All posts by kohlhaas

Kerry Morrison’s Cogent Argument Against Legal Street Vending Supports Outlawing Hollywood Real Estate Super-Villians CIM Group, Employer of HPOA President Monica Yamada

As we’ve previously discussed at great length, the palefaced economic elites of Los Angeles are all abuzz at the possibility that the City Council might legalize street vending of various kinds, an activity whose practitioners are, for the most part, not that palefaced. As part of their abuzzitude, the palefaces have produced reams of frantic pearl-clutching hysteria regarding the threats posed to truth, justice, the American way, etc. that would, they say, certainly ensue as a result of such legalization.

These white-privilege rage-rants, while mostly grounded in delusion and mental illness, occasionally contain valid and useful arguments. It can sometimes happen, as Albert Einstein said, that “a blind pig has found an acorn.”1 A letter by Kerry Morrison, Executive Directrix of the HPOA, to Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, is an example of this. Kerry argues that, amongst other reasons, street vending should not be legalized, at least not in Hollywood, because it “raises numerous questions that must be taken into consideration. For example, how will taxes and permits be enforced, especially given that this is a cash-only business?2

Typical cash-only business in Los Angeles, beloved of the human residents but hated by the HPOA because of the difficulty of enforcing "taxes and permits."  This one's owned by an extraordinarily wealthy former mayor of Los Angeles, who evidently didn't get the memo about how his business practices are RUINING EVERYTHING!!
Typical cash-only business in Los Angeles, beloved of the human residents but hated by the HPOA because of the difficulty of enforcing “taxes and permits.” This one’s owned by an extraordinarily wealthy former mayor of Los Angeles, who evidently didn’t get the memo about how his business practices are RUINING EVERYTHING!!
As an aside, this argument can also be used against iconic Los Angeles restaurants The Pantry, Nick’s Cafe, and Philippe’s. Will the HPOA soon be asking the City Council to shut down these landmark establishments?

In any case, Kerry also lists a bunch of other undesirable consequences that, in her view, are likely to ensue from the legalization of street vending. These are not all illegal, e.g. the horrifying prospect of the potential placing of trash into appropriate public receptacles, but they’re all, says Kerry, “not something we are requesting in Hollywood.” We will refer to these en masse as “Kerry Morrison’s cogent argument.”

In our previous post on this subject we mentioned that the city of Los Angeles has had some problems with the enforcement of “taxes and permits” regarding CIM Group, a real-estate investment conspiracy run by rich white people. There we discussed the whole John Noguez scandal and hinted at the difficulty of enforcing building permit terms and conditions against CIM. Subsequently we decided to do some further research on the subject, the fruits of which are the subject of today’s post.
Continue reading Kerry Morrison’s Cogent Argument Against Legal Street Vending Supports Outlawing Hollywood Real Estate Super-Villians CIM Group, Employer of HPOA President Monica Yamada

Share

Kerry Morrison: Hollywood Businesses too Feeble to Survive Free Market Without Municipally Enforced Draconian Anticompetitive Pinko Racist Regulatory Capture

Street vendor in Manhattan destroying the prosperity of the city, laying waste to the comfort and privilege of rich white people, and generally ruining EVERYTHING!!
Street vendor in Manhattan destroying the prosperity of the city, laying waste to the comfort and privilege of rich white people, and generally ruining EVERYTHING! And now the city of Los Angeles intends to forcibly convert Hollywood into a cultural and economic wasteland like New York City by allowing such miscreants to operate with impunity on our streets. “Not on our watch,” say BIDs.
Street food is one of the signature pleasures of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world. Practically alone amongst its peers, though, Los Angeles forbids vending on its public rights of way. This is because there are really no bounds to the willingness of the economic elites of this city to prohibit anything that normal human beings enjoy if by doing so they can stick a dagger in the neck of the poor. They will certainly destroy the village in order to save it.
Hollywood BIDs destroying the city of Los Angeles in order to save it from its own misguided sense of sanity
Representative of the Hollywood BIDs metaphorically destroying the city of Los Angeles in order to save it from perceived (albeit delusionally) unintended consequences of an all-too-rare outburst of sanity with regard to its street-vending policy.
Case in point: the City Council recently began to discuss legalizing street vending in Los Angeles. Sane people everywhere rejoice at this attempt to allow civilization to flourish and also bring an estimated half-billion dollars worth of economic activity out of the shadows and onto the bottom line. There’s a hot dog in the public manger, though.

The BIDs and their minions have leapt into coordinated action! They are in a cyclonic tizzy, explaining fast and loud how the unintended consequences of the sane and harmless choice to legalize street vending will ruin everything. It will e.g. impoverish small businesses, encourage crime, cause the unauthorized commercial use of public trash cans, cause the unauthorized non-use of public trash cans, provide increased funding to criminal street gangs, encourage armed robbery, cause diseases, and even more stuff too weird to list here. Think we’re exaggerating? Read on!
Continue reading Kerry Morrison: Hollywood Businesses too Feeble to Survive Free Market Without Municipally Enforced Draconian Anticompetitive Pinko Racist Regulatory Capture

Share

The History of Sidewalk Obstruction Enforcement in Los Angeles (Part 1)

Jacob Kuhrts, 19th century LA councilman and either noble freedom fighter or monumentally self-righteous asshole, you decide.
Jacob Kuhrts, 19th century LA councilman and either noble freedom fighter or monumentally self-righteous asshole, you decide.
This is the first in an occasional series of posts examining various episodes from the rich and disturbing history of the criminalization of sidewalk use in Los Angeles. As we shall see, the sidewalks of our city have been a site of contention for well over a century.

We begin in January 1887 when, according to the Los Angeles Times,

There has been great complaint about the abominable fashion in which the sidewalks—especially at street corners—are blocked up by loafers and by thoughtless citizens; and the police have been ordered to enforce the ordinances and abate this nuisance.1

Even then, evidently, maybe especially then, an order to “enforce the ordinances” had a subtext. Ensuing events show that Officer Little didn’t understand these unspoken aspects:
Continue reading The History of Sidewalk Obstruction Enforcement in Los Angeles (Part 1)

Share

BID Patrollies Arrest Black Man for Any Random Thing that Pops Into Their Heads

BID patrollies preparing to arrest a man for blocking the sidewalk even though he is evidently not blocking the sidewalk.  Someone would later alter the charge to conform to reality.
BID patrollies preparing to arrest a man for blocking the sidewalk even though it is manifestly evident that he is not blocking the sidewalk. Someone would later alter the charge to conform to reality.
Watch the first minute of this video and see, in 2010, some BID Patrollies confront and accuse a man of “blocking the sidewalk”:

Officer: OK, so do me that favor and just get up and go somewhere cause you’re blocking the sidewalk.

Man: Not blocking the sidewalk, people got places to walk right past me.

Officer: You’re blocking the sidewalk.

Man: I’m not blocking nothing.

And you can see from the video that the man is not, in fact, blocking the sidewalk. But, unsurprisingly, the BID patrollies arrest him anyway.
Continue reading BID Patrollies Arrest Black Man for Any Random Thing that Pops Into Their Heads

Share

They Have Sown the Wind, and They Shall Reap the Whirlwind

The prophet Hosea explaining to Business Improvement Districts in Hollywood that the Lord is not so happy with their shenanigans
The prophet Hosea explaining unto Business Improvement Districts in Hollywood that the Lord is not pleased with their shenanigans
Today’s text, brothers and sisters, as we begin to return to action after celebrating the birth of our Lord and savior, is Hosea 8:1-7:

…[T]hey have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law. Hollywood shall cry unto me, My God, we know thee. Hollywood hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him. They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off… For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind…


Image of Hosea by Duccio di Buoninsegna is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia here.

Share

What Publicity Can Do

Business Improvement Districts crushing Hollywood under their golden heel, the oppression protected, enabled, and obscured by heavy thunderclouds.
Business Improvement Districts crushing Hollywood under their golden heel, their oppression protected, enabled, and obscured by heavy thunderclouds representing secrecy, regulatory capture, and impotent, sycophantic politicians.
Louis Brandeis famously stated that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman. And publicity has already played an important part in the struggle against the Money Trust.”1

We here at MK.org find that these words are as true now as they were 101 years ago. You will recall that we recently received a treasure trove of emails pursuant to a Public Records Act request to the HPOA. In these documents we’ve uncovered two very interesting remarks by Steve Seyler, most exalted pooh-bah of BID security.
Continue reading What Publicity Can Do

Share

U.S. Army Veteran Complains About BID Patrol’s Reckless Firearms Behavior. Steve Seyler Dismisses Fears as “a tad over emotional.” Investigation Ongoing?

The BID patrol officer discussed in this post, his hand clearly on his gun.
The anonymous BID patrol officer discussed in this post, his hand clearly on his gun. Click and zoom to see more clearly.
On October 23, 2014, an Army veteran wrote to Devin Strecker of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, among others, the following words:

This morning on my way to work, I was standing waiting to cross the street when I look over and see the gentleman on the left in the picture attached, grasping his weapon as if to draw his fire arm all while chatting away with the gentleman on the right. As I continued to wait to cross the street, I noticed the gentleman on the left start to pull out actually draw his weapon about 4-5 inches out of his holster. All the while standing chatting with his partner. I am ex army infantry, when we even had our hand TOUCHING our holstered weapon, there better had been a life threatening reason to even touch our holstered weapon.

Continue reading U.S. Army Veteran Complains About BID Patrol’s Reckless Firearms Behavior. Steve Seyler Dismisses Fears as “a tad over emotional.” Investigation Ongoing?

Share

Law Is Our Father and Mother, Whom We Will Not Dishonour

Thomas Carlyle in the act of weeping for the Hollywood Media District BID because they won't listen, they just won't listen...
Thomas Carlyle in the act of weeping for the Hollywood Media District BID because they won’t listen, they just won’t listen
These words Thomas Carlyle, in his great history of the French revolution, put into the mouths of a vast mob of sans-culottes, on their way to plant a Tree of Liberty in the Jardin des Tuileries.1 Even those maligned symbols of mob rule and terror realized that the law is the only salvation of a free people. How then do the members of the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Media District BID, a group to whom has been granted every privilege that law can devise, come to dishonour2 it so?

But enough nonsense. We have a story to tell you about the Hollywood Media District BID!
Continue reading Law Is Our Father and Mother, Whom We Will Not Dishonour

Share

Zillionaire HMD BID Board Member Varet Funded Hate-Spewing Muses of Spree Killer Anders Behring Breivik

Norwegian racist Spree Killer Anders Behring Breivik: Three degrees of separation from the Hollywood Media District BID
Norwegian racist Spree Killer Anders Behring Breivik: Three degrees of separation from the Hollywood Media District BID
As we previously discussed, the Hollywood Media District BID recently expanded the size of its board of directors in order to include Joseph Varet, who told the assembled worthies that he wanted to be on the board “to contribute my own non-profit/for-profit board experience to just contribute towards further…uh…developing the district in a positive and sustainable way.” We don’t know about you, but, to paraphrase Hanns Johst, “Wenn ich überzeugt und nachhaltige höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning!”1

Joseph didn’t go into details about his “own non-profit/for-profit board experience” but, as you may have guessed, have we got some details for you!
Continue reading Zillionaire HMD BID Board Member Varet Funded Hate-Spewing Muses of Spree Killer Anders Behring Breivik

Share

There’s a 98.72% Chance that at Least Two People on the HPOA/CHC Boards of Directors are Really, Really Hypocritical

About a week's supply of Bourbon whiskey
About a week’s supply of Bourbon whiskey. The post is about vodka, but we found this picture more attractive.
According to scientists the top 20% of U.S. drinkers drink an average of 6.3 drinks per day.1 At 0.6 ounces of pure alcohol per drink2 that works out to 3.78 ounces all together. At 30 ml per ounce that comes to 113.4 ml of pure alcohol. Steve Seyler’s bête noire is something called Taaka vodka which is, we assume, 80 proof, or 40% alcohol. Thus 113.4 ml is equivalent to \frac{113.4}{0.4}=283.5 ml of actual vodka.

The small bottles that everyone in the BID is so het up about are 200 ml, so we’re talking about \frac{283.5}{200}=1.42 bottles of Taaka. What’s the chance that someone on the Board of directors drinks at this rate and still has the temerity to vote in favor of policies that target homeless people for arrest for doing the same thing that they do every freaking day? It’s pretty high, friends. Details below the fold.
Continue reading There’s a 98.72% Chance that at Least Two People on the HPOA/CHC Boards of Directors are Really, Really Hypocritical

Share