Tag Archives: Feckless Idiocy of Mitch O’Farrell

More Detail On Mitch O’Farrell’s April 2020 Coronavirus Exposure — Which Happened Because He Insisted On Meeting In Person With Angry Psychopathic Housedwellers In Echo Park — But Still Wouldn’t Talk To The Unhoused Community — And If You Read As Many CD13 Emails As I Do — You’re Aware That O’Farrell Rarely Commits Himself In Writing — Or His Staff Is A Bunch Of Lying CPRA Violators And Withholds What He Writes — I’m Pretty Sure Both Are True — But When He’s In Fear For His Own Life — It Seems More Real To Him Somehow — And Now The Dude Cannot Shut Up — But Quizzes Juan Fregoso About Where The Guy Who Tested Positive Was Standing — And How Close Did He Get — And What Color Shirt Was He Wearing? — It’s Pretty Clear That O’Farrell Saves His Deepest — His Most Sincere — Concern For Himself Only — But Then His Damn Voting Record Already Told Us That

June 30, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

A couple weeks ago I reported that in April 2020, smack in the middle of a pandemic no less, Los Angeles City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell had an in-person meeting with a bunch of unhinged housedwellers about how much they hated having to look at unhoused people living in Echo Park. And this all was going on at the same time that both O’Farrell and his staff were, despite their pleas and letters, refusing to meet with the unhoused people themselves, refusing to meet with activists who were organizing them, refusing to discuss public health with anyone, and refusing even to discuss the reasons for his refusal.

And not only that but O’Farrell was exposed to coronavirus at his meeting with these angry housedwellers. And by now it seems pretty ironic that actually they were the ones spreading disease. You may recall that in their list of demands to O’Farrell, one of the housedwellers’ reasons for demanding the eviction of the Echo Park homeless encampment was the threat to their health created by its presence: “[t]here is a high risk due to human waste and illegal drug waste, which is a haven for an epidemic of Cholera, dysentery,hepatitis A & E, typhus, and even leprosy.”¹

The bare fact of the exposure was all I knew of when I wrote that earlier post. But since then CD13 has produced a little more material, all of which you can find here on Archive.Org,² and among this stuff is an email conversation in which O’Farrell quizzes his nightmare field deputy Juan Fregoso about who had it, where he was standing, was he likely to have transmitted it, and so on.³ It’s the kind of thing you might expect from a guy like Mitch O’Farrell, and there’s a transcript below. There’s no big news here, no breakthrough explanations of the characteristic feckless idiocy with which O’Farrell conducts all his public business.

But if you read as many of these City staff emails as I do you’ll recognize that O’Farrell is being weirdly talkative here. It’s so rare to get anything in writing out of CD13 that’s actually from the Councilmember. Either O’Farrell is consciously not putting things in writing or his staff is way, way overclaiming exemptions to withhold all of it.⁴ There’s certainly plenty of evidence that they do that. And of course if you’re the wrong kind of constituent he doesn’t have a single word for you nor a single moment in which to speak it. But here he is, in fear for his life,⁵ and all of a sudden he’s got plenty to say.
Continue reading More Detail On Mitch O’Farrell’s April 2020 Coronavirus Exposure — Which Happened Because He Insisted On Meeting In Person With Angry Psychopathic Housedwellers In Echo Park — But Still Wouldn’t Talk To The Unhoused Community — And If You Read As Many CD13 Emails As I Do — You’re Aware That O’Farrell Rarely Commits Himself In Writing — Or His Staff Is A Bunch Of Lying CPRA Violators And Withholds What He Writes — I’m Pretty Sure Both Are True — But When He’s In Fear For His Own Life — It Seems More Real To Him Somehow — And Now The Dude Cannot Shut Up — But Quizzes Juan Fregoso About Where The Guy Who Tested Positive Was Standing — And How Close Did He Get — And What Color Shirt Was He Wearing? — It’s Pretty Clear That O’Farrell Saves His Deepest — His Most Sincere — Concern For Himself Only — But Then His Damn Voting Record Already Told Us That →

CD13, Homeless Issues

Homeless Residents Of Echo Park And Their Supporters Tried And Tried And Tried To Meet With Mitch O’Farrell Earlier This Year — To Discuss Essential Human Needs — Like Bathrooms — And Not Being Killed By Police — And Hygiene Supplies — And Other Equally Important Matters — But Mitch O’Farrell Wouldn’t Meet With Them — Or Direct His Staff To Meet — Meanwhile Both He And His Staff Met Repeatedly With Psychopathic Echo Park Housedwellers — To Discuss Their Idiotic Concerns — Like How Unpleasant It Is To See Homeless People — And Property Values — And Freaking Cholera — And How They Could Fuck Up The Lives Of The Unhoused Even More Than Usual — And Sometimes Just To Drop Off Gifts — Like Care Packages — And This Led To The Damn Housedwellers Exposing O’Farrell — And His Appalling Field Deputy Juan Fregoso — To COVID-19 In April 2020 — Which — Given That Cholera Business — Is A Level Of Irony Rarely Seen In Actual Reality

June 14, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

In January 2020 the unhoused residents of Echo Park came together to protest their displacement by an ongoing series of sweeps ordered by CD13 Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell. They wrote O’Farrell an exceedingly reasonable letter explaining their precarious situation, the dangers to which his sweeps exposed them, a number of proposals for assuaging the⁶ so-called concerns of the local housedwellers, and, for our purpose most crucially, a request to meet with him to discuss the burgeoning crisis.

This letter and the protests that inspired it turned out to be the beginning of an ongoing and still-active resistance movement in the Park, the story of which is ably told by Liam Fitzpatrick in Knock LA. This movement has merged seamlessly with the ongoing rebellion against police violence, as seen e.g. yesterday in a massive protest against LAPD and the City’s attacks on the unhoused residents, which culminated in a march to O’Farrell’s office, a series of really moving speeches calling out his weaponized incompetence, and an impressive display of art.

And over these six months of unrest, O’Farrell has repeatedly ignored the activists’ requests to meet, to discuss, to find solutions. According to Streetwatch LA, a group deeply involved in organizing the campaign, the only in-person contact O’Farrell’s office made with any of the activists consisted of O’Farrell’s absolutely despicable field deputy Juan Fregoso meeting with one resident of the Park and aggressively suggesting that the guy enter a shelter while continuing to ignore reasonable requests from these constituents for serious meetings to discuss policy.⁷

The City of Los Angeles is famous for using encampment sweeps and other violent tactics against unhoused residents in response to complaints, which are characteristically both deeply sociopathic and astonishingly trivial, from unhinged local housedwellers, and the Echo Park sweeps which catalyzed the protests are not an exception. I recently received a small but significant set of emails from CD13 on the subject which suggest that this particular round of violence was seeded by complaints in late 2019 from residents of Parkview Living, which is some kind of retirement home across the street from the Park.

The emails are heavily redacted, by the way, in accordance with a newly-adopted and highly illegal CD13 policy of hiding the identities of psychopathic anti-homeless constituents in order to encourage them to continue to freely express their psychopathic anti-homeless rage. Nevertheless it’s still possible to figure out what’s going on. The housedwellers are worried, as usual, about having to look at unhoused residents as well as the effect of a visible encampment on their property values. Not so much about the well-being, the health, or even the very lives of the unhoused residents.

Even more upsetting given his refusal to even talk to the actual unhoused residents is the fact that O’Farrell and his staff met repeatedly with these angry hypersensitive housedwellers to assuage their wounded sensibilities and to promise, accurately, to step up enforcement against the suffering residents of the Park. O’Farrell explicitly encouraged the Parkview housedwellers to bring their concerns to the media, presumably to bolster the appearance of public support for his violent encampment sweeps.

Fregoso, on the other hand, apparently validated their weird self-pity by telling them falsely that the City had in fact singled them out by specifically allowing encampments near Parkview, probably with the same goal.⁸ In addition to meetings O’Farrell and his staff apparently dropped by in person to give gifts to Parkview residents. Which foolishness, ironically, led to O’Farrell and Fregoso being exposed to COVID-19 in April 2020.
Continue reading Homeless Residents Of Echo Park And Their Supporters Tried And Tried And Tried To Meet With Mitch O’Farrell Earlier This Year — To Discuss Essential Human Needs — Like Bathrooms — And Not Being Killed By Police — And Hygiene Supplies — And Other Equally Important Matters — But Mitch O’Farrell Wouldn’t Meet With Them — Or Direct His Staff To Meet — Meanwhile Both He And His Staff Met Repeatedly With Psychopathic Echo Park Housedwellers — To Discuss Their Idiotic Concerns — Like How Unpleasant It Is To See Homeless People — And Property Values — And Freaking Cholera — And How They Could Fuck Up The Lives Of The Unhoused Even More Than Usual — And Sometimes Just To Drop Off Gifts — Like Care Packages — And This Led To The Damn Housedwellers Exposing O’Farrell — And His Appalling Field Deputy Juan Fregoso — To COVID-19 In April 2020 — Which — Given That Cholera Business — Is A Level Of Irony Rarely Seen In Actual Reality →

CD13, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Mitch O’Farrell And The California Public Records Act — Second Part Of A Series On His Outrageous Violations — He Has Instructed His Flunky — Dan Halden — To Redact The Names Of Constituents Who Send Him Insane Rage Rants Against Homeless Human Beings — Advocating Starvation — Forced Relocation — And Similar Genocidal Measures — And The Reason He Thinks He Can Hide Their Identities? — Because — Halden Says — Publicity Would “Chill” Their Willingness To Ask Mitch O’Farrell For “Help” — What He Means Is They Don’t Like Being Exposed And Mocked On The Internet For Their Sociopathy — At O’Farrell’s Bidding Halden Also Redacts The Names Of Actual Public Officials — Like Jittery Little Peruvian-Hating Psychopath Carol Massie — Of The Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance — And Refuses To Explain Why — Although The Real Reason Is Obvious — O’Farrell Hates The Constitution — And He Hates The Law — And He’s Really Got To Go

May 16, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

Here’s another installment in my ongoing series of posts about the City of Los Angeles and the interesting ways in which its various departments violate the California Public Records Act.⁹ Today I’m looking once again at Los Angeles City Council District 13, repped by the fecklessly idiotic troll doll Mitch O’Farrell, and some of O’Farrell’s illegal email redaction policies.¹⁰ The story actually begins last March.

At that time I received some emails from CD13 containing conversations between staffers, LAPD officers, and local owners of commercial properties about homelessness. The discussions were filled with dehumanizing stereotypes and calls to starve the homeless, to use pressure-washing and illegal planter placement and other hostile measures to displace them, and so on. All of this not just uncriticized, not just accepted, but actively encouraged and facilitated by City staff and LAPD officers.

I found the whole scene appalling and wrote a number of posts exposing these privilege-addled sociopaths, the main one of which is here but this other one about Kanye West flunky Anthony Kilhoffer is also good. Some of them flipped out and threatened me and apparently others complained to CD13 that I had exposed their sociopathy to the world or that I was mean to them on the internet or whatever. Since then, clearly in response, CD13 has redacted email addresses of basically every correspondent who’s not using a government email address.¹¹

Dan Halden, who’s responsible for handling some of my CD13 CPRA requests,¹² has told me that such redactions are legally justified because exposing constituents to personal mockery for advocating genocide against the homeless would create a chilling effect on their willingness to contact their elected officials. Here’s one instance of Halden’s articulation of this novel¹³ legal theory:
Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell And The California Public Records Act — Second Part Of A Series On His Outrageous Violations — He Has Instructed His Flunky — Dan Halden — To Redact The Names Of Constituents Who Send Him Insane Rage Rants Against Homeless Human Beings — Advocating Starvation — Forced Relocation — And Similar Genocidal Measures — And The Reason He Thinks He Can Hide Their Identities? — Because — Halden Says — Publicity Would “Chill” Their Willingness To Ask Mitch O’Farrell For “Help” — What He Means Is They Don’t Like Being Exposed And Mocked On The Internet For Their Sociopathy — At O’Farrell’s Bidding Halden Also Redacts The Names Of Actual Public Officials — Like Jittery Little Peruvian-Hating Psychopath Carol Massie — Of The Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance — And Refuses To Explain Why — Although The Real Reason Is Obvious — O’Farrell Hates The Constitution — And He Hates The Law — And He’s Really Got To Go →

CD13, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Mitch O’Farrell And The California Public Records Act — His Office Violates It So Egregiously That — Comparisons Fail Me — Here’s The Story Of One Request — From May 2019 — That It Took Loyal O’Farrell Flunky Dan Halden Eleven Months To Complete — Along The Way He Lied And Lied And Lied — Obviously At O’Farrell’s Bidding — For Instance In June 2019 He Said It Would Take Six Months Of Work To Finish — And When He Finally Got Around To It He Did The Whole Damn Job In Essentially One Week — Which Would Have Been Great If That Week Hadn’t Started On April 14, 2020 — This Is The Same O’Farrell Who Voted Against An Eviction Moratorium Because He Said It Would Be Illegal For The City Council To Pass It — He Called It A “Pretend Measure Which We Could Never Enforce” — Which Is Apparently How He Sees The Public Records Act As Well — This Is Part One In An Endless Series By The Way — The Next Installment Is About O’Farrell’s Redaction Policies — Which Are More Illegal — And More Weird — Than You Can Probably Imagine — Hinted At Briefly In The Cartoon!

May 13, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

Public records, you may have noticed, are essential to the work I do here on MK.Org. Without them it’s hard for me to find subjects without turning to unsubstantiated mouth-off-shooting.¹⁴ And local agencies including pretty much every department of the City of Los Angeles have always been very bad about producing records. They stall, they temporize, they lie, they go silent, and use a tediously unvaried set of ridiculous excuses to explain their noncompliance with the law.

And to that list of standardized and implausible excuses they’ve added the COVID-19 pandemic.¹⁵ About which they’re almost certainly mostly lying, but I still don’t feel right hassling actual individual City employees about my requests because who knows what unimaginable personal tragedies they might be dealing with? It occurred to me pretty recently that if the City’s going to fail to produce records for me to write about I could write about their failures to produce.

It’s an inexhaustible source of topics, and I’m kicking things off with a post about City Council District 13, an inexhaustible source all on its own.¹⁶ This ill-fated district is infamously repped by the widely despised Mitch O’Farrell, who along with his frontman and loyal minion Dan Halden, manages to violate the CPRA in any number of egregious but interesting ways, some of them unique in my experience to his office alone. Today we’re talking about just one of them, which is delay of production.¹⁷ Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell And The California Public Records Act — His Office Violates It So Egregiously That — Comparisons Fail Me — Here’s The Story Of One Request — From May 2019 — That It Took Loyal O’Farrell Flunky Dan Halden Eleven Months To Complete — Along The Way He Lied And Lied And Lied — Obviously At O’Farrell’s Bidding — For Instance In June 2019 He Said It Would Take Six Months Of Work To Finish — And When He Finally Got Around To It He Did The Whole Damn Job In Essentially One Week — Which Would Have Been Great If That Week Hadn’t Started On April 14, 2020 — This Is The Same O’Farrell Who Voted Against An Eviction Moratorium Because He Said It Would Be Illegal For The City Council To Pass It — He Called It A “Pretend Measure Which We Could Never Enforce” — Which Is Apparently How He Sees The Public Records Act As Well — This Is Part One In An Endless Series By The Way — The Next Installment Is About O’Farrell’s Redaction Policies — Which Are More Illegal — And More Weird — Than You Can Probably Imagine — Hinted At Briefly In The Cartoon! →

Los Angeles City Government, Selma Park

Newly Obtained 2016 Emails Show That Senior Assistant City Attorney Valerie Flores And Chief Assistant City Attorney David Michaelson Agreed With This Blog That Banning Adults Without Children From Selma Park Was Illegal — Even As Flores Caustically Blamed Rec And Parks For Removing Signs She Had Tacitly Admitted Should Have Been Removed — No Matter What Kerry Morrison, Eric Garcetti, And Mitch O’Farrell Said About It — Further Evidence Linking O’Farrell’s Universally Mocked 2016 Proposal To Ban Adults From City Parks With Reopening Of Selma Park — Also New Info On The Content Of Mitch O’Farrell’s Feverish Delusions About Drug Dealers Overrunning The Largely Vacant Real Estate In His Head

January 29, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

OK, brief recap¹⁸ on the situation with Selma Park in Hollywood! In September 2015 I discovered that the Hollywood Entertainment District BID had illegally placed signs on the outer fence of the Park stating that adults without children were banned and in October 2015 Rec and Parks removed the illegal signs. Morrison engineered this years-long illegal exclusion of the people of Los Angeles from their public park because, despite her stridently self-proclaimed Christianity, she was angry that people were using the park to share food with one another.

Subsequent investigations showed that dozens of people had been arrested in the park for violating these illegal restrictions, although none were prosecuted and that current school board candidate and former Public Works Commissioner Heather Repenning, at that time a staffer for Eric Garcetti back when he was repping CD13, was deeply involved with Kerry Morrison, the BID’s very own Ilse Koch, in the illegal park closure process.

Documents proved that Morrison’s gestapo wannabes, the Andrews International BID Patrol, had been deeply involved in the ongoing series of civil rights violations engendered by the illegal park closure, not only by chasing people out of the park who had every right to be there, but by making actual custodial arrests as well, contrary to Morrison’s vehement but mendacious denial that this had ever occurred.

Subsequently, in December 2016, Mitch O’Farrell introduced a motion in Council seeking to amend the Los Angeles Municipal Code to allow the City to ban adults without children from playgrounds in LA Parks. He linked this explicitly to the reopening of Selma Park. This crapola motion was supported by Kerry Morrison, whose idea it must have been, but universally mocked and opposed by all sane people in Los Angeles and some not so sane ones as well. Even people who live east of San Bernardino took some notice of O’Farrell’s incipient crackpot fascism. And thus did the proposal die in committee in December 2018.

And just recently I received a massive set of emails between people at RAP and Mitch O’Farrell’s Hollywood field deputy Daniel Halden.¹⁹ And buried amonst them was this lengthy email conversation from November 2016 between various folks at RAP, Daniel Halden of CD13, and Valerie Flores and David Michaelson of the City Attorney’s office discussing Selma Park, those illegal signs, this blog, and, interestingly enough, me, who, like the bloody-handed henchman she is, Flores calls “a serial CPRA abuser.”²⁰

And interestingly enough, more than a year after the signs came down, Valerie Flores tells RAP to put the signs back up, but only on the playground, not on the park itself. Which is pretty ridiculous, since they never took the signs down from the playground and no one, to my knowledge, ever complained about the signs on the playground. The discussion even escalated to Chief Assistant City Attorney David Michaelson, who also stated definitively that the City could not ban adults from the entire park, but only the playground.

Given that they’re falling over themselves here to admit that I was right all along about the damn signs, you’d think that instead of calling me names these people might have been grateful to me for merely calling attention, rather than leaving them to get sued, to the fact that in the City’s nauseating eagerness to do whatever random crapola Kerry Morrison demanded of them, they’d been violating people’s civil rights for a freaking decade²¹ by arresting them for being in a park they had every right to be in.

Also interesting is the fact that Flores quoted Mitch O’Farrell on the reason for the signs going back up:²² “According to the Council Member, after the sign was removed, the Selma Park became overrun with drug dealers and other criminal elements.” If you know the area, you’ll know this is a lie. You’ll also suspect that Mitch O’Farrell has never been near that park in his life and that the lie was almost certainly put into his mouth by Kerry Morrison.

And, shedding some light on the genesis of the universally mocked CF 16-1456, Flores announces that “Next week we will work with RAP to discuss options for the area of Selma Park that does not include the children’s play area.” Of course, by now it’s clear that there are no such options or they would have banned everyone but the damn cops from that poor beleaguered little park by now. The whole conversation is very, very much worth your time, and if you turn the page you’ll find a transcription, reordered chronologically for ease of reading.
Continue reading Newly Obtained 2016 Emails Show That Senior Assistant City Attorney Valerie Flores And Chief Assistant City Attorney David Michaelson Agreed With This Blog That Banning Adults Without Children From Selma Park Was Illegal — Even As Flores Caustically Blamed Rec And Parks For Removing Signs She Had Tacitly Admitted Should Have Been Removed — No Matter What Kerry Morrison, Eric Garcetti, And Mitch O’Farrell Said About It — Further Evidence Linking O’Farrell’s Universally Mocked 2016 Proposal To Ban Adults From City Parks With Reopening Of Selma Park — Also New Info On The Content Of Mitch O’Farrell’s Feverish Delusions About Drug Dealers Overrunning The Largely Vacant Real Estate In His Head →

CD13, Los Angeles City Government

Mitch O’Farrell’s Secret Email Account Yields The First Concrete Evidence I’m Aware Of Concerning Staff-Mediated Back-Room Collusion Between City Council Members — Suggests Brown Act Violations On A Massive Scale — Consistent With Serial Meetings Coordinated Via Council Staff — Contributes To A Theory Of Staged City Council Debates Invariably Ending In Yet Another Unanimous Vote — At Very Least Yields Many Potentially Fruitful Leads For Future CPRA Requests

December 14, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

If you’ve ever attended a meeting of the Los Angeles City Council it’s very likely that you’ve seen one of the fully scripted performances that pass for debate with that body, ending, as always, with a unanimous vote in favor of yet another preordained conclusion. It’s a sickening spectacle, more worthy of a for-show-only parliament of some backwater bargain-bin Ruritanian dictatorship than of the legislators who are putatively leading our great City. This phenomenon is the subject of much discussion here in Los Angeles, and was the basis for at least one sadly ill-fated lawsuit.

If you haven’t seen an example of this spooky kabuki, you can take a look at this August 23, 2016 debate on whether the City should support or oppose some state bill about taxi regulation.²³ After the break you’ll find a detailed chronology with links into the video, which will save you a lot of time because the whole thing is more than 30 minutes long and it is mind-numbing. There’s no conceivable way that episodes like this one could happen other than through prior discussion, collusion, and agreement among the Councilmembers. It’s completely implausible that it could be otherwise.

The problem with that, of course, is that prior discussion, collusion, and agreement among Councilmembers are illegal in California. It’s even illegal for Council staffers to discuss things and then report back to their bosses about other CMs’ opinions as reported by their respective staffs. The law mandates real public debates and forbids scripted performances whose conclusions are predetermined in back rooms. In particular, the Brown Act at §54952.2(b)(1) states explicitly that:

A majority of the members of a legislative body shall not, outside a meeting authorized by this chapter, use a series of communications of any kind, directly or through intermediaries, to discuss, deliberate, or take action on any item of business that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body.

As far as I know there’s never been a successful Brown Act complaint against the City Council on these grounds. Courts will not, I’m under the impression, accept arguments based on the fact that it’s totally obvious what’s going on. Without sufficient proof of out-of-meeting communications no action is possible. And there just has not hitherto been any proof to be found, or none that I know of. But it appears that, buried deep within the recent release of emails from Mitch O’Farrell’s toppest secretest privatest email account, there are some hints of how this coordination might be accomplished.

There’s no proof there of a Brown Act violation, but there’s evidence that in 2013 David Giron, who is Mitch O’Farrell’s legislative director, coordinated with CD5 and CD8 regarding the positions of Paul Koretz and Bernard Parks²⁴ with respect to fracking in Los Angeles and then communicated the intentions of those other CMs to Mitch O’Farrell. This is the kind of thing that the Brown Act forbids if it takes place among the majority of the Council, or even the majority of a Council committee.²⁵

There’s no hint in the evidence that this discussion is any kind of anomaly, so it may be the first piece of the puzzle of how the City Council builds consensus out of view of the public. It certainly gives me hope that the truth will be brought out eventually.²⁶ Take a look at the email exchange here, which is on the surface about Mitch O’Farrell’s position on CF 13-0002-S108, having to do with a State Senate bill on fracking. There are transcriptions and detailed discussion of the issues involved right after the break.
Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell’s Secret Email Account Yields The First Concrete Evidence I’m Aware Of Concerning Staff-Mediated Back-Room Collusion Between City Council Members — Suggests Brown Act Violations On A Massive Scale — Consistent With Serial Meetings Coordinated Via Council Staff — Contributes To A Theory Of Staged City Council Debates Invariably Ending In Yet Another Unanimous Vote — At Very Least Yields Many Potentially Fruitful Leads For Future CPRA Requests →

Los Angeles City Government, The Race Card

How Surreal Can LA Politics Get?! Joe Bray-Ali, Favored Candidate Of Councilboy Mitch O’Farrell, Himself Working Feverishly To Outlaw Racism And Stuff In Los Angeles, Is Exposed As A Crypto-Racist Fat-Shaming Homo-Transo-Phobo-Creep On The Internet!

April 26, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

NOTE: YOU READ IT HERE FIRST — I PREDICT THAT EITHER BRAY-ALI WILL WITHDRAW FROM THE RACE OR ELSE MITCH AND THE LA TIMES WILL WITHDRAW THEIR ENDORSEMENTS OF JOE BRAY-ALI OVER THIS ISSUE.

UPDATE: AT 10:47 A.M. ON APRIL 27, MITCH O’FARRELL WITHDREW HIS ENDORSEMENT!
UPDATE 2: ON APRIL 27 AT 3:10 PM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES RESCINDED ITS ENDORSEMENT OF JOE BRAY-ALI.

Today Laist.com revealed that Council District 1 candidate Joe Bray-Ali has a history of posting weirdly offensive pernicious nonsense on exceedingly disgusting alt-right website Voat.Com, which seems to be some kind of refuge for people who manage to pull off the unexpectedly possible trick of getting kicked off Reddit for being too despicable.²⁷ You should read the article for the details, and I’ve summarized them in the picture that appears somewhere near this sentence. The guy says nasty racist, fat-shaming, transphobic, sexist, stuff, although the bare fact that he’s participating in forums called things like /v/Niggers as if they were somehow normal, somehow mainstream, is in many ways worse than anything he says there. I I speculated last month that this campaign was only going to get weirder, but I had no idea how right I would turn out to be.

This is a really bad turn of events for fecklessly idiotic Councilboy Mitch O’Farrell who famously endorsed Bray-Ali over his colleague Gil Cedillo. He also, for whatever reason, has allowed his staff to give money to Bray-Ali. O’Farrell, of course, is famous for having introduced a Council motion seeking essentially to outlaw racism, homophobia, transphobia, and so on in Los Angeles. His motion states, in pertinent part, that:
Continue reading How Surreal Can LA Politics Get?! Joe Bray-Ali, Favored Candidate Of Councilboy Mitch O’Farrell, Himself Working Feverishly To Outlaw Racism And Stuff In Los Angeles, Is Exposed As A Crypto-Racist Fat-Shaming Homo-Transo-Phobo-Creep On The Internet! →

Los Angeles City Council

Mitch O’Farrell Endorses Upstart Hipster Bike Rider Joe Bray-Ali In Stunning Vindication Of MK.Org Prediction! Our Editorial Policy Is That Mitch O’Farrell Is Always Wrong!! Therefore We Endorse Gil Cedillo!!!

April 7, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

A few weeks ago we predicted that Mitch O’Farrell was endorsing Joe Bray-Ali for City Council in CD1 based on the fact that O’Farrell’s ~~cowering toady~~ scheduler Dave Cano had donated $125 to Bray-Ali in February.²⁸ Well, today our prediction was vindicated beyond our wildest dreams by the fact that Mitch O’Farrell himself actually made his endorsement explicitly in the LA Times. ²⁹ Our next prediction is that O’Farrell’s toadying staff, who’ve been taught by the charismatic but fecklessly idiotic leader of their cult that money equals love, will all start donating money to Joe Bray-Ali. Stay tuned here for details!
Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell Endorses Upstart Hipster Bike Rider Joe Bray-Ali In Stunning Vindication Of MK.Org Prediction! Our Editorial Policy Is That Mitch O’Farrell Is Always Wrong!! Therefore We Endorse Gil Cedillo!!! →

CD13, Selma Park

Mitch O’Farrell’s Universally-Reviled, Kerry-Morrison-Inspired Anti-Playground-Access Motion Is Roundly Opposed But For The First Time Not Unanimously By Los Feliz Neighborhood Council, Which In Context May Be Seen As A Sorely Needed Victory For Mitch, Who Has To Play ‘Em As They Lay In This Debacle

January 27, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

This is a playground in Griffith Park, which if the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council has its way will continue to be open to all Angelenos, whether or not they remembered to bring a child before using the swing set.

BACKGROUND: Recall, if you will, that this L.A. Times editorial kicked off a somewhat misguided firestorm of opposition to Mitch O’Farrell’s recent Council motion 16-1456 seeking to develop a legal tool for banning adults without children from playgrounds in parks in the City of Los Angeles.

The latest development is that the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council registered its opposition to this Kerry-Morrison-of-the-HPOA-inspired trainwreck of a motion with this eloquent statement:

A city ordinance banning adults from accessing a public playground/park area unless “accompanying a child” would unfairly penalize people by virtue of their age and deny them a public benefit afforded to others. The proposal, by its very nature, seems unduly discriminatory, and fraught with enforcement problems.

Instituting an overreaching policy by penalizing a vast majority of law‐abiding citizens in what is generally regarded as “park‐poor” city is counterintuitive. It seems to be motivated out of allaying a fear rather than ensuring a freedom. Nor does it currently contemplate the dozens of gray areas it will create regarding how it will be administered (playground boundaries, proof of age, proof‐of-guardianship, etc.), and the discord it will sow by awkward attempts to enforce it.

All good points.³⁰ The big difference in tonight’s case is that one person actually voted against the motion to oppose,³¹ which means, I guess, that besides Kerry Morrison, at least one other resident of the City of Los Angeles stands with Mitch on this issue. Perhaps this will teach Mitch that it’s not always safe to do what she asks… but probably not.
Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell’s Universally-Reviled, Kerry-Morrison-Inspired Anti-Playground-Access Motion Is Roundly Opposed But For The First Time Not Unanimously By Los Feliz Neighborhood Council, Which In Context May Be Seen As A Sorely Needed Victory For Mitch, Who Has To Play ‘Em As They Lay In This Debacle →

CD13, Selma Park

Mitch O’Farrell’s Malcriado Anti-Playground Motion, Propounded At The Behest Of Ms. Kerry Morrison, Is Now Batting 0 for 2 As Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Weighs In With Unanimous Eighteen To Zero Opposition

January 25, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

If the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council has its way, and really, why should they not, this park will remain free and open to the public at large.

You may recall that this L.A. Times editorial kicked off a somewhat misguided firestorm of opposition to Mitch O’Farrell’s recent Council motion 16-1456 seeking to develop a legal tool for banning adults without children from playgrounds in parks in the City of Los Angeles. The Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council weighed in a couple weeks ago with a unanimous statement of opposition, and that trend continued last night as the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council filed its own unanimous statement of opposition.

Lincoln Heights has a unique take on the issues involved in banning people without kids from a playground:

Limiting teenager and young adult access to swings and limited park space in areas where there is already limited access to green open space is unfair to our young adult population. If a 17 year old wants to swing on a swing or study in the grass under a tree, they should not be prevented from doing so. In Lincoln Heights, there is already limited activities for teenagers and denying them the use of park space is discriminatory There is no differentiation between playgrounds and the grass that surrounds it.

This is a completely reasonable point, and one that as far as I can see has not yet been made on the public record. And the fear that such bans will be enforced against teenagers is not imaginary.
Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell’s Malcriado Anti-Playground Motion, Propounded At The Behest Of Ms. Kerry Morrison, Is Now Batting 0 for 2 As Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Weighs In With Unanimous Eighteen To Zero Opposition →