Category Archives: Los Angeles City Government

Homeless Issues, Hypocrisy, Los Angeles City Government

It Turns Out That The Los Angeles Department Of Sanitation — Which Is A Key Player In The Raiding And Destruction Of Homeless Encampments — Will Provide “Community Dumpsters” For Housedweller Groups And Events — At The Behest Of Council Districts — And With A Huge Amount Of Attention And Time Devoted By City Staff — But None Of These Players — Not One — Will Provide Dumpsters For Homeless People Living On The Streets — These Are The Very Same Players Who Use Encampment Trash Accumulation To Justify Death-Dealing Sweeps — And It Is Supremely Ironic That Bladimir Campos — Of LA San — Is Involved In Both Activities

June 1, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

It’s well-known that pretty much the entire response of the City government of Los Angeles to our homelessness crisis is criminalization and its subsequent brutality, implemented at the hands of police and weaponized sanitation workers, driven never by sound policy, morality, or basic human decency, but rather by the incessant hateful complaints of psychopathic genocidal housedwellers.

This policy is manifested most visibly in notoriously savage encampment sweeps, during which tents, medicine, legal papers, and other possessions absolutely necessary for human life, are destroyed by City functionaries and cops. The claim is that sweeps are necessary to keep the streets clean, although the utter cynical falsity of this claim is revealed by two facts.

First, the sweepers often neglect to pick up actual trash while they’re destroying possessions and second, the City refuses to provide people living in encampments with the basic tools they need to keep their homes and neighborhoods clean in the first place, tools enjoyed by every housedweller in the City. Most important among these are trash receptacles and toilets. So crucially needed are toilets and trash cans and so cruel is the City’s refusal to provide them that an entire coalition of activist groups, Services Not Sweeps, exists to demand that the City provide them, among other things.

And not only that, but I recently obtained a big set of emails between staffers in Paul Koretz’s office and Bladimir Campos of LA Sanitation, who’s responsible for, among other things, coordinating encampment sweeps when Council Districts ask him to. I don’t know what excuses the City gives for their refusal to provide trash receptacles to encampments or even if they feel the need to excuse themselves, but one appalling fact I learned from these new emails is that the City actually has a whole system in place to deliver dumpsters to community events and pick them up afterwards.

Like all such perquisites in the City of Los Angeles, these so-called community dumpsters seem to be coordinated through Council offices, and you can read in this conversation and this other conversation exactly how much painstaking effort Koretz staffer Aviv Kleinman and a surprisingly large number of other City officials were willing to put in week after week after week after year after year to make sure that one of these dumpsters was made available by LA San for some community group’s event.

And don’t miss the supremely ironic fact that Kleinman’s correspondent at Sanitation was none other than Bladimir Campos. So not only does the City refuse to provide trash receptacles to people who desperately need them, not only does the City use the entirely predictable consequences that flow from a lack of receptacles, but the City is refusing to provide receptacles when they already have an entire functioning system in place for providing trash receptacles.

Nothing at all needs to be developed, no new funding needs to be put in place. All that has to happen is for City Councilmembers to understand or to be made to understand that the people living in an encampment are of equal value to the people in some other kind of community group with respect to City-provided trash receptacles, no matter what kind of housing situation they’re in. None of which is likely to happen, of course, because our public officials have no shame and no consciences. Read on for transcribed selections.
Continue reading It Turns Out That The Los Angeles Department Of Sanitation — Which Is A Key Player In The Raiding And Destruction Of Homeless Encampments — Will Provide “Community Dumpsters” For Housedweller Groups And Events — At The Behest Of Council Districts — And With A Huge Amount Of Attention And Time Devoted By City Staff — But None Of These Players — Not One — Will Provide Dumpsters For Homeless People Living On The Streets — These Are The Very Same Players Who Use Encampment Trash Accumulation To Justify Death-Dealing Sweeps — And It Is Supremely Ironic That Bladimir Campos — Of LA San — Is Involved In Both Activities →

Los Angeles City Government, Venice

George Francisco — Venice Neighborhood Council Candidate — And Supreme Boss Of The Venice Chamber Of Commerce — And Notably Creepy Little Zillionaire — Speaks Publicly Of His Vast And Unbounded Support For The LGBTQ Community Of Venice — And In Private It Appears That He Will Say “I Have Gotten A Lot Of Mileage Out Of That Rainbow Shit” — So — You Know — Vote Your Conscience On Sunday, Friends

May 31, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Yoicks, man! This George Francisco fellow is like a Russian nesting doll where the layers get surrealler rather than tinier. The other day I wrote about a complaint filed against the dude for taking money from developers to arrange for supportive comments at public meetings. Evidently inspired by that a source sent me what really appears to be a screenshot of more of Francisco’s text messages. These ones are about the famous raising of the world’s largest rainbow flag last year by Venice Pride.

As you can imagine, all of the world’s Francisco-adjacent organizations, along with every sane person in the whole wide world, are deeply supportive of LGBTQ people. And as you can imagine, they will happily tell the whole world about this, which is as it should be. Why, e.g., just look at this press release from the Venice Chamber of Commerce, in which Francisco is a reasonably powerful figure, and its quite direct, quite laudable, statement that “The Venice Chamber of Commerce is strongly in support of our LGBTQ members and the wider LGBTQ community and we always will be.”

Or also this screenshot from the Venice Sign Insta account or the direct link here announcing how the sign will be lit up in rainbow colors for Pride Month, which is June of 2019.¹ The text is inspiring:

The historic Venice Sign will be lit up in rainbow hues during the month of June to celebrate diversity and equality for all. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and the VCC os [sic] proud to join commemorating a key moment in the struggle for inclusion and LGBTQ rights.

Laudable sentiments indeed, O Iconic Venice Sign! But what does your human controller, George Francisco, have to say about LGBTQ issues when he thinks no one’s listening? Well, it appears from this apparent screenshot that apparently it is something more along the lines of:

I have gotten a lot of mileage out of that rainbow shit.

Which is more true? Well, I leave discernment up to you! And turn the page for images of the screenshots.
Continue reading George Francisco — Venice Neighborhood Council Candidate — And Supreme Boss Of The Venice Chamber Of Commerce — And Notably Creepy Little Zillionaire — Speaks Publicly Of His Vast And Unbounded Support For The LGBTQ Community Of Venice — And In Private It Appears That He Will Say “I Have Gotten A Lot Of Mileage Out Of That Rainbow Shit” — So — You Know — Vote Your Conscience On Sunday, Friends →

LAPD

The City Of Pomona Has No Memorandums Of Understanding With College Law Enforcement — So Not Only Is The Agreement Between The City Of Los Angeles And The University Of Southern California Anomalous Among Such Agreements — Such Agreements Don’t Necessarily Even Have To Exist — All Of Which Means That The City Of Los Angeles Made And Is Making A Conscious — And Explicit — And Entirely Optional — Decision To Allow USC To Arrest People Far Away From Its Campus — And To Continue To Do So Even In The Face Of Evidence Of Its Racist Practices

May 31, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

Here’s another update on my ongoing attempt to understand why alone of all private college security forces in Los Angeles the Department of Public Safety of the University of Southern California is allowed by the Los Angeles Police Department to operate not just off campus but up to a mile off campus.

And they do in fact operate far, far off campus. They detain and handcuff people for unexplained reasons that can’t possibly have anything to do with their university. It’s a travesty and a shame. And it turns out that they are the only private college in the City of Los Angeles that’s allowed by the LAPD to do this.¹ This kind of behavior is authorized by a memorandum of understanding between USC and the City of Los Angeles.

And as part of my attempt to understand what’s going on with this, I’ve been looking at law enforcement agencies around Los Angeles County and various MOUs they maintain with colleges. And, at least on the evidence of the LA County Sheriff, which only has one innocuous MOU with BIOLA University and on the evidence of the City of Pasadena which has only three, none of them allowing off-campus operations, it’s becoming clear that the relationship between USC and the City of Los Angeles is really, really unusual, at least in this county.

The latest piece of evidence comes to us from the fair City of Pomona, about which I know very little other than the clearly important facts that it’s somewhere east of here and that it’s got a freeway and a bunch of colleges named after it. Oh, and it maintains its own police department rather than contracting with the LA County Sheriff.
Continue reading The City Of Pomona Has No Memorandums Of Understanding With College Law Enforcement — So Not Only Is The Agreement Between The City Of Los Angeles And The University Of Southern California Anomalous Among Such Agreements — Such Agreements Don’t Necessarily Even Have To Exist — All Of Which Means That The City Of Los Angeles Made And Is Making A Conscious — And Explicit — And Entirely Optional — Decision To Allow USC To Arrest People Far Away From Its Campus — And To Continue To Do So Even In The Face Of Evidence Of Its Racist Practices →

LAUSD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Roya Saghafi Is Suing Palisades Charter High School Over Nasty Evil Racist Hostile Targeted Harassment In The Workplace — Alleged Doncha Know — Of Exactly The Type That Sane People Have Associated For Decades With Pali High In Particular — And For That Matter With The Palisades In General — Abhorrent Little White Supremacist Stronghold That It Is — So Naturally I Requested Everybody’s Emails With Saghafi Under The CPRA — And Then Doctor Pamela Magee — Chief Boss Of Pali High And Their Designated CPRA Responder — Refused To Give Them To Me On The Basis Of A Wildly Unsupportable Interpretation Of An Exemption — The Battle Rages On!

May 29, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

UPDATE: Dr. Pamela Magee hired a lawyer to advise on this matter and he capitulated to my demands! At least in theory! So these emails should be forthcoming! At least in theory!

So there’s this charter school in the Palisades, Palisades Charter High School, which is moderately famous for, among other things, being chock full of both satan-worshipping privatizers¹ and openly racist baby thugs. Two salient facts about Pali High² are that the supreme boss of the school, Doctor Pamela Magee, earns more money in one year than all but three of the sixty thousand employees of LAUSD, and that a former teacher, Roya Saghafi, is suing the school for the torment she suffered at their racist horrible hands while she worked there.

You can read about both of these matters in a previous post of mine and also get your hands on Saghafi’s complaint. And I’ve been following up on the Saghafi story, of course, and as part of this effort I sent this request under the California Public Records Act to Doctor Pam Magee asking for:

… emails in the possession of any administrative staff which are to/from/cc/bcc Roya Saghafi from January 1, 2012 through March 29, 2019.

And eventually I got a response from Doctor Pam Magee, and what she said was not encouraging:

This information is not available under CPRA 6254b as these records pertain to pending litigation.

This doesn’t seem right! Better read the code section. Always read the code section:

… this chapter does not require the disclosure of any of the following records:

(b) Records pertaining to pending litigation to which the public agency is a party … until the pending litigation … has been finally adjudicated or otherwise settled.

Yikes, man! She quoted it accurately, so that was a disappointment. But on the other hand it seemed really implausible that the emails I’d requested could be exempt on this theory. First of all, they obviously weren’t exempt before Saghafi filed suit so they couldn’t really become exempt on the day she filed.
Continue reading Roya Saghafi Is Suing Palisades Charter High School Over Nasty Evil Racist Hostile Targeted Harassment In The Workplace — Alleged Doncha Know — Of Exactly The Type That Sane People Have Associated For Decades With Pali High In Particular — And For That Matter With The Palisades In General — Abhorrent Little White Supremacist Stronghold That It Is — So Naturally I Requested Everybody’s Emails With Saghafi Under The CPRA — And Then Doctor Pamela Magee — Chief Boss Of Pali High And Their Designated CPRA Responder — Refused To Give Them To Me On The Basis Of A Wildly Unsupportable Interpretation Of An Exemption — The Battle Rages On! →

Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Council, Municipal Ethics, Venice

Remember How CD11 Staffie Taylor Bazley Helped Mark Ryavec And The Rest Of His Psychopathic Housedwelling Venice Klown Kar Krew Install Illegal Planters By Asking Brian Buchner To Call In A Sweep? — Well He Did — And This Morning I Turned Him In To The Ethics Commission For Doing It — Get A Copy Of The Complaint Right Here!

May 28, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Quick update time! Psychopathic homeless-hating housedwellers in Venice have been illegally dropping anti-encampment planters all over the damn place. I obtained some emails via the California Public Records Act that proved that Mark Ryavec, Carlos Torres and assorted other members of their fashy little beerhall fight clubs, the Venice Stakeholders Association and Venice United, were behind the planters with the avid assistance of a bunch of LAPD cops and Taylor Bazley, who is Mike Bonin‘s field deputy for Venice.

Then I turned all the cops in to LAPD Internal Affairs since cops are supposed to enforce the law rather than help a bunch of zillionaires violate the law. But that move, as satisfying as it was, left smarmy little creepy little avid little licker of the dung-encrusted boots of zillionaires Taylor Bazley unreported anywhere for anything to do with his part in the ongoing civic tragedy that is the connivance of our City officials with these illegal planter-placers. Which is a gap in the cosmic order that could not allowed to remain!

And thus, this very morning, I filed a complaint against Bazley with the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. The facts are the same as in the above-mentioned complaint against the cops, but the violations alleged are different because Bazley, at least as far as we know, is not a cop, so he has fewer restrictions on his relations with lawbreaking.
Continue reading Remember How CD11 Staffie Taylor Bazley Helped Mark Ryavec And The Rest Of His Psychopathic Housedwelling Venice Klown Kar Krew Install Illegal Planters By Asking Brian Buchner To Call In A Sweep? — Well He Did — And This Morning I Turned Him In To The Ethics Commission For Doing It — Get A Copy Of The Complaint Right Here! →

LAUSD

GANAS Academy Founder Sakshi Jain Emails Now Available — Showing A Pattern Of Increasing Anxiety And Paranoia About Anti-Co-Location Activists — Appeals To LAUSD To Punish Catskill Elementary Employees Who Seemed To Oppose Co-Location — Discussions With The California Charter School Association On Media Strategy — Wild Accusations Of “borderline libelous and slanderous accusations – not just about the Founder, but about the school as well” — Whatever The Hell That Means — Resignation Of A Board Member Who Did Not Want “to be villainized by the community [he] was hoping to help” — Other Essential Information — Including A Potential Brown Act Violation In February 2019 — Read All A-Freaking-Bout It!

May 27, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Here’s more on the anti-colocation battle being fought by a brave and devoted band of teachers and parents at Catskill Elementary School in the City of Carson against impending plans to install upstart charter school GANAS Academy on their campus. I have been investigating this story using requests made to GANAS via the California Public Records Act.¹ And just recently these GANASsholes handed over a trove and a half of goodies. You can read about the video over here, and today we’re talking about the emails, which, as always, are where the serious action is. Browse them yourself, of course, or download the whole damn stack of them, right here on Archive.Org.²

And today I’m just going to run through a few highlights with transcriptions and a little light commentary. They paint a revealing picture of the effect that the anti-co-location protests have been having on GANAS, with at least one board member having resigned when he became aware of the intensity of the animosity towards his charter school. They also show the growing anxiety, shading into abject paranoia, of galaxy-brained GANAS founder and head of school³ Sakshi Jain as it became increasingly clear to her that she was in for a long and bitter struggle, and that there wasn’t really much help forthcoming from either LAUSD or the California Charter School Association.
Continue reading GANAS Academy Founder Sakshi Jain Emails Now Available — Showing A Pattern Of Increasing Anxiety And Paranoia About Anti-Co-Location Activists — Appeals To LAUSD To Punish Catskill Elementary Employees Who Seemed To Oppose Co-Location — Discussions With The California Charter School Association On Media Strategy — Wild Accusations Of “borderline libelous and slanderous accusations – not just about the Founder, but about the school as well” — Whatever The Hell That Means — Resignation Of A Board Member Who Did Not Want “to be villainized by the community [he] was hoping to help” — Other Essential Information — Including A Potential Brown Act Violation In February 2019 — Read All A-Freaking-Bout It! →

LAUSD

More Records From The New Los Angeles Charter School Co-Location Battle! — Including A Copy Of The West Adams Neighborhood Council Anti-Charter Resolution Marked Up And Annotated By NLA Executive Staff! — This Is A Real Glimpse At The Usually-Hidden Thought Processes Of Some Privatizers — And An Example Of The Power Of The California Public Records Act

May 25, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

New Los Angeles Charter Elementary School was forcibly co-located on the campus of the public Baldwin Hills Elementary School leading to a great deal of tension which came to a head during the UTLA strike in January and NLA boss Brooke Rios said that her school would try to find somewhere else to have their school but then they couldn’t find another place so parents from the public school proposed an anti-charter-school resolution to the West Adams Neighborhood Council which approved it by a vote of 8 to 3 and you can read a copy of the resolution here and watch some video of the whole damn meeting, or at least the part where they’re discussing the charter school stuff.¹

And at that meeting NLA Elementary School principal Kate O’Brien passed out a document, and you can get a copy of the document here. But that document, NLA’s response to the motion opposing their co-location, didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. They read the proposed motion before the meeting, read it carefully, marked it up with a highlighter, and drafted detailed responses to the various points made against them.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, of course. In fact I find it commendable in a way that very little habitual privatizer behavior is to me. By engaging is really detailed preparation the NLA folks showed that they were taking the process seriously, as a threat to them. Which is was. And is. But regardless of that, not only is the fact that NLA prepared so carefully interesting, but the nature of the preparations is really interesting.

And this is where the Public Records Act comes in. After the meeting, when it became clear that NLA had prepared so carefully, I asked them for copies of their notes and prep documents. And yesterday they gave them to me² and today I am giving them to you! This is a really important piece of history.

☆ Copy of the WANC resolution highlighted by NLA — This is NLA’s advance copy of the resolution presented to the West Adams Neighborhood Council, liberally highlighted and with handwritten numbered references to comments.

☆ NLA annotations for WANC resolution — These are the actual comments referred to in the previous document.

And turn the page for images of all this stuff!
Continue reading More Records From The New Los Angeles Charter School Co-Location Battle! — Including A Copy Of The West Adams Neighborhood Council Anti-Charter Resolution Marked Up And Annotated By NLA Executive Staff! — This Is A Real Glimpse At The Usually-Hidden Thought Processes Of Some Privatizers — And An Example Of The Power Of The California Public Records Act →

LAUSD

Video From GANAS Academy Now Available! — See Chanting Catskill Protesters Following Sakshi Jain And Juliana Mercurio Out Of A Carson City Council Meeting In April! — But From Jain And Mercurio’s Point Of View!! — With Their Commentary!!! — See Video Of Mercurio And Jain Driving Away From The Protesters! — Shot From Inside The Getaway Car!! — Mercurio: “We’re About To Be Blocked In … Again …” — Video From The Famous Carson City Council Meeting — California Charter School Association Flackie Gives Public Comment — Very Interesting Stuff Here Friends!

May 22, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Recently, for instance, I obtained a copy of a call to 911 made by GANAS’s shockingly unsocialized founder, Sakshi Jain, in March 2019 during which she pleaded persistently with an unsympathetic dispatcher at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to come arrest a bunch of protesters whose presence she found dismaying despite the dispatcher’s repeated admonition that protesting wasn’t illegal.

And, as these defenders of Catskill Elementary School’s resources and autonomy are a feisty bunch of folks, that March protest is not the only direct action they’ve taken to further their goals. For instance, on April 10, 2019 they attended a meeting of the GANAS Academy directors and gave vigorous and extended public comment, which was not gracefully received by the privatizers on the board.

The board ultimately tried to shut down the meeting and it ended with the Catskill folks following them out to the parking lot chanting. The Catskill defenders posted an uplifting video of this event and the chaos starts here at 1:10:20, with board chair Juliana Mercurio’s angry pronouncement that if the protesters don’t sit down she is going to close the meeting. A few days later the Carson City Council considered and ultimately passed an anti-GANAS resolution.

Which brings the story up to yesterday, when I received almost an entire gigabyte of public records from GANAS via their lawyers at Young, Minney, & Corr, a law firm specializing in the affairs of California charter schools.¹ Included in this release, most of which I’m still prepping for publication, were a number of videos shot by GANAS Academy people in the performance of their duties. You can browse the collection and download copies here on Archive.Org and also here on my YouTube channel.

There are links to the individual videos with brief descriptions below, but before we go there, you must, must watch two of these clips. These were filmed by GANAS board member Juliana Mercurio after the Carson City Council meeting on April 16. They capture the protesters following Mercurio and Jain to Jain’s car and the subsequent vehicular escape. The first one features the protesters as seen over Mercurio’s shoulder and includes Mercurio’s commentary, e.g. she describes the protesters as “an irate mob of people.” The second is shot from inside their getaway car. As they’re driving away Mercurio wearily predicts that they’re “about to be blocked in … again …”
Continue reading Video From GANAS Academy Now Available! — See Chanting Catskill Protesters Following Sakshi Jain And Juliana Mercurio Out Of A Carson City Council Meeting In April! — But From Jain And Mercurio’s Point Of View!! — With Their Commentary!!! — See Video Of Mercurio And Jain Driving Away From The Protesters! — Shot From Inside The Getaway Car!! — Mercurio: “We’re About To Be Blocked In … Again …” — Video From The Famous Carson City Council Meeting — California Charter School Association Flackie Gives Public Comment — Very Interesting Stuff Here Friends! →

LAPD

Pasadena Police Have Three Memorandums Of Understanding With Local Colleges — Pasadena Community College — Art Center College Of Design — And Of Course Cal Tech — And Not A Single One Of Them Allows The College Cops To Operate Off Campus — It’s Actually The Opposite Here — Each Of These Agreements Lists Crimes That The Pasadena PD will Handle Even On Campus — It’s Beginning To Appear That USC Is Unique Not Only In The City Of LA But In The Whole Region — As Before Though If It’s Not Required To Let Them Operate Off Campus Then At Least There’s Some Hope — However Small — Of Changing Things

May 20, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

This is just a quick update on my ongoing attempt to understand why alone of all private college security forces in Los Angeles the Department of Public Safety of the University of Southern California is allowed by the Los Angeles Police Department to operate not just off campus but up to a mile off campus.

Not only that but it’s beginning to appear that police in other jurisdictions really, really don’t allow this kind of thing at all. I learned recently that the LA County Sheriff has only one memorandum of understanding with any college in its jurisdiction and it explicitly does not allow them to operate off campus.

And today I received three MOUs from the Pasadena Police Department, none of which allow campus security to operate off campus. In fact, the central point of all three of these agreements is to lay out precisely which on-campus crimes will be handled by the PPD and which by campus security.

There is a great deal of detail on sexual assault and rape because colleges are bound by various federal laws to handle such crimes in very particular ways, but the explicit assumption in every case is that campus security will operate only on campus.

Here are links to them, and they’re not that interesting. But then, why should they be? There’s a transcription of the one from Cal Tech after the break, and my investigations continue.

Continue reading Pasadena Police Have Three Memorandums Of Understanding With Local Colleges — Pasadena Community College — Art Center College Of Design — And Of Course Cal Tech — And Not A Single One Of Them Allows The College Cops To Operate Off Campus — It’s Actually The Opposite Here — Each Of These Agreements Lists Crimes That The Pasadena PD will Handle Even On Campus — It’s Beginning To Appear That USC Is Unique Not Only In The City Of LA But In The Whole Region — As Before Though If It’s Not Required To Let Them Operate Off Campus Then At Least There’s Some Hope — However Small — Of Changing Things →

Los Angeles City Government, Venice

Powerpoints From The Secret Meeting Between Garcetti Staffers And The Venice Chamber Of Commerce On March 1, 2019 Are Now Available — They Are Utterly Vapid And Devoid Of Content — Which Is Not Surprising Given That They’re Merely Pretextual — The Zillionaire Ruling Classes Have Many Such Empty Excuses To Hold Conclaves With City Officials — It Is Always What’s Not On The Agenda That Matters

May 20, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Maybe you remember that on March 1, 2019 representatives from the august office of the august Mayor of Los Angeles journeyed westward to Venice to hold a secret creepy little invite-only conclave with local zillionaires, sponsored by the Venice Chamber of Commerce and held at the locally celebrated white supremacist compound known to the world as the Hotel Erwin. Well, it actually happened, and I recently obtained a list of invitees and some emails about the process of planning the confab and wrote a fairly well-received post about the material.

But of course if there are any unifying themes at all to CPRA-based investigations they’d be the fact that (a) material trickles in very, very slowly and (b) it does not arrive in any particular order.¹ Which is why it’s getting close to eight weeks after that first post and I have just recently obtained the presentation materials from that tip-top secret meeting, which is why I have taken up my metaphorical pen this morning and am metaphorically scribbling this note to you! There are three items on the menu this morning.² These are:

And of course, look at them if you want to. Publishing public records is a big part of what we do here at the blog and there’s not much point in publishing if nobody reads. But I will tell you in advance that there’s absolutely nothing interesting in the content of these documents. They say nothing at all and they say it in an incredibly tedious manner.

Not only that, but they’re obviously reworkings of generic presentations that these City staffers and the people from the Los Angeles Tourism Board have given many times, only very lightly edited to reflect the interests of this particular audience. There’s nothing in these powerpoints that needed to be said at all, let alone to be said in person. But nevertheless, it would be an error to write this off as the usual booshwah spewed in such astonishing volume by real-estaties. In fact, the very lack of content is itself the medium that’s communicating the extremely important message.
Continue reading Powerpoints From The Secret Meeting Between Garcetti Staffers And The Venice Chamber Of Commerce On March 1, 2019 Are Now Available — They Are Utterly Vapid And Devoid Of Content — Which Is Not Surprising Given That They’re Merely Pretextual — The Zillionaire Ruling Classes Have Many Such Empty Excuses To Hold Conclaves With City Officials — It Is Always What’s Not On The Agenda That Matters →