Tag Archives: Mike Bonin

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! →

Homeless Issues, Venice

Secret Emails From The Venice United Google Group! — Basically Just More Casually Racist Homeless-Hating Potty-Mouthed Rage-Rants From The Usual Privilege-Drenched Genocidal Venice Housedwelling Psychopaths — Like Sam Awad — Klaus Moeller — Nikoletta Skarlatos — Travis Binen — Who Says Mike Bonin Tempts Kids To Become Homeless In Venice With By Offering Them Free Food And Services — Therefore Venice Homeless Should Be Forcibly Relocated To Lancaster — And Deeply Profoundly Unfathomably Inscrutably Mean-As-A-Damn-Snake Carol Reynes Thinks She Wins The Argument By Saying Venice Is So Bad It Looks Worse Than Mexico — And Senior Lead Officer Kristan Delatori’s Response To This Hateful Madness — Not An Entirely Appropriate 5150 Hold On The Housedwellers — No, She’s All Like Thanks Housedwellers I’ll Be Out Tomorrow To Arrest More Homeless!

May 21, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Maybe you’ve seen all those mass-manufactured reactionary anti-homeless self-pitying NIMBY yard signs in Venice lately, the garbage-brained slogans on which I won’t dignify by repeating here. And maybe you’ve heard of some of the shadowy little unincorporated associations responsible for them, like e.g. Venice Totalitarianism Unleashed or Venice Snakeholders Ass Sociation or Humane-Kill Homeless Shelters Now! and so on. And one of these creepy little Kool-Aid drinking societies is known as Venice United.

And this particular gang of fauxhemian housedwelling facists has some kind of Google Group which seems to be top secret although maybe I’m just not searching for it right. And one thing they do in their creepy little secret society is send really angry and really crazy emails to one another. And for whatever reason they send copies of them to City officials.¹ And that makes them subject to the California Public Records Act.

And that loveliest law is how I obtained this set of absolutely astonishing emails, already described in sufficiently lurid terms in the title, which, in case you’re wondering, is why I have called you all here today. And my freaking goodness, they’re literally batshit insane.² Even when compared with some of the known masters of the genre, e.g. Anthony Kilhoffer, genocidal anti-homeless psychopath and certified Grammy-winning genius. Or that twisted gang of grinning killers over in Hollywood who want to starve the homeless into oblivion.

Or Carlos Torres, who thinks this blog ought to be shut down until I learn how to be nice to him and his homeless-hating friends. Or this other gang of rage-driven physically violent Hollywood housedwellers consisting of Ferris Freaking Wehbe³ and a bunch of his closest vigilante⁴ asshole buddies. Even when compared to the Venice planter-placers there’s no question who the magic mirror thinks is the craziest of them all, it’s these folks, and it’s. Not. Even. Close.

And please read the whole spool, because I’m not going to be able to transcribe them all. See evidently famous makeup artist Nikoletta Skarlatos screaming at Venice in all caps to RISE UP AND MIKE BONIN BEWARE! And heavily-armed ice-cream peddler Klaus Moeller and his housedweller dog whistles about Mad Max on the streets of Venice!

And other such freakish lurkers in the emotional ruins of the formerly paradisiacal former slum-by-the-sea! Like for instance LAPD Senior Lead Officer Kristan Delatori listening to these mouth-slaverers, taking them seriously, telling them that she never gives homeless human beings permission to be on sidewalks. Scandalous.

Also, due to exceptionally idiotic redactions, I really can’t transcribe the recipient lists, and those are really freaking crazy in themselves, including like every reporter in the world. But there are definitely some transcriptions below, mostly of the choicest, most kookiest stuff, so read on!
Continue reading Secret Emails From The Venice United Google Group! — Basically Just More Casually Racist Homeless-Hating Potty-Mouthed Rage-Rants From The Usual Privilege-Drenched Genocidal Venice Housedwelling Psychopaths — Like Sam Awad — Klaus Moeller — Nikoletta Skarlatos — Travis Binen — Who Says Mike Bonin Tempts Kids To Become Homeless In Venice With By Offering Them Free Food And Services — Therefore Venice Homeless Should Be Forcibly Relocated To Lancaster — And Deeply Profoundly Unfathomably Inscrutably Mean-As-A-Damn-Snake Carol Reynes Thinks She Wins The Argument By Saying Venice Is So Bad It Looks Worse Than Mexico — And Senior Lead Officer Kristan Delatori’s Response To This Hateful Madness — Not An Entirely Appropriate 5150 Hold On The Housedwellers — No, She’s All Like Thanks Housedwellers I’ll Be Out Tomorrow To Arrest More Homeless! →

Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Council, Venice

You Know Those Illegal Anti-Homeless Planters All Over Venice — And No One Knows Who Installed Them — Or Why The Cops Won’t Remove Them — Or Arrest Anyone — Well Here Is Proof That Venice Stakeholders Association Boss Mark Ryavec Worked With Mike Bonin Staffie Taylor Bazley — And LAPD Officers — And Bazley Worked With LA Sanitation — And Brian Freaking Buchner — To Coordinate Encampment Sweeps With Planter Installation — And Taylor Bazley Knew They Were Illegal — And Bazley Told Constituents That The Council Office Wasn’t Involved — And Taylor Bazley Is A Liar! — Of Course We Knew That But Now We Have Proof!

May 4, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

The anti-homeless planters placed all over Venice by hitherto unknown parties have received a great deal of media coverage in the last year, from the Hollywood Reporter to LA Magazine to Capital and Main to KFI radio to Venice Update. There’s no question that these planters are illegal. The Los Angeles Municipal Code at §62.118.2 requires revocable permits for any installations on public sidewalks. Los Angeles Magazine has reported that not only do these planters not have permits, but that the City’s Bureau of Engineering states that they would not issue permits for them.⁵

And although that Venice Update story names Venice Gauleiter Mark Ryavec as a funding source for the planters at Lincoln and Palms, the other stories are careful either to avoid saying who’s responsible for planter installation or else to state explicitly that no one knows who’s putting them in. It seems obvious that some factions in the City of Los Angeles have been involved in planter installation, though. LA Sanitation’s sweeps of encampments in places targeted for planters seem coordinated with installation, and the LAPD seems always to have representatives present when the sweeps are happening.

And if you’re familiar with the way the City of Los Angeles is run you know that it is actually not possible that projects like these can be implemented, that there could be any kind of coordination between departments, that illegal planters could persist, without at least the passive support of the local Councilmember. In the case of Venice, which is in CD11, that is Mike Bonin. And yet Bonin’s office has consistently denied that it is involved at all.

For instance, in November 2018, KFI reported that “A spokesman for Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents the area, said he was not aware of any city department’s involvement in the placing of the planter boxes.” In May 2018 Bonin staffie Taylor Bazley explicitly told a concerned resident, Adam Smith, that CD11 “certainly [is] not involved” in planter installation. Here you can watch Chief Michel Moore stating that the planters are not an area of LAPD responsibility.

However, an email conversation that I recently obtained from the City via the California Public Records Act shows conclusively that both Bonin’s unnamed spokesperson and his loyal staffie Taylor Bazley were lying when they said CD11 was not involved. Bazley was involved, Mark Ryavec was involved, and LAPD officers James Roberts, James Setzer, Javier Ramirez, and Kristan Delatori were involved.

Michel Moore may not have been lying when he said that LAPD wasn’t responsible for planters, but these emails show that he was at least misinformed or uninformed by his subordinates at Pacific Division. For instance, LAPD Captain James Roberts enlisted Mark Ryavec’s aid in asking Taylor Bazley to authorize LAPD to move homeless people away from an installation site.⁶ These emails are evidence, therefore, that multiple City offices are working together to violate the law in order to placate angry housedwellers and that at least Mike Bonin’s office is lying about it.

And there’s a lot of other important information here. For instance, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is required by City protocol to participate in all encampment sweeps in the City. They’re widely touted as playing “a critical role in minimizing any negative health effects in our communities, while also offering our homeless neighbors access to a path out of homelessness.” Bazley, however, in an email to anti-homeless psychopath Mark Ryavec, describes their role quite differently: “LAHSA needs to attempt to demonstrate rendering of services by visiting the site 3 documented times”⁷ There’s a real contrast between “offering our homeless neighbors access to a path out of homelessness” and “attempt[ing] to demonstrate rendering of services.”

The emails also reveal the identities and email addresses of a number of NIMBY housedwellers from Venice besides Mark Ryavec who are involved in planter installations. Turn the page for a list of these haters as well as transcriptions of all the emails.
Continue reading You Know Those Illegal Anti-Homeless Planters All Over Venice — And No One Knows Who Installed Them — Or Why The Cops Won’t Remove Them — Or Arrest Anyone — Well Here Is Proof That Venice Stakeholders Association Boss Mark Ryavec Worked With Mike Bonin Staffie Taylor Bazley — And LAPD Officers — And Bazley Worked With LA Sanitation — And Brian Freaking Buchner — To Coordinate Encampment Sweeps With Planter Installation — And Taylor Bazley Knew They Were Illegal — And Bazley Told Constituents That The Council Office Wasn’t Involved — And Taylor Bazley Is A Liar! — Of Course We Knew That But Now We Have Proof! →

Los Angeles City Government

Ever Wonder If You Are Blocked By Your Councilmember On The Twitter?! — We Have The Answer! — Also City Attorney! — Also The Mayor! — But Nury Martinez — And Herb Wesson — And Mike Bonin — And Mitch O’Farrell — They Won’t Even Answer The Damn Requests — Oh, Almost Forgot To Say! — Deputy City Attorney And Insufferable Rich Boy Strefan Fauble Wants To Be Sure You Know — Mike Feuer Isn’t Muting Any Twitter Users But If He Were — The List Would Be Exempt From Release Under The CPRA! — Yeah Right, Strefan Fauble! — Stick To Art Collecting And Leave The CPRA Lawyering To Others!

April 14, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

For about two months now I’ve been looking into the practice of Twitter users being blocked or muted by official City of Los Angeles accounts. I’m still gathering evidence, but yesterday it came out that Police Commission president Steve Soboroff blocks a bunch of users who’ve never even interacted with him, so I thought it’d be timely to write up the information I have so far. This issue is of special interest in these latter days given that in 2018 a federal judge ruled that it is unconstitutional for Donald Trump to block users on Twitter.

What I can offer you today, friends, is Twitter block/mute information for eleven of the fifteen council districts, the City Attorney, the Mayor, and a small selection of official LAPD accounts.⁸ There’s also an interesting line of hypothetical bullshit from deputy city attorney Strefan Fauble⁹ about some pretty technical claims about CPRA exemptionism,¹⁰ but that, being übernerdlich, is way at the end of the post.

Most of the accounts blocked are porn or spam, but Jose Huizar and David Ryu are notable exceptions. Both reps block accounts that are obviously controlled by actual individual people. Huizar’s list is by far the most extensive, and includes wildly inappropriate blocks like @oscartaracena and @BHJesse.

My research on this question is ongoing, mostly hindered by the City of LA’s familiar foot-dragging CPRA methodology. Turn the page for a tabular summary of the results I have so far along with a brief discussion of how Strefan Fauble is still on his CPRA bullshit.
Continue reading Ever Wonder If You Are Blocked By Your Councilmember On The Twitter?! — We Have The Answer! — Also City Attorney! — Also The Mayor! — But Nury Martinez — And Herb Wesson — And Mike Bonin — And Mitch O’Farrell — They Won’t Even Answer The Damn Requests — Oh, Almost Forgot To Say! — Deputy City Attorney And Insufferable Rich Boy Strefan Fauble Wants To Be Sure You Know — Mike Feuer Isn’t Muting Any Twitter Users But If He Were — The List Would Be Exempt From Release Under The CPRA! — Yeah Right, Strefan Fauble! — Stick To Art Collecting And Leave The CPRA Lawyering To Others! →

Los Angeles City Government

Venice Property Owners Have Raised More Than $70,000 To Cover A Pathway Near The Penmar Golf Course With Cactus And Sprinklers — With Full Cooperation Of Mike Bonin’s Office — Which Helped Them Obtain Permits — We Have A Copy Of Secret Nextdoor Dot Com Discussion — Which Provides Insight Into City Of LA Complicity — Not To Mention The Kind Of Hateful Anti-Human Pre-Genocidal Rhetoric That Drives These Projects — Also Reveals Mark Ryavec Asking About Landscape Architects In October 2018 — One Month Before He Helped Arrange For Illegal Palms/Lincoln Planters

December 26, 2018 Mike 4 Comments

There has been a wave of anti-homeless landscape architecture around Los Angeles, mostly involving planters. Some of these projects, like Miguel Nelson’s so-called North Sea thing in Skid Row, are done legally, meaning with permits obtained from the City. Others are completely illegal, like the livestock troughs full of dirt and cactus dumped all over the sidewalks of Palms Blvd. in Venice by despicable anti-homeless vigilante Mark Ryavec and his lynch-mob buddies at Lincoln Hardware.

And recently, a Venice resident, fed up with the attitudes of his or her neighbors, sent me a screenshot of a thread on Nextdoor.com, which seems to function more or less as the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines of the Los Angeles anti-homeless brigades, wherein another such project is being planned.¹¹ These property owners have raised more than $70,000 on their GoFundMe page to install cactus and sprinklers obstructing most of a block-long public pedestrian path along the west edge of the Penmar Golf Course in order to prevent homeless people from continuing to live there.¹²

And even though this unfiltered glimpse into the white-hot seething id of homeless-hating planter proponents is interesting enough, like a rampaging flock of crocodiles or something, it’s not the most important aspect of this revelation. The most important thing revealed here is the level of the City’s complicity with this project. According to the organizers, Mike Bonin’s staff helped them obtain permits and also attends their community meetings to help them raise money.

This is in stark contrast to the absolute indifference the City displays when citizens concerned with blatantly illegal antihomeless measures seek help navigating City bureaucracy. Where was Mike Bonin’s office when activists were trying to get the City to enforce its own laws against unpermitted sidewalk-blocking planters? Nowhere, actually. It’s not their problem, it seems. Not their job to enforce those particular laws against those particular perpetrators. After the break you’ll find some quotes about and details of Bonin’s complicity.

But before that, here’s an interesting little episode revealed in this discussion. On October 20, 2018, Mark Ryavec, the Adolf Eichmann of Venice, evidently whipped into some kind of visionary frenzy by all the talk of cactuses, asked one of the organizers: “…who might I contact to get the name and contact info for the landscape architect?” And they told him. And a little over a month later Ryavec and his minions, with the abject complicity of the City of Los Angeles, were replacing homeless human beings with illegal hostile planters at the corner of Palms and Lincoln.
Continue reading Venice Property Owners Have Raised More Than $70,000 To Cover A Pathway Near The Penmar Golf Course With Cactus And Sprinklers — With Full Cooperation Of Mike Bonin’s Office — Which Helped Them Obtain Permits — We Have A Copy Of Secret Nextdoor Dot Com Discussion — Which Provides Insight Into City Of LA Complicity — Not To Mention The Kind Of Hateful Anti-Human Pre-Genocidal Rhetoric That Drives These Projects — Also Reveals Mark Ryavec Asking About Landscape Architects In October 2018 — One Month Before He Helped Arrange For Illegal Palms/Lincoln Planters →

Los Angeles City Council, Venice

Mike Bonin Instructs City Planning And City Attorney To Study Possibility Of Using Zoning To Protect Local Independent Businesses In Venice With Goal Of Preserving Unique Neighborhood Character — Where Are Gil Cedillo With Highland Park And José Huizar With Boyle Heights In This Conversation? — There’s An Ungodly Amount Of Money At Stake In All Three Neighborhoods But Only In Venice Are Zillionaires Losing Their Community Character

November 27, 2018 Mike 2 Comments

UPDATE: This motion now has a council file number, which is CF 07-0629-S1. Note that this is a supplemental file and the original motion was by Bill Rosendahl (!) in 2007 to accomplish the same thing, but it died on the vine. The original file was CF 07-0629 and Rosendahl’s original motion is here.

Well, for God’s sake. Mike Bonin, councilcrumpet in charge of that formerly holiest of holy neighborhoods, the late lamented Venice, seems to have just noticed that independent businesses as opposed to chain stores can contribute a great deal to the character of the community. With that in mind he introduced this motion in Council this morning instructing the City Planning Department and the City Attorney to study the possibility of preventing chain stores from ruining everything even more than it’s already ruined by copying San Francisco’s anti-chain-store zoning laws.

And as much as I hate Mike Bonin, and as much as I don’t go to Venice any more because I’m not a freaking necrophiliac, I think these kind of laws are a good thing. The City of Los Angeles gives so much power to zillionaires and their BIDological sock puppets to shape the character of the neighborhoods they’ve colonized and almost no power at all to the residents. Super-restrictive zoning laws like the ones proposed here can take some of that power away from the property owners and shift it over to individual non-zillionaire residents who, after all, are the ones that made their neighborhoods desirable and so whose opinions really ought to be heeded.

So even though I’m sure that Mike Bonin’s motives are despicable, and even though I’m sure all his reasons are wrong, toxic, and repellent, nevertheless, even as a hundred monkeys with typewriters sometimes produce a coherent blog post,¹³ so it seems does Mike Bonin occasionally propose an at least superficially laudable motion. The big question though that this raises is where is Gil Cedillo? Where is José Huizar?¹⁴

Highland Park, mostly in CD1, and Boyle Heights in CD14, also two of the holiest holy neighborhoods of this grand and holy City, are being raped, killed, and eaten just as Venice was raped, killed, and eaten starting some thirty years ago. But it’s not too late to stop the damage there before it’s irreversible. Cedillo and Huizar have the opportunity to do what e.g. Ruth Galanter, on whose watch Venice started circling the drain down which it’s long since disappeared, was unwilling to do to save these irreplaceable neighborhoods with whose care they’ve been entrusted.

Why aren’t they right up there with Mike Bonin asking staff to study how to save Highland Park, how to save Boyle Heights? Why aren’t they seconding Bonin’s motion instead of Paul Freaking Krekorian? Rhetorical questions, of course. They’re not saving Highland Park or Boyle Heights because it’s worth too much money to destroy them. Because Bonin’s zillionaire Venice constituents will get what they want but the poor, the working class, residents of Highland Park and Boyle Heights have no money and therefore no leverage at all with their Councilmembers. In thirty years, no doubt, their successors will be proposing exactly this same kind of motion, too late to raise the reeking corpses. As usual there’s a transcription of the motion after the break.
Continue reading Mike Bonin Instructs City Planning And City Attorney To Study Possibility Of Using Zoning To Protect Local Independent Businesses In Venice With Goal Of Preserving Unique Neighborhood Character — Where Are Gil Cedillo With Highland Park And José Huizar With Boyle Heights In This Conversation? — There’s An Ungodly Amount Of Money At Stake In All Three Neighborhoods But Only In Venice Are Zillionaires Losing Their Community Character →

Los Angeles City Council, Street Vending

The City Council Seems To Have Lost Its Grip On Reality With Its Latest Motions On Street Vending — They Want To Keep All Previously Proposed Exclusionary Zones But Change Justification From “Zillionaires Asked For It” To “Objective Health, Safety, Or Welfare Concerns” — And Paul Koretz — Who Evidently Doesn’t Believe That Words Have Meaning — Wants To Exclude A Bunch Of BIDs On The Same Implausible Grounds — This Is Obviously Going To End Up In Court

November 1, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

As you no doubt know, the City of Los Angeles has been arguing about legalizing street vending for years in the face of fiercely unhinged opposition to the very idea from business improvement districts and other organized gangs of zillionaire thugs. But then the whole debate was mooted by a lightning strike from Sacramento in the form of Ricardo Lara’s SB-946, signed into law by Jerry Brown in September, which imposed a set of really stringent restrictions on the form that municipal street vending regulation can take. And not surprisingly, pretty much every dirty trick that the BIDs and their buddies forced into our City’s proposal was banned by Lara’s bill.

In particular, the BIDdies had managed to get the Council to agree that street vending could be banned in any neighborhood in Los Angeles merely because their councilmember asked for it. This serves BIDdies well, of course, because their repsters will do whatever it is that they ask in order to keep the firehose of campaign contributions turned up to eleven. By the end there they’d managed to enshrine such indefensible no-vending zones as Hollywood Boulevard and recommend that BIDs should be able to charge vendors for the privilege of operating on public streets.¹⁵

But this nonsense was switched right off by Lara’s bill, which states unequivocally that:

A local authority shall not require a sidewalk vendor to operate within specific parts of the public right-of-way, except when that restriction is directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns.

And right after the bill was signed it appeared as though our esteemed City Council was taking this matter seriously. They passed a motion ordering the City Attorney to draft an ordinance that would comply with Lara’s law. But such sporadic spurts of sanity swiftly scatter around here.

And thus it wasn’t really a surprise to hear renowned bigamist and CD9 repster Curren Price on the radio yesterday talking about how Council would be able to keep all the previously proposed no-vending zones and even add more and the only difference would be, according to super-genius Curren Price, that “now we’re going to have to base them on health, safety, and welfare concerns.”¹⁶ And turn the page to read all about the drastically deep dive into the crazy vat revealed by this one little stray comment!
Continue reading The City Council Seems To Have Lost Its Grip On Reality With Its Latest Motions On Street Vending — They Want To Keep All Previously Proposed Exclusionary Zones But Change Justification From “Zillionaires Asked For It” To “Objective Health, Safety, Or Welfare Concerns” — And Paul Koretz — Who Evidently Doesn’t Believe That Words Have Meaning — Wants To Exclude A Bunch Of BIDs On The Same Implausible Grounds — This Is Obviously Going To End Up In Court →

Venice Beach BID

Donald Duckworth Was The Very First BID Consultant Involved With Venice Beach BID Formation — In June 2014 Debbie Dyner Harris Introduced El Duckie To Carl Lambert — Meetings Were Held — Duckworth Drafted Petitions And Gave Advice — Then El Duckie Seems To Have Stopped Returning Carl Lambert’s Emails —Then Nothing Until Tara Devine Took Over — Reason For That Not Yet Clear

September 1, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

The story of Tara Devine and the Venice Beach BID has been told repeatedly and in great detail starting in 2016 when the ultimately successful push to establish this most-despised of Los Angeles BIDs¹⁷ was revived. But the pre-2016 history remains obscure, not least due to zeck dreck Devine’s obstreperous obstructionism with respect to providing public records.¹⁸

Of course, everything about this BID is interesting,¹⁹ so what a pleasant surprise it was to find in a recent release of goodies²⁰ by BIDdological freak show specimen Donald Duckworth a series of emails from 2014 showing that when Mike Bonin first kicked off the Venice Beach BID formation process his staffie Debbie Dyner Harris turned to El Duckworth to hook up with criminal conspirator and founding BIDfather Carl Freaking Lambert to get the job done. Internal evidence strongly suggests that this was the beginning of the modern VBBID formation process.²¹ Strangely, Estela Lopez, the wickedest woman on Skid Row, was also slated to be involved.²²

The story begins on June 5, 2014 when Debbie Dyner Harris emailed El Duckworth with a little proposition:

Hi Don. I hope all is well. The Councilmember is hosting several property owners and business owners along Ocean Front Walk in Venice at a meeting this Monday, June 9, to discuss creating a BID. He was wondering if you’d be able to attend, to help answer any questions on the creation and operation of a BID, and providing your insight. We will be joined by Miranda Paster of the City Clerk’s office, as well as the founding director and the current president of Central City East’s BID.

I am sorry for the late notice, we’ve been trying to develop our agenda. It will be held this Monday, June 9, at 9:45am in our Westchester community room. I hope you can make it!

Thanks,
Debbie

And turn the page for the rest of the story, along with links to and transcriptions of the evidence!
Continue reading Donald Duckworth Was The Very First BID Consultant Involved With Venice Beach BID Formation — In June 2014 Debbie Dyner Harris Introduced El Duckie To Carl Lambert — Meetings Were Held — Duckworth Drafted Petitions And Gave Advice — Then El Duckie Seems To Have Stopped Returning Carl Lambert’s Emails —Then Nothing Until Tara Devine Took Over — Reason For That Not Yet Clear →

Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Council

Some Insight Into How Mike Bonin Arranges For Business Improvement Districts To Present His Policy Positions To The Public Is Provided By A Moderately Bizarre Email Exchange Between Don Duckworth And Bonin Chief Of Staff Chad Molnar On Mike Bonin’s Position On Street Vending Opt-In Versus Opt-Out And Requiring Vendors To Obtain Property Owner Permission — After Which Don Duckworth Wrote To His Bosses On The BID And As Good As Accused Mike Bonin Of Being A Whiny Little Baby

August 28, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Oh, man! Don’t you hate it when you tell your followers and minions and networkers that your Councilmember supports some policy position and then his chief of staff flips out on you and “requests” that you eat your words and you have to do it cause if you don’t the Council District might cut off the flow of zillion dollar bills pouring down on you and the damn zillionaires as whose henchman you serve from the heady cornucopian heights of the fourth floor of 200 N. Spring Street?²³

What?! That never happens to you?! Well, it certainly happens to BIDdological freak show specimen Donald Duckworth like, all the freaking time. This is the story of one such episode from 2017 having to do with street vending, which began on January 11 when 2017 Donald Duckworth sent out the Westchester Town Center BID‘s Winter 2016 newsletter.

It contained a typically stupid but essentially innocuous article on the infamous CF 13-1493, which is, of course, the street vending matter. I don’t have the original email attached to which he sent the thing, but he also forwarded a copy to Rita Moreno of the City Clerk’s office. And therein we find the following exhortatory paragraph, which evidently accompanied the newsletters sent out to the BIDs willing minions:

We are sending the newsletter now so that our readers have an opportunity to voice their preferences with respect to the proposed City action that is being supported by Councilman Mike Bonin. Think of taco carts, fruit vendors, and cheap merchandise together with all of the litter, sidewalk mess, and clutter caused by vendors that don’t pay rent, taxes, or fees as the brick and mortar stores they are competing against do. The Westchester Town Center BID has requested our Councilman to not force street vending on the community of Westchester and to require property owner approval before any vendor could set up shop in front of their property. If some neighborhoods want it fine, but we don’t think Westchester is one of those places. The Neighborhood Council and Chamber of Commerce have agreed. How fair is it to require property owners to repair their sidewalks but not allow them to have a voice in whether or not someone can set up a business there?

Well, it seems that Councilmember Mike didn’t like this claim that he was in favor of the street vending apocalypse²⁴ and he called Donald Duckworth on the morning of January 12, 2017 and was all like hey dude, not right and therefore apologize. And Donald Duckworth, whose job is to bring home the bacon rather than to aggravate the pigs, begged forgiveness and agreed to correct the damn record. And the whole detailed story along with links to and transcriptions of the emails and other records can be found directly after the damn break!
Continue reading Some Insight Into How Mike Bonin Arranges For Business Improvement Districts To Present His Policy Positions To The Public Is Provided By A Moderately Bizarre Email Exchange Between Don Duckworth And Bonin Chief Of Staff Chad Molnar On Mike Bonin’s Position On Street Vending Opt-In Versus Opt-Out And Requiring Vendors To Obtain Property Owner Permission — After Which Don Duckworth Wrote To His Bosses On The BID And As Good As Accused Mike Bonin Of Being A Whiny Little Baby →

Business Improvement Districts

Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — Newly Obtained Emails Reveal The Most Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act I Have Ever Seen In The Wild — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale — Who Sadly Is Highly Unlikely To Be Prosecuted For Her Criminal Ways — Conducted An Actual Vote On An Actual Motion By Email — Not One Single Board Member Objected — The Statute Of Limitations Has Run So They’re Not Going To Jail — But Obviously They’re Still Going To Hell — Cause There Ain’t No Statute That Can Limit The Freaking Wrath Of God!

August 18, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

I know some of you out there have been remembering such classics as the story of the angry scary fat black homeless male man or the story of the gang members escaping the seething urban hellscape of Santa Freaking Monica and thereby wondering just why it is that it’s been since March freaking 2017 since I last posted any full frontal mockery of the halfwits-by-the-sea out in Northwest Zillionaireville. I’m speaking of course of the Pacific Palisades Business Improvement District, Mike Freaking Bonin’s platonic ideal of a good BID.

And it’s certainly no coincidence that my last few posts about these coastal dimwits had to do with Laurie Freaking Sale’s weirdo Humistonian CPRA aggression. For instance there was the incident of Ms. Laurie Sale’s being too busy to follow the law, a theory which doesn’t work so well for non-zillionaires.²⁵ Then there was the case of board member Rick Freaking Lemmo explaining how they were going to spend 3% of their annual assessments on lawyers to keep records out of my hands.

Well, it turns out that that’s not working out so well,²⁶ because earlier this week I took a trek all the way out to the damn Palisades on public transit²⁷ to finally inspect some records after fifteen tooth-pullingly painful months trying to talk some sense into Ms. Laurie Sale and then a few more months of my lawyer trying to talk some sense into the world’s angriest CPRA attorney, Ms. Carol F. Humiston.²⁸

And good lord, friends! The craziness in these records is beyond fever pitch! It’s beyond Ebola pitch! Can’t easily be measured by disease slash pitch comparisons is how crazy it is! For various technical reasons it’s going to take a long time to prep this steaming pile o’ puckey for publication, so I’ll be dribbling it out a bit at a time. Today’s installment consists of 44 pages of emails amongst the BID Board, which can be found here on Archive.Org.

And amongst the millionish sharp little shards of crazy to be found here is the single most egregious violation of the Brown Act that I’ve ever known to be committed by a BID.²⁹ In January 2016 BID zeck dreck Laurie Sale³⁰ emailed her board with a motion to approve a contract and one by one they all voted yes by reply-all. This is beyond bad, beyond obvious. Turn the page for a discussion of the section that this violates, of what can be done about it now,³¹ and transcriptions of and links to all the evidence.
Continue reading Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — Newly Obtained Emails Reveal The Most Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act I Have Ever Seen In The Wild — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale — Who Sadly Is Highly Unlikely To Be Prosecuted For Her Criminal Ways — Conducted An Actual Vote On An Actual Motion By Email — Not One Single Board Member Objected — The Statute Of Limitations Has Run So They’re Not Going To Jail — But Obviously They’re Still Going To Hell — Cause There Ain’t No Statute That Can Limit The Freaking Wrath Of God! →