lunacy,2 is facts! Facts as reflected in public records! All this blather, like the blather you’re reading now, exists for no real purpose beyond filling out the blank space around the links to the records.

Like for instance, this link to a contract between Sakshi Jain, supreme commander and founding heroine of the lately placed-on-hiatus GANAS Academy, and some guy named Ed, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as an educational consultant. The purpose of the contract is to engage Ed’s services to recruit students to attend Jain’s star-crossed but nevertheless self-proclaimedly world-class private school. And what is most amazing to me is that Ed is to be paid per piece. Not a joke. Eight Hundred And Fifty Freaking Dollars per student signed up.
Continue reading Sakshi Jain — Supreme Commander And Founding Spirit Of GANAS Academy — The Little Charter That Couldn’t — Hired A Guy Named Ed In May 2019 To Recruit Students For Her School — Cause Evidently They Weren’t Busting Down Her Doors Trying To Get In — And Per The Contract — Which Naturally I Have A Copy Of Here — Ed Was To Collect $850 Per Student Signed Up — Yes — You Read That Right — Eight — Hundred — And — Fifty — Dollars — Per Recruited Student — So Much For The Vaunted Efficiency Of Charter Schools →

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LAUSD

In January 2018 — Just Mere Months After Millions Of Dollars In Charter School Money Bought Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin’s Election To The LAUSD School Board — He Asked The California Charter School Association To Draft A Board Resolution For Him — Outlining Proposal To Study How To Legally Sell Or Lease LAUSD Property To Charters — And To Take LAUSD Facilities Away From Public Schools And Give Them To Charters On The Basis Of “Performance” — And To List All Facilities So The Privatizers Would Know Which To Target — And To Put Prop 39 Co-Location Disputes In The Hands Of A Putatively Neutral Third Party — And To Work Some Incomprehensible Voodoo With Bond Money — And Then Melvoin Proceeded To Have Secret Meetings On The Subject With CCSA Flacks — And Other Privatizing Galaxy Brains — Like Emilio Pack — And Caprice Young — And Mark Kleger-Heine — And Cristina De Jesus — This Post Is Part One Of A Series Because The Whole Thing Is So Darn Complicated

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We’ve already seen that LAUSD officials, both elected and appointed, have a sickening penchant for sharing confidential materials with Charter lobbyists, giving them advance input into official policy proposals, and so on. I’ve recently reported, e.g., on an episode from September 2018 where Austin Beutner allowed Cassy Horton and Jed Wallace of the California Charter School Association to vet an upcoming speech and also to talk in advance with his speechwriter to explain what they thought ought to be included. Convicted felon slash former schoolboard member Ref Rodriguez did the same thing in March 2018 with respect to a board proposal.

And it turns out that, beginning in January 2018, LAUSD Board member and charter school bootlicker Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin1 was involved in a very similar scheme having to do with LAUSD policies on school facilities, a subject which sounds tedious but is actually bureaucratic code for real estate, a subject which is at the very center of the zillionaire plan to loot the public treasure-stores for their own gain.2

Basically the proposal, which seems never to have made it out of the secret meetings, would have called for LAUSD to list all its facilities so that the privatizers could choose which ones to target, to allocate facilities between charter schools and public schools based on excellence and student success rather than on need, to authorize a putatively neutral third party to settle disputes over co-location offers, to study how to sell or lease LAUSD property to charters, and to do something complicated with bonds used to fund facilities. It all seems incredibly shady, shady beyond belief.

Icky Sticky Nicky was elected to the LAUSD Board in May 2017 after having been endorsed by the Los Angeles Times, which delusionally called him an “independent thinker” and also claimed that “Melvoin, who has worked for reform-oriented groups, is decidedly aligned with that movement but in a more balanced way than, say, Monica Garcia.” The LA Times reported on his July 2017 swearing in, and was, by then, after the election was over and the information could no longer sway a single voter, willing to state the relevant facts more explicitly, noting that Melvoin was “elected with the help of millions of dollars from charter school supporters.” The Times also quoted from Melvoin’s speech at the ceremony:

Today is not about the results of an election but about the emergence of a new paradigm. [I am a product of] the coalition that arose to implore us to lead with a simple yet radical maxim: Put kids first.

And today’s story concerns some ugly truth about Melvoin’s putative more-balanced-than-Monica-Garcia alignment with Charter school zillionaires and about what they bought from him in exchange for their zillions of dollars.3 About how these matters actually played out during his first year in office and, by extension, exactly how he interprets his “simple yet radical maxim: Put kids first.”
Continue reading In January 2018 — Just Mere Months After Millions Of Dollars In Charter School Money Bought Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin’s Election To The LAUSD School Board — He Asked The California Charter School Association To Draft A Board Resolution For Him — Outlining Proposal To Study How To Legally Sell Or Lease LAUSD Property To Charters — And To Take LAUSD Facilities Away From Public Schools And Give Them To Charters On The Basis Of “Performance” — And To List All Facilities So The Privatizers Would Know Which To Target — And To Put Prop 39 Co-Location Disputes In The Hands Of A Putatively Neutral Third Party — And To Work Some Incomprehensible Voodoo With Bond Money — And Then Melvoin Proceeded To Have Secret Meetings On The Subject With CCSA Flacks — And Other Privatizing Galaxy Brains — Like Emilio Pack — And Caprice Young — And Mark Kleger-Heine — And Cristina De Jesus — This Post Is Part One Of A Series Because The Whole Thing Is So Darn Complicated →

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Lawsuits

Coalition Of Local Fascists File Motion Asking Judge Otero To Let Them Intervene And Object To The City’s Settlement With The Mitchell Plaintiffs — Here’s A Copy Of Their Self-Serving And Mendacious Motion — Hearing On Calendar For August 12, 2019 At 10 AM — Courtroom 10C — First Street Federal Courthouse

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In March 2019 the Los Angeles City Council voted to settle Mitchell v. City of LA, the monumental federal civil rights case over homeless property rights. The impending settlement has inspired an astounding amount of delusional ranting from zillionaires and their willing minions over the last year or two, including this unparalleled slice of whatever-it-is from the CCALA. And no one listened to them, although the Daily News, which, it’s true, is not exactly Der Sturmer but, it’s also true, is not exactly not Der Sturmer, did publish this pandering slab of nonsense from Councilmember Joe Buscaino, one of two to vote against settling.

And a few weeks ago all these zillionaires got together and filed a motion with the court hearing the case, presided over by James Otero, asking for permission to intervene for the purpose of objecting to the settlement, a story covered by no one, it seems, other than the Daily News. There are transcribed selections below. And I don’t really know enough to be able to comment on the motion, other than to say I have mixed feelings.

That is, the people seeking to intervene are certainly fascists and liars. They mix incredibly disingenuous claims about their love and compassion for all humanity with lies about disease and advocacy for extreme oppression of homeless people. They actually cite the actual freaking Daily Freaking Mail in their brief. They lie about the levels of crime, of violence, they cite Drew Freaking Pinsky as if he were anything more than a lying hack himself. If they’re given a free hand to set policy they’ll deport homeless people, even housed poor people, off to the desert to live in camps, bleating the whole while about how they only want the best for their victims.

On the other hand, I do agree that their interests, as abhorrent as they are, aren’t adequately represented by any of the parties to the case, and I do agree in general that there are such circumstances in which people ought to be able to intervene in court cases when that happens. And I also agree with them that the fact that the City Council deliberated on the settlement in closed session is antithetical to democracy. So I’m going to leave the commentary up to the only person whose thoughts really matter, and that’s Judge Otero. The parties’ reply briefs are due tomorrow and I will publish them here if any are filed, which I imagine they will be.
Continue reading Coalition Of Local Fascists File Motion Asking Judge Otero To Let Them Intervene And Object To The City’s Settlement With The Mitchell Plaintiffs — Here’s A Copy Of Their Self-Serving And Mendacious Motion — Hearing On Calendar For August 12, 2019 At 10 AM — Courtroom 10C — First Street Federal Courthouse →

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LAPD

Ten Years Of LAPD Directives Regarding Cooperation With ICE — There Have Been Four Versions Of The Rules Since 2009 — But As Of October 2018 There Are Still Specified Circumstances Under Which They Will Still Honor ICE Detainer Requests — And Hold People So That ICE Can Take Custody Of Them

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I recently published a set of notices issued by the LAPD Chief of Detectives over the years. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there, including the records on which this story is based. Today we have a set of four notices, the earliest from 2009, explaining how LAPD is to interact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement with respect to undocumented prisoners in the context of Darryl Gates’s famous Special Order 40, which forbade officers from questioning anyone with the sole purpose of determining their immigration status. Here are links to the four notices, each of which is superseded by the subsequent one:

☆ CoD Notice 8.4 — July 1, 2009
☆ CoD Notice 1.8 — December 21, 2016
☆ CoD Notice 1.8 — May 17, 2017
☆ CoD Notice 1.8 — October 12, 2018

This recent flurry of revisions was required by the California TRUST Act, signed into law in October 2013 which, according to the LA Times, “prohibits state and local law enforcement from holding people longer than 48 hours for federal immigration agents — unless they’ve been convicted of certain crimes, most of them serious or violent.” These directives codify how this requirement is to be implemented by actual LAPD officers with respect to actual prisoners.

The detailed rules explain when they’re allowed to look up immigration status information, what kinds of information they’re allowed to act on, how they’re allowed to act based on the information, under what circumstances LAPD will hold prisoners for transfer to ICE, and so on. The rules are technical and I am in no way qualified to interpret, explain, or even opine on their meaning, but these rules are so important and so timely that it’s clearly necessary to publish them anyway. I know there are people out there who need this information.

There’s a transcription of the most recent one, which explains LAPD’s current policy, below. I will say in closing, though, that given the nightmarish conditions, the sexual torture, the murder, going on in ICE’s concentration camps, I cannot actually imagine any circumstances whatsoever in which LAPD, or anyone, ought to turn anyone over to them, no matter how terrible their crimes, and the list of crimes for which they can be turned over includes forgery and suborning perjury and things on that level, none of which are worth putting someone in Dachau over.1 It is clearly time for a fifth revision of this policy.
Continue reading Ten Years Of LAPD Directives Regarding Cooperation With ICE — There Have Been Four Versions Of The Rules Since 2009 — But As Of October 2018 There Are Still Specified Circumstances Under Which They Will Still Honor ICE Detainer Requests — And Hold People So That ICE Can Take Custody Of Them →

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LAUSD

In March 2018 Then-LAUSD-Board-Member Ref Rodriguez Shared A Top Secret Confidential Copy Of A Board Resolution With Cassy Horton Of The California Charter School Association — Before Anyone Other Than Richard Vladovic Had Seen It — And Cassy Horton Of CCSA Inserted Comments And Rewrote Language — And Arranged For Marcia Aaron of KIPP LA — And Parker Hudnut Of ICEF Charter Schools — To Meet In Her Company With Rodriguez And Aixle Aman Prior To Its Introduction To The Board To Discuss It — And Shared It With Christina De Jesus Of Green Dot Charter Schools — And Emilio Pack Of STEM Prep — For Their Comments — And Rewrites

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Remember how in September 2018 universally-reviled-by-sane-people LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner gave an advance copy of a major policy speech to the California Charter School Association for their comments, and even organized a conference call between Jed Wallace, then supreme commander of the CCSA, and Beutner’s speechwriter Shira Fine so that Wallace could pass along pro-charter propaganda to Fine for inclusion?

And then, when it got tweeted about, reprehensible CCSA shill Cassy Horton responded with a particularly mendacious claim that this kind of thing was just business as usual and everyone does it?1 Well, today’s story, about Horton getting top secret information from Ref Rodriguez in March 2018, may tend to support her claim that it’s just business as usual. But I still haven’t seen any evidence that anyone other than CCSA flacks is getting advance information out of LAUSD officials.

Before he was investigated by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, before he resigned in what passes for disgrace in municipal politics, before he pled guilty to a felony and assorted misdemeanors, before all that nonsense, former school board member Ref Rodriguez was famous for being the handpicked stooge of the CCSA. And, like his asshole buddy Austin Beutner after him, it turns out that Ref Rodriguez also secretly shared major policy documents, including at least one LAUSD board resolution, with CCSA flacks for them to revise to better reflect their interests.

The story begins with this email from Cassy Horton to four of the very creepiest of creepy charter creeps, which is to say Marcia Aaron of KIPP LA, Emilio Pack of STEM Preparatory, Christina De Jesus of Green Dot, and Parker Hudnut of Inner City Education Foundation Charter Schools.

Its subject alone tells quite a story: “<DO NOT SHARE OR FORWARD> Authorizing Resolution for Review and Feedback”. But the whole thing is essential reading. What’s at stake in the resolution is how charters should be authorized by LAUSD, how their performance should be evaluated, and so on. Not, sane folks might think, something which ought to be written by the very industry it’s meant to regulate. Evidently Ref Rodriguez disagreed. Here’s a transcription of the email:
Continue reading In March 2018 Then-LAUSD-Board-Member Ref Rodriguez Shared A Top Secret Confidential Copy Of A Board Resolution With Cassy Horton Of The California Charter School Association — Before Anyone Other Than Richard Vladovic Had Seen It — And Cassy Horton Of CCSA Inserted Comments And Rewrote Language — And Arranged For Marcia Aaron of KIPP LA — And Parker Hudnut Of ICEF Charter Schools — To Meet In Her Company With Rodriguez And Aixle Aman Prior To Its Introduction To The Board To Discuss It — And Shared It With Christina De Jesus Of Green Dot Charter Schools — And Emilio Pack Of STEM Prep — For Their Comments — And Rewrites →

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Los Angeles City Council

The Resurgence Of The Unhinged Grudge Informer — Anonymous CD5 Resident Threatens To Call ICE On Construction Workers Because They Don’t Speak English And The Constant Beeping Of Trucks Drives Her Crazy — And CD5 Staffer Debbie Dyner Harris Doesn’t Say A Critical Word About It — It’s All Normal In Quality-Of-Life-Land — If Our Society Creates And Weaponizes An Institution Like ICE It’s Certainly Not Unexpected That People Would Use It As A Weapon — But Can’t We Rely On Our Public Officials Not To Encourage It — If Only Through Their Invidious Silence?

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Tomorrow, July 12, 2019, under the banner of Lights for Liberty, thousands of people across the country and across the world will be participating in vigils at American concentration camps run by ICE, protesting the murderous treatment of the prisoners held there. You can find an event near you here. There are any number of serious reasons to abolish ICE, you can even ask ICE agents about it.

And one of these reasons is that the very existence of this organization, which is empowered to lock people up and torture them on the barest suspicion that they’re somehow violating immigration laws, incites people to use that power to further their personal goals. Under the original Nazis concentration camps were not only a tool of state terror but were used regularly by ordinary people to settle entirely non-political grudges with their neighbors.

The very existence of the capability creates the irresistible urge to use it. The blade itself incites to violence.1 This behavior was so commonplace and so problematic for various reasons that there’s a term for those who engage in it, they’re grudge informers. As Colleen Murphy puts it in her fine book The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice:

The term “grudge informers” refers to individuals who, during periods of conflict or repression, report personal enemies to authorities in order to get rid of them.2
Now, I’m not interested in rehashing the endlessly stupid discussions about the appropriacy of comparisons of ICE concentration camps to Nazi concentration camps nor, obviously, the appropriacy of the term “concentration camp” to refer to them. If it strikes you that there are two legitimate sides to that debate, you can go here and talk about it to your heart’s content.

I am, however, interested in talking about public records. In this case, a set of emails I obtained from the office of Paul Koretz, putatively esteemed CD5 repster, containing the phrase “quality of life.” I’m really interested in the kind of crazy shit that housedwellers gripe about to their council offices, and especially interested in the kind of terrorism that gets conjured up and poured down upon the tender heads of the helpless like so much molten lead from the ramparts as a result of such complaints.

Searches on this phrase seemed like a good way to find more of it, and oh boy, did that ever work out! Just for instance, if you have the heart, or the stomach, really, take a look at this endless series of constituent complaints from folks on Sweetzer Avenue in May of this year, really worked up about some construction noise created by an assuredly villainous outfit known as ETCO Homes.
Continue reading The Resurgence Of The Unhinged Grudge Informer — Anonymous CD5 Resident Threatens To Call ICE On Construction Workers Because They Don’t Speak English And The Constant Beeping Of Trucks Drives Her Crazy — And CD5 Staffer Debbie Dyner Harris Doesn’t Say A Critical Word About It — It’s All Normal In Quality-Of-Life-Land — If Our Society Creates And Weaponizes An Institution Like ICE It’s Certainly Not Unexpected That People Would Use It As A Weapon — But Can’t We Rely On Our Public Officials Not To Encourage It — If Only Through Their Invidious Silence? →

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LAUSD

Green Dot Charter Schools CEO Cristina De Jesus Served On Gavin Newsom’s State Charter School Task Force Earlier This Year — According To Tony Thurmond The Point Was To Identify “what is truly best for kids” — But De Jesus Told Her Colleagues That Her “Representation On The Task Force” Gave Green Dot “The Ultimate Voice” — And She Used Her Knowledge Of Task Force Meetings To Shape Green Dot PR Messaging On Charter School Controversies — None Of Which Sounds Like Thinking About What’s Best For Anyone Other Than Green Dot — Oh And Also It Seems That In Early 2018 De Jesus And The California Charter School Association Were Just Sitting Around Waiting For Michelle King To Die — So They Could Start Manipulating The Choice Of Her Replacement — Which As We Now Know They Ultimately Managed Really Well — At Least From Their Infernal Point Of View — And Making Insensitive Remarks While They Waited — Which Is Not A Good Look For A Bunch Of Privatizing Vultures — Especially Given How Their Hand-Picked Dude Is Working Out

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Earlier this year Governor Gavin Newsom asked State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond to convene an expert task force to study some aspects of charter schools in California and to issue a report by July 1, which task they duly completed. Here’s what Tony Thurmond had to say about what all these experts were going to get up to:

I am excited that we have this incredible assembly of experts from all sectors to help lead this charge, to take a deeper look at the impact of charter schools. We plan to research data and facts, and will review the fiscal impact and authorization process of charter schools. But more importantly, we are going to do this with thoughtful intention and through the lens of identifying what is truly best for kids.

And one of the putative experts appointed thereto was Cristina De Jesus, mostly famous for being the supreme commander of behemothic privatizing charter school organization Green Dot California. And even though Tony Thurmond thought the task forceers were going to think about the kids, well, as might be expected by the cynical,1 it turns out that, as shown in some emails I recently obtained via the California Public Records Act, De Jesus had very, very different ideas about her role on this expert body.2

The story begins on March 27, 2019, when Anna Phillips published a story in the Los Angeles Times, privatizers-into-a-tizzy-throwingly entitled How a couple worked charter school regulations to make millions. And into a tizzy indeed were thrown the privatizers, especially their ministers of truth.3 Thus did Green Dot commo-king Sean Thibault write an email to his Supreme Commander CDJ,4 proposing a response, perhaps to be submitted as a letter to the editor, which Thibault refers to as an LTE because of course he does.

This proposed LTE is incredibly worth reading for its crackpot accusation that “ideological charter critics” essentially caused Clark and Jeanette Parker to steal all that money from Today’s Fresh Start Charter School because they “have focused their legislative proposals on areas that already have healthy public scrutiny” rather than what, according to Sean Thibault, they ought to have been doing, which is “partnering to update charter laws and regulations to help catch bad apples.” But what we’re really interested in here is Thibault’s summing-uppery, directed at his boss CDJ:
Continue reading Green Dot Charter Schools CEO Cristina De Jesus Served On Gavin Newsom’s State Charter School Task Force Earlier This Year — According To Tony Thurmond The Point Was To Identify “what is truly best for kids” — But De Jesus Told Her Colleagues That Her “Representation On The Task Force” Gave Green Dot “The Ultimate Voice” — And She Used Her Knowledge Of Task Force Meetings To Shape Green Dot PR Messaging On Charter School Controversies — None Of Which Sounds Like Thinking About What’s Best For Anyone Other Than Green Dot — Oh And Also It Seems That In Early 2018 De Jesus And The California Charter School Association Were Just Sitting Around Waiting For Michelle King To Die — So They Could Start Manipulating The Choice Of Her Replacement — Which As We Now Know They Ultimately Managed Really Well — At Least From Their Infernal Point Of View — And Making Insensitive Remarks While They Waited — Which Is Not A Good Look For A Bunch Of Privatizing Vultures — Especially Given How Their Hand-Picked Dude Is Working Out →

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Business Improvement Districts, Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Petitioner’s Trial Brief Filed In My Lawsuit Against The Historic Core BID — Get A Copy Here — Read About How Blair Besten Did Not Search The BID’s Mailchimp Account For Responsive Emails Because — Wait For It — She Does Not Consider What Mailchimp Sends To Be Emails — And Other Stories — Trial On The Calendar For September 3, 2019 At 1:30 PM — Stanley Mosk Courthouse Department 85

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Perhaps you recall that in August 2018, due to the unhinged intransigent obstructionism of both Ms. Blair Besten, the half-pint Norma Desmond of the Historic Core, and Mr. Jeffrey Charles Briggs, the self-proclaimed Hollywood superlawyer with whom she cahoots, I was forced to file a petition to enforce my rights under the California Public Records Act with a trial scheduled for September 3, 2019 at 1:30 PM in Department 85 of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse.

Well time rolls on, one damn day at a time, we’re all done with meeting and conferring and discovery and all the suchlike pleasant pastimes in which we, the litigious few, engage like some elaborate dance before the main event, and now it’s time to file our trial brief. So that’s just what we did, just yesterday, and you can get a copy here.

And what a brief it is, friends, elaborating as it does on not just the broad overview of the utter unhingedness of Besten’s intransigent obstructionism, but both the nitty and the gritty, every last gritty little grain, of it, spelled out in painstaking detail like a tale told not by but certainly of an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying a lot of something about a whole damn lot of nothing.

Read on for some selections! Although, listen, I’m leaving out all the small-scale details of the BID’s abject failure to respond properly to my requests, where they sent 19 emails here and 17 emails there, none of which were responsive, and then repeated this over and over and over again and then was all like computer problems! Logistical difficulties! Boo freaking boo-hoo-hoo! That right there is a far more than adequate summary.

Also I’m leaving out the details of the requests, which were for interesting emails, which is more than enough detail to follow the argument. If you want to read all that stuff, and the supporting evidence, and it is certainly worth reading, read the whole brief!

Don’t miss the place where Blair Besten insisted under oath that those things that Mailchimp sends out to subscribers aren’t emails, they’re newsletters, and then when asked again if they were emails she was instructed by her supergenius of a lawyer, Mr. Jeffrey Charles Briggs, not to answer as the question called for an expert opinion. Also check out the super-mathematical agreement I made with the BID for production schedules for future requests!
Continue reading Petitioner’s Trial Brief Filed In My Lawsuit Against The Historic Core BID — Get A Copy Here — Read About How Blair Besten Did Not Search The BID’s Mailchimp Account For Responsive Emails Because — Wait For It — She Does Not Consider What Mailchimp Sends To Be Emails — And Other Stories — Trial On The Calendar For September 3, 2019 At 1:30 PM — Stanley Mosk Courthouse Department 85 →

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Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Council, Venice

Remember Mike Bonin’s Former Venice Field Deputy Taylor Bazley? — The One Who Was Always Going On About How He — And His Boss — And The Rest Of The Damn Staff — Didn’t Have Anything To Do With Those Damn Planters? — But It Turned Out That He Did? — Well Now It Turns Out That He’s Been Encouraging Housedwellers To Place Planters At Least Since 2017 — To “Harden” Streets “From Future Encampments” — And Other Such Nasty Language — Never Once Mentioning Beauti-Freaking-Fication — And Those Recent Planters Behind Whole Foods On Lincoln? — The Venice Neighborhood Council Paid For Two Of Them! — Public Money Spent On Actually Illegal Things — This Is Very Not OK — Last Thing — Mark Ryavec Acknowledges In Writing How Much Help His Planter Placer Buddies Have Gotten From LAPD — The Whole Thing Is So Gross

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Here’s a little self-quoting for background:

Everybody knows about those damn planters in Venice, but we’re just beginning to learn the depth of the City’s complicity with the angry housedwelling planter-placers. And fairly recently I obtained some emails that proved that Mike Bonin’s staff, if not Bonin himself, have been very complicit indeed, which led me to file a complaint with the City Ethics Commission against one of them, Taylor Bazley.

And today I have some serious new information about the planters. First, some planters were recently installed near the Whole Foods at Lincoln and Rose. It turns out that two of these planters, as illegal as all the rest of them, were paid for by the Venice Neighborhood Council, which allocated $600 for two of them at its meeting on January 8, 2019. You can read all about it in the minutes and agendas.

The process was initiated by solipsistic Venice housedweller Tatiana Morrison, whose ridiculous Go Fund Me is still at less than forty percent of its goal, with this formal request to VNC for money. Like so many of the zillionaire classes, when her pathetic attempts at putative self-reliance failed miserably, she was perfectly happy to misappropriate public funds to accomplish her misbegotten goals.

So here we have the City of Los Angeles, through its department the Venice Neighborhood Council, spending public money on things that violate actual laws. If they had spent the $600 on, say, cocaine, it would have been legally, ethically, morally, the same thing although much, much less harmful to society. I’m not exactly sure if there’s any recourse for this kind of thing, or at least any affordable recourse, but I’m thinking about it and I will be sure to let you know if anything presents itself.

Now on to your friendly neighborhood psychopath, Mark Ryavec. Everyone knows he and his Klown Kar Krew of Venice housedwellers have been one of the major forces behind the deluge of illegal planter placings and that the LAPD has been helping him out big time, even though LAPD Chief Michel Moore has publicly denied that his folks are involved at all. But nevertheless, documentary evidence of these well-known facts has been fairly sparse. That’s why this email exchange from August 2018 between Ryavec and Taylor Bazley, Mike Bonin’s former field deputy for Venice1 is so important. Here Ryavec, trying to cajole some money out of Bazley, makes the following admission against interest:2
We – the residents – have done allthe heavy lifting with the beautification effort, with the only real assistance from the City coming from the LAPD. To date we have raised over $35,000 for this effort and provided countless hours of volunteer labor. Can the City of Los Angeles at least make an effort to provide trash bins and regularty empty them?

And finally, now, on to the main thing.3 It’s also well-known that Taylor Bazley has repeatedly denied his involvement with the planters. And yet, behold this email conversation from December 2017 between Bazley and former VNC member and all-round sociopathic housedweller Matt Shaw about placing some planters on Third Avenue in Venice.4 And despite all the denials, it’s Bazley who’s the instigator: “Can we push this ball over the hill? lf we wait until the problem is back and there is urgency it might be too late…” And despite all the talk about beautification, Bazley’s very explicit about the purpose being anti-homeless: “I think that will harden 3rd significantly from future encampments.”
Continue reading Remember Mike Bonin’s Former Venice Field Deputy Taylor Bazley? — The One Who Was Always Going On About How He — And His Boss — And The Rest Of The Damn Staff — Didn’t Have Anything To Do With Those Damn Planters? — But It Turned Out That He Did? — Well Now It Turns Out That He’s Been Encouraging Housedwellers To Place Planters At Least Since 2017 — To “Harden” Streets “From Future Encampments” — And Other Such Nasty Language — Never Once Mentioning Beauti-Freaking-Fication — And Those Recent Planters Behind Whole Foods On Lincoln? — The Venice Neighborhood Council Paid For Two Of Them! — Public Money Spent On Actually Illegal Things — This Is Very Not OK — Last Thing — Mark Ryavec Acknowledges In Writing How Much Help His Planter Placer Buddies Have Gotten From LAPD — The Whole Thing Is So Gross →

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