Tag Archives: Mike Bonin

Chaos at Council Hearing on Venice Beach BID: In Response to Heckling, Bonin Accuses Venice Beach BID Detractors Of “Malignant Dangerous Defamation,” Compares Them To Trump

August 24, 2016 Mike 3 Comments

Mike Bonin speaking in favor of the Venice Beach BID in Council on August 23, 2016. He's either misinformed, lying, or both. — Mike Bonin speaking in favor of the Venice Beach BID in Council on August 23, 2016, mere minutes before accusing BID detractors of “malignant dangerous defamation.”

Yesterday the Los Angeles City Council heard protests against the proposed Venice Beach Business Improvement District. You can watch the whole thing here. There were impassioned public comments and a lot of heckling. Also, on Monday Laura McLennan of CD11 gave me over a hundred pages of material on the VBBID, which is worth looking at. After the public comment, Mike Bonin gave a speech about why he supported the BID, which is my topic for today. You can jump directly to Bonin’s remarks in the video and as always, you can find a transcription at the end of the post. I’m just going to address a few of Bonin’s comments in detail:

Let me for a second or two correct some of the wide misperceptions about the BID and what process… the process for establishing a BID is established by state law.
Continue reading Chaos at Council Hearing on Venice Beach BID: In Response to Heckling, Bonin Accuses Venice Beach BID Detractors Of “Malignant Dangerous Defamation,” Compares Them To Trump →

Lawsuits

City of Los Angeles to Pay Almost a Million Dollars, Half to Carol Sobel, in Lavan Case and also Pete White and Hamid Khan v. City of LA

June 15, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Carol Sobel (on right) is making a good living forcing the City of Los Angeles to pay for its nasty addiction to tormenting the homeless. Have they hit bottom yet? It doesn't look like it. — Carol Sobel (on right) is making a good living forcing the City of Los Angeles to pay for its nasty addiction to tormenting the homeless. Have they hit bottom yet? It doesn’t look like it.

According to an excellent article in yesterday’s Times by the incomparable Emily Alpert Reyes, the City Council agreed to pay out $947,000 in settlements in two cases brought by civil rights lawyer Carol Sobel. The article didn’t have much detail on either the cases or where the money was going, so I thought I’d fill some of it in here.

The first case is Lavan v. City of Los Angeles. I reported last December that this case seemed to be nearing settlement, and there was more news on this in March. Well, yesterday the Council approved Motion 16-0397, which authorizes the payment of $322,000 to Carol Sobel in legal fees and $500,000 for other purposes which aren’t clear from the motion. Nothing has hit PACER yet, so I don’t know how to get the rest of the story, but you’ll see it here as soon as I get some. You may want to subscribe to the Council file to keep up to date.

The second case is really interesting, and I haven’t written on it before. Evidently, in 2005 the Central City East Association began sponsoring tours of Skid Row for “…public officials, law enforcement, members of the judiciary, students, academics, local business owners, social service providers, and the media” so they can “…see for themselves and learn about the challenges, not through a windshield, but from the experience of walking through [Skid Row] and interacting with social service representatives, police, residents and business owners.”¹ (Here is the 9th Circuit opinion on which this summary is based).
Continue reading City of Los Angeles to Pay Almost a Million Dollars, Half to Carol Sobel, in Lavan Case and also Pete White and Hamid Khan v. City of LA →

Hypocrisy, Venice

Mark Ryavec’s Venice-Based Gang of Aggressively Moronic Subliterate Meatheads Threatens City of LA with Lawsuit over Conversion of Westminster Senior Center to Homeless Storage Facility

May 17, 2016 kohlhaas 2 Comments

Westminster Senior Center, located at 1234 Pacific Avenue in the heart of the late lamented Venice, now raped, killed, and eaten by the likes of Mark Ryavec and all those smarmy little techbros of both sexes.

This is a little off our beat, but we’ll tie it in before the end. As you may or may not be aware, Councilfolk Bonin and Harris-Dawson have been running amok-inna-good-way out west of here, just planning to build all manner of golden goodies for the homeless population of what, forty years ago, was the best part of Los Angeles, which is to say, Venice. There’s the affordable housing project in the City parking lot, there’s the storage facility in Westminster Park, and we don’t know what-all else. Well, just tonight, in the Council file of the latter item, this little slab of Ryaveckian lunacy just hit the internets. Read it and weep for civilization, fellow Angelenos. This Ryavec fellow would be a funny guy if he weren’t a slavering psychopath.² Continue reading →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

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

September 7, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

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 →