Tag Archives: Power Point

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

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

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

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

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

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Fashion District BID Executive Director Kent Smith’s Complete July 2015 Emails Now Available. FDBID Managing Director Rena Leddy Wins MK.org Excellence in BID Transparency Award!

Rena Leddy headshot
Rena Leddy, Managing Director of the Fashion District BID and MK.org CPRA Hero of the Fricking Year!!
Just this morning I received, via Dropbox, every one of Kent Smith’s emails for the month of July 2015. You can see all 1098 of them on the archive. Most of it’s dismal mass-blasted junk, of course, but even a lot of that is interesting. E.g. search in there for CCA (Central City Association) to see bunches of their bulletins, like this one, advertising special guests Jessica Borek and Matt Rodriguez. Unfortunately there’s probably no way to find out what was said there, but at least we know it happened.
Yet another smoking gun, as if it weren't clear enough that Marie Rumsey is a big-time lawbreaker.
Yet another smoking gun, as if it weren’t clear enough that Marie Rumsey is a big-time lawbreaker.
The most amazing thing about this document dump is the formatting. They’re PDFs, which often is a bad sign for emails, although these are text-based1 so they can be searched reasonably effectively. Too many agencies think somehow that a scanned PDF of a printed email satisfies CPRA’s requirement that electronic documents be produced in native formats. These PDFs are on a level I’ve never seen before, though. First of all, the links are live, including the links to remote images. Also the links to attachments are live and the attachments are embedded in the PDFs. For instance, look at this email about anti-street-vending strategies from Marie Rumsey to various people. It has an actual schedule of actual meetings with Councilmembers that CCA set up for street vending opponents attached, and you can click on it and read it! Or here it is if you’re lazy. This is the real deal! Look at the properties in that last item and see that Marie Rumsey spent 2015 breaking the revolving door ordinance to an even greater extent than anyone here imagined. Also take a look at this email from Jessica Borek to the gang which comes with a copy of a Power Point thing by Jessica Borek about the Coalition to Save Small Business strategy as well as a marked-up copy of ELACC’s proposed framework. This is the real deal, friends! It’s what CPRA was actually meant to yield.
Continue reading Fashion District BID Executive Director Kent Smith’s Complete July 2015 Emails Now Available. FDBID Managing Director Rena Leddy Wins MK.org Excellence in BID Transparency Award!

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