Tag Archives: Jesus Christ

Tom Waldman – Communications Director For CD2 Repster Paul Krekorian – Our Second Fashiest Councilmember – Has Raised Obstruction Of The California Public Records Act To A New Level – A Level Of Unrelenting – Mindless – Primordial – Paradigm Shifting – Neuron Rewiring – Self-Justifying – Psychopathy – Which Is A Stunning Accomplishment Given The Baseline Level Of Psychopathic Obstructionism That Pervades Every Possible Interaction Between The City Of Los Angeles And The Public Records Act – Here Is Tom Waldman’s Story!

The California Public Records Act gives every person access to official writings because, as the law itself tells us,1 “the Legislature … finds and declares that access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state.” And this isn’t just some random preamble to some random law. It is among the fundamental human rights enumerated in the California Constitution itself,2 which states that:

“The people have the right of access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business, and, therefore, the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny.”

Among the other fundamental rights enumerated in this same article are freedom of the press, of speech, of religion, the right to civilian control of the military, the prohibition of slavery, equal protection, habeas corpus, and so on.3 This right of access to public records, measured both intrinsically and by comparison with the company it keeps, is hugely important. Fundamental.

But nevertheless, the City of Los Angeles4 habitually, consistently ignores its duties under the CPRA, flouts this fundamental right in a way that they’d never think of doing with, e.g., the right to be free of slavery. And they don’t just ignore their duties, don’t just flout the law. They flout it in the stupidest, most arrogant, most flamboyant ways possible.
Continue reading Tom Waldman – Communications Director For CD2 Repster Paul Krekorian – Our Second Fashiest Councilmember – Has Raised Obstruction Of The California Public Records Act To A New Level – A Level Of Unrelenting – Mindless – Primordial – Paradigm Shifting – Neuron Rewiring – Self-Justifying – Psychopathy – Which Is A Stunning Accomplishment Given The Baseline Level Of Psychopathic Obstructionism That Pervades Every Possible Interaction Between The City Of Los Angeles And The Public Records Act – Here Is Tom Waldman’s Story!

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Do You Have What It Takes To Be A BID Consultant For The City Of Los Angeles? Honesty? Integrity? Freaking LIKEABILITY?!??!

Shadowy BID consultant Teresa "Tara" Devine has what it takes!  She is evidently 15% likeable, honest, and infested with what passes for integrity in BID consultancy circles.
Shadowy BID consultant Teresa “Tara” Devine has what it takes! She is evidently 15% likeable, honest, and infested with what passes for integrity in BID consultancy circles.
If you follow BIDs in Los Angeles you will know that the process for creating a new one is so fraught with weirdo technicalities that when a Councilmember wants to form one in their district, not only do they have to get together a bullshit astroturf front group made up of major campaign contributors, but they also have to hire a consultant to guide the BAFG through the labyrinth. Of course, this is anything but an adversarial process, and success is pre-ordained. However, if the requirements imposed by the State of California are not adhered to somewhat scrupulously, the new BID will be vulnerable to challenges by non-mainstream anti-BID malcontents.1 Thus the City has an interest in making sure that these consultants are competent.2

It turns out that they take this interest seriously enough that the City Clerk maintains a list of qualified BID consultants. I recently obtained a copy from 2010. There are some old friends on there, e.g. Donald Duckworth, who you might recognize from 2014 as the initial consultant on Mike Bonin’s Venice Beach BID project, since replaced by the shadowy ringlet-tossing Tara Devine. The famed Susan Levi is also on that list. But all things must pass away, and the list will eventually need to be renewed. Thus it seems that in August 2015 the Clerk put out a request for qualifications seeking new qualified consultants to put on the list.3 So now it is possible to tell exactly what skills you need to develop if you want to be a shadowy BID consultant too!
Continue reading Do You Have What It Takes To Be A BID Consultant For The City Of Los Angeles? Honesty? Integrity? Freaking LIKEABILITY?!??!

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Oh the Irony: Kerry Morrison, Proponent of Loud Music to Repel Homeless, Herself Complains Publicly About Loud Music in Restaurants

Do to others what you want them to do to you. This is the meaning of the law of Moses and the teaching of the prophets.
Do to others what you want them to do to you. This is the meaning of the law of Moses and the teaching of the prophets.
We reported here about 10 days ago that BID bossette and self-proclaimed prayer warrior Kerry Morrison is a zealous advocate of blasting classical music at night to repel homeless sidewalk sleepers, even to the point of intervening with property managers whose tenants complain that they also can’t sleep. And that little item turned out to be one of our most popular posts for the month of May, so we thought we’d follow up on it tonight. Recently a friend of this blog drew our attention to Kerry Morrison’s staff bio from the HPOA “about” page. And we can learn a lot from this little item, friends. For instance, note that Kerry Morrison “…eschews1 loud music in restaurants.”

Well, Kerry, Jesus had two things to say about this and we have just one.
Continue reading Oh the Irony: Kerry Morrison, Proponent of Loud Music to Repel Homeless, Herself Complains Publicly About Loud Music in Restaurants

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Media District Use-of-Handcuffs Investigation from 2010 by UPS Now Available, Casting Even More Doubt on Legality, Professionalism, Sanity, of A/I BID Patrol Arrest Policy

One of 649 people arrested, handcuffed, and chained to a bench for drinking in public by the Andrews International BID Patrol in 2010.
One of 649 people arrested, handcuffed, and chained to a bench for drinking in public by the Andrews International BID Patrol in 2010. Was there “a threat towards any officer” here, Stevie?
On September 28, 2010 Media District BID safety patrol officers handcuffed a man because he was drinking in public and wandering around in traffic. This triggered an extensive investigation by Universal Protection Service, the company which manages security for the BID. You can read all 13 pages of it here. The level of concern on the part of the investigator, Daryl Whitt, is remarkable:

Here is the recap of my interviews with the officers involved with the detainment/arrest on 9-28-10.

There are still some gaps in their stories that I have been unable to close. The main issue as I see it is that CPL Garcia reacted in the wrong manner. He should have never advised the officer to place handcuffs on the subject as there was no threat towards any officer.

 One of 649 people arrested, handcuffed, and chained to a bench for drinking in public by the Andrews International BID Patrol in 2010.
One of 649 people arrested, handcuffed, and chained to a bench for drinking in public by the Andrews International BID Patrol in 2010. Was there “a threat towards any officer” here, Stevie?
Obviously UPS doesn’t take it lightly that their employees handcuffed a man. Nor should they. Also, fully three pages out of the 13 comprise an “Initial Notice” of “General Liability” sent by Daryl Whitt to his supervisors at UPS. Furthermore, The state of California putatively doesn’t take handcuffing lightly either. Just look at the 83 page training manual published by the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services detailing every procedure, concern, legal obligation, and liability involved with the handcuffing of people by private security.1
Continue reading Media District Use-of-Handcuffs Investigation from 2010 by UPS Now Available, Casting Even More Doubt on Legality, Professionalism, Sanity, of A/I BID Patrol Arrest Policy

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Red-Cheeked, Tin-Eared, Wooden-Headed Hollywood Congressguy Adam Schiff Stereotypically Calls Loudly for Neighbor to Remove Proverbial Mote While Ignoring Proverbial Beam

Adam Schiff... and you thought we were being fricking hyperbolic about the make-up.  Guess not, eh?
Adam Schiff… and you thought we were being fricking hyperbolic about the make-up. Guess not, eh?
Everybody in the whole world is doing pope stories. We’re listening to KNX on the way to work yesterday morning and they got traffic on the 5’s and the freaking pope on the 3’s, 7’s, and 9’s. It occurs to us that we’re good and goddamned sick of marching to the beat of a different drummer.1 Thus we resolved to fricking fit in for once and do a pope post. We’re following the herd and we bleating like it! But what to write about the pope, then? Oh, yes! Adam Schiff, make-up wearing congressional fellow from Hollywood, is ready at hand with a subject!
Continue reading Red-Cheeked, Tin-Eared, Wooden-Headed Hollywood Congressguy Adam Schiff Stereotypically Calls Loudly for Neighbor to Remove Proverbial Mote While Ignoring Proverbial Beam

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Kerry Morrison Tries, Fails, to Serve Two Masters, Unfolding Events Yield Two Pressing Reasons for Her to Resign from LAHSA Immediately

Kerry Morrison chooses which of the two masters she's gonna love and, consequently, which she's gonna hate.
Kerry Morrison chooses which of the two masters she’s gonna love and, consequently, which she’s gonna hate.
In the last two weeks, two cataclysmic changes in the the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority‘s mission have made it, in not just our opinion but in the opinion of any sane observer, impossible for Kerry Morrison to ethically continue to serve as both a LAHSA Commissioner and the executive directrix of the HPOA. Since as of a few years ago she was earning $192,794 per annum1 from the HPOA we’re guessing it’s not that job she’s gonna quit. What happened is this: both the Los Angeles City Council and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are poised to ask LAHSA to (a) decide where across the city to locate service centers for the homeless and (b) to stop breaking up homeless encampments.
Kerry Morrison counting a homeless person, no doubt using the local methodology that "[f]ederal officials are disputing," according to the Los Angeles Times.
Kerry Morrison counting a homeless person, no doubt using the local methodology that “[f]ederal officials are disputing,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Unfortunately, Kerry’s masters on the BID Boards expect her to target the homeless for hyperenforcement even as they scoff at the very idea that homeless human beings have rights and, accordingly, she’s directed her flunkies (we’re talking about you, Steve Seyler) to arrest homeless people in encampments and for any other random thing that pops into their heads. She can’t ethically do both, for, as a wise man once said:2

No one can serve two masters, for either he
will hate the one and love the other; or else
he will be devoted to one and despise the
other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.

Well, we’re not cynics, not at all, so we’re not going to predict what she’s going to do. We are, however, going to write much more about the choices she’s facing right below the fold!
Continue reading Kerry Morrison Tries, Fails, to Serve Two Masters, Unfolding Events Yield Two Pressing Reasons for Her to Resign from LAHSA Immediately

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Lots of Documents, and Not of the Usual Sort!

Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, 99 years ago in 1916.   Her truth, like that of John Brown, goes marching on in Los Angeles in 2015.
Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, 99 years ago in 1916. Her truth, like that of John Brown, goes marching on in Los Angeles in 2015.
Today I’m pleased to announce the availability of a bunch more documents, some of them really interesting, and none of them of the sort we’ve usually featured here. First of all we are adding the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to our list of scrutinizees, albeit in a fairly desultory manner. Documents we obtain will be available from the usual menus above, and here is a link to that page. We kick things off with a couple years worth of form 700s from the Commissioners and the Executive Director. For almost certainly nefarious reasons, the city of Los Angeles, unlike other more enlightened cities in California, does not require BID board members or high-level employees to file financial disclosures (although this may be changing soon, fingers crossed!), so obtaining these forms was the only way to get any insight into Kerry Morrison’s finances insofar as they relate to her work for the HPOA. And now, like Jesus Christ hisself, we have saved the best for last, so the good stuff is after the break!
Continue reading Lots of Documents, and Not of the Usual Sort!

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The Hollywood BID Patrol’s Intransigence on Transience Provides Yet Another Performative Demonstration of David Graeber’s Theory of Violence, Stupidity, and Interpretive Labor

An astounding number of BID Patrol officers on Ivar Avenue by the library, June 30, 2015, milling around not being charged criminally for degrading everyone's quality of life by, through their open display of guns, passively threatening to kill anyone who disobeys them.
An astounding number of BID Patrol officers on Ivar Avenue by the library, June 30, 2015, milling around not being charged criminally for degrading everyone’s quality of life by openly displaying their guns and their self-evident willingness to use them, thus creating the imminent fear that they’ll kill anyone who disobeys them.
Watch here for the final bit of a Hollywood BID Patrol operation on Ivar Avenue on June 30, 2015. There are about 12 of them milling around on the sidewalk after, evidently, having kicked out a bunch of homeless people, most probably on the basis of suspected violations of disgraceful LAMC 41.18(d). Of course, if you know the spot you’ll know that there are homeless people there essentially all the time, only very rarely getting kicked out by the BID Patrol.

So what horrific incident was it that required the presence of about a dozen of Hollywood’s finest1 on a pleasant Tuesday afternoon on Ivar Avenue? Murder, rape, homeless encampment, street-preaching? The amazing thing is that no one there seemed to know for sure except, we assume given that the principle of charity requires us to assume that the BID Patrol both has reasons for its actions and at the same time knows what those reasons are, the officers themselves.

A witness to the June 30, 2015 incident who also had no firm idea of the BID Patrol's intention, but was willing to exert effort to come up with a shared theory that fit the known facts, proving that he, unlike the Patrol, has not yet placed himself outside of normal human society.
A witness to the June 30, 2015 incident who also had no firm idea of the BID Patrol’s intention, but was willing to exert effort to come up with a shared theory that fit the known facts, proving that he, unlike the Patrol, has not yet placed himself outside of normal human society.

One witness, though, spent the time and the effort to share his theory on the BID Patrol’s motivation with our correspondent. This is what David Graeber calls “interpretative labor,” an activity which, as Graeber has it, “much of the everyday business of social life” comprises, an activity in which people with guns, made stupid by their own potential for state-sanctioned violence, do not typically engage, as they clearly do not in this case:2

Thank you for filming, cause they only pulled up when I started talking about God and Jesus. I was just talking about God and Jesus and taking the Illuminati down, and every day they don’t never bother nobody, and let them sit here, right? Well, all of a sudden today I came and started talking about God and Jesus and taking down the Illuminati, cause I’m in the middle of a documentary, all of a sudden they get a hundred calls a day. God bless us all, the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name.

Continue reading The Hollywood BID Patrol’s Intransigence on Transience Provides Yet Another Performative Demonstration of David Graeber’s Theory of Violence, Stupidity, and Interpretive Labor

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Fabio Conti: The Donut Policy is Not Working! BID Patrol, “Toughen Up,” Stop Being Nice to Homeless Because they Have Knives and They Scare Me! Steve Seyler: “Ultimately We’re Gonna Put the Cuffs on”

Fabio Conti, white privilege rage ranter of the month at the BID Joint Security Committee meeting of July 9, 2015: the Hollywood homeless are armed and dangerous!! Why is this allowed?!
Fabio Conti, white privilege rage ranter of the month at the BID Joint Security Committee meeting of July 9, 2015: the Hollywood homeless are armed and dangerous!! Why is this allowed even though they SCARE ME?!
At the July 9, 2015 Joint Security Committee meeting, BID Board member Fabio Conti, after Andrews International Security head BIDdie-boy Steve Seyler told a what-passes-for-heartwarming story about shipping some homeless lady out of state on a bus, flipped the fuck out about heavily armed and dangerous homeless people on the streets of Hollywood and how A/I ought to stop with the rapport-building, bus-ticket-buying, and donut/sandwich handing-out and start arresting all of them right now. Says Fabio: STOP BEING SO NICE TO THE HOMELESS!!! The “the purple guys” downtown “…keep the area pretty clean…” of homeless human garbage. The Hollywood BID Patrol must do the same!

Steve Seyler showing his good side to the camera at the July 9, 2015 meeting of the BID Joint Security Committee meeting.
Steve Seyler showing his good side to the camera at the July 9, 2015 meeting of the BID Joint Security Committee meeting.
Under ordinary circumstances a faux pas like Fabio’s would probably be politely overlooked but these are no ordinary times, it seems. Instead it triggered an avalanche of white-privilege-rage-ranting that derailed the meeting for what seemed like an eternity and was actually over 30 minutes of this approximately 70 minute long meeting. The asylum was so being-run-by-the-inmates that Hollywood Entertainment District BID Board President Monica Yamada, not habitually the most aware person in the room, had to shut it down. But not before the display of an unbearable montage/barrage of peel-the-face-off shots that had most of the attendees showing their true colors in a remarkably nauseating performative contradiction of Jesus’s usually on-target admonition about the truth. Mostly the truth will make you free but sometimes it just makes you sick.

Even the sense that God gave these good God-damned geese by the LA river just North of Los Feliz Blvd is enough to know that when Steve Seyler blithers on about rapport-building through donut distribution he really means ARREST EVERYBODY and haul them away
Even the sense that God gave these good God-damned geese by the LA river just North of Los Feliz Blvd. will suffice to understand that when Steve Seyler blithers on about rapport-building through donut distribution he really means ARREST EVERYBODY RIGHT NOW!!
For instance, usually, of course, at these meetings and in other venues, Steve rattles on about how cuddlesy-warmsy-fuzzly-wuzzly his officers are but everyone there knows that that’s just the velvet glove over the iron fucking fist and that he’s just spreading the goodwill-ambassador bullshit for the delectation and over-the-eyes-wool-pulling of the public. This much is obvious to anyone with a fraction of the sense that God gave a good God-damned goose. In this instance, though, under relentless pressure from Fabio, whose position is that “we’re to a point where, you know, we cannot be kind,” Steve was forced to admit his homeless-people-on-the-sidewalk policy out loud, in public, on camera:

“…we’re gonna start out with a nice approach, hey, please, time to get up, businesses are open, you gotta get off the sidewalk, we’re here to help you, you know, blah blah blah blah, please, please, pretty please, and then, you know, ultimately we’re going to put the cuffs on you…”

Steve’s not usually so open about the fact that all the donuts, all the sandwiches, all the heartwarming coziness, it’s all just a formality. “…ultimately we’re going to put the cuffs on you…”

The only people in the room who talked and didn’t seem insane1 were two LAPD liaison officers (whose names, unfortunately, we didn’t catch), who patiently explained to everyone that “…the sky’s not falling…” However, as long-time readers of this blog are well aware, there is very little in this world that can get the attention of a white person who’s hell-bent on confusing comfort with safety. The LAPD guys were completely ignored. Sanity will not prevail, not in this room at this time.

Watch the whole thing or read on for a partial transcription (so much craziness here that we can only cover this teensy fraction. We’ll return to the subject soon enough, though).
Continue reading Fabio Conti: The Donut Policy is Not Working! BID Patrol, “Toughen Up,” Stop Being Nice to Homeless Because they Have Knives and They Scare Me! Steve Seyler: “Ultimately We’re Gonna Put the Cuffs on”

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Kerry Morrison Announces De Facto Semi-Denazification of BID Anti-Panhandling Project; Hollywood Not to be Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace After All

HPOA agents on Hollywood Blvd polishing their public image.  They're not fooling US, though...
HPOA agents on Hollywood Blvd polishing their public image. They’re not fooling US, though…
Long-time readers of this blog will recall the two HPOA BIDs’ obsessive crusade to end the human-to-human sharing of money on the streets of Hollywood, thereby decreasing the probability that our saviour will arrive soon. One aspect of this campaign, previously pushed quite vigorously by the BIDs, is the satanic contraptions known as “donation stations,” which are some kind of weirdo parking-meter-esque devices that tourists are supposed to put money in instead of handing it to homeless people. This kind of corporatization of the loving human act of sharing money is, of course, characteristic of Nazi thought and its wannabe adherents throughout history. Well, at today’s Joint Security Committee meeting, HPOA head Honcho-ette Kerry Morrison announced the suspension (or “parking,” to use the same abhorrent managerialism used by the author of the document in question) of the donation station project.
Continue reading Kerry Morrison Announces De Facto Semi-Denazification of BID Anti-Panhandling Project; Hollywood Not to be Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace After All

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