U.S. Blues

The House of Representatives: a record 37 candidates are women who are Hispanic or Latina. 

And there are 33 openly gay, lesbian bisexual, trans or gender-nonconforming candidates.   

There are at least 403 people of color, women or nonbinary candidates running for seats in the House tomorrow.  

There are eleven candidates in the Senate, who are Black this year. That is as many as have served in the Senate in all of American History.    

There are a record-setting 25 women nominated for governor -- 16 democrats and 9 republicans. There are five Black nominees for governor this year including a record three Black women.   

People feel a call to action and a call to serve so they are seeing themselves in the policies that are being pushed forward and the decisions that are made and the budgets that are passed.   

Soft corruption:

A lot of readers and associates ask me, are you going to provide a cheat sheet for the election?  

The short answer is no, the ballot is too long. “It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.” 

Still, I looked it over and voted.  

There were over fifty opportunities to make a selection. I abstained 36 times and pulled the proverbial lever 17 times.   

My simple rule was: YOU (meaning, me) need to have some discernible angle in favor or opposed.  

Otherwise, better Not to vote, I reasoned 

I'm going to leave the Lt. Governors decision to the people in the know on that.    “Sir, you're disrupting the meeting.” 

I voted for a couple of Judges who I had come before and won, or at least the judges Luis Lavin and Goodwin Liu had sided with the good guys — moi.  

And I chose a few because I had met them when I was conducting open forums at the Studio City Library trying to make sense of all these damn judges on the ballot (with just 20 valid signatures).    

The City Council and Labron James share the position that the top Laker made text the other day, “Our record is our record… we are who we are.”  

Gulp.  By Friday the Lakers could have the worst record in the NBA.  

LAFC won big!  

An older reader asked me if it was true that the Los Angeles Times is going to go out of print, and only publish online.  

It’s not true, but I briefly wondered — maybe they’d be interested in some long-form local ranting from an unhinged blue stater with a red-state girlfriend.    

The Times is here to stay! Yay!! 

The Times will cease production at the Olympic Boulevard printing plant in 2024, the company said. Printing operations will move out of the leased facility for a joint venture with Southern California News Group. 

In 2019, New York real estate developer Atlas Capital Group paid about $240 million for the site. It was bought and sold twice in the last decade.   

Last year, Atlas announced that it planned to redevelop the site into a Hollywood-style lot with 17 soundstages to meet strong regional demand for movie and television production facilities.  

The project was approved in May, said Paul Audley, president of FilmLA, the nonprofit that handles film permits in the region.  

Construction on the lot is expected to begin in 2023 and be completed in 2026.   

Times management did not provide further information on the future status of print production employees. 

The new Legend of the Lakers book celebrating 75 years of the Lakers could be the best gift of the year.    

US Blues:  

Grateful Dead

Red and white, blue suede shoes, I'm Uncle Sam, how do you do?

Gimme five, I'm still alive, ain't no luck, I learned to duck.

Check my pulse, it don't change. Stay seventy-two come shine or rain.

Wave the flag, pop the bag, rock the boat, skin the goat.

Wave that flag, wave it wide and high. 

Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.

I'm Uncle Sam, that's who I am; Been hidin' out in a rock and roll band. Shake the hand that shook the hand of P.T. Barnum and Charlie Chan.

Shine your shoes, light your fuse. Can you use them ol' U.S. Blues?

I'll drink your health, share your wealth, run your life, steal your wife.

Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.

Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.

Back to back chicken shack. Son of a gun, better change your act.

We're all confused, what's to lose?

You can call this all the United States Blues.

Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.

Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.

Wrong Lane:

The man said to the woman he’d been sharing a lane at the pool with, "you're not listening to me.”  

The woman shook her head in disgust, “No, you’re not listening to me."    

More lane lock. 

If every home in America had one purple stater, one red stater, and one blue stater…. 

The magnetism of anger has been pulling people to their separate corners.  

What’s wrong with the old system of you live over there, I live over here and we meet once and a while for a “play hard to the end ” sporting contest.  

If there’s a disagreement about which side legitimately won, well, then we can go to court. 

And eventually, we can settle, without accepting any wrongdoing.  

Propinquity:

Fox went after Sheila Kuehl, likely the Sheriff's least favorite supervisor, for the Metro contracts with POV...but downplayed that Eric Garcetti, the metro board chair and mayor was giving Sheila a run for her Peace over Violence money.  At a rate of nearly $45,000 a week. Yikes.    

Despite all that "crisis intervention, support and referral information, Counseling, case management and emergency response..."  Garcetti still got a sexual harassment hairball, right in the old Yashar Ali kisser.     

The Times took a closer look following the shocking search warrants that resulted in dozens of devices including Patty Giggan’s Toyota being hauled away by the Sheriff’s department. 

The Times, who wisely sent sharpies Michael Finnegan and Laura Nelson in to handle such a delicate task, found no evidence that supported the one and only whistleblower Jennifer Loew’s claims. 

Well, Metro did pay low, $625,000 to go away, while admitting no wrongdoing.  

“Sir, you’re disrupting the meeting.”

Also, Sheila Kuehl’s contention that the first she learned about the hotline was when she was invited to Union Station to announce its launch, is, to use an old-fashioned Irish expression favored by President Biden, malarky.  

The hotline started taking calls in 2017. Peace Over Violence’s contract to run it was renewed in 2018, and Metro staff then extended the contract for another three years for almost $495,000. Had the total been a few thousand dollars higher, the Metro board would have had to vote.  

As it was, Kuehl and the agency’s 12 other board members didn’t have to vote. 

This game is called soft corruption and Sheila and the BOS gang are all highly-rated players. 

Studio City: 

In Studio City, Paul Krekorian was running a smart play, but there was evidence that he was taking calls from the head coach, Eric Garcetti.  We’d found an email with Garcetti, personally inquiring with Planning about the status.  He must have been getting pressure from Weintraub. 

So, the play went like this.  Weintraub had been refusing to pay his transit occupancy and parking occupancy taxes.   

Eventually, PJ Shemtoob of City Attorney’s office filed a lawsuit to collect a ton of money that Weintraub who owned the hotel at that point had collected from guests, but never paid to the city in taxes. 

When Shemtoob finally sued Weintraub, it came out that, Weintraub had been sued previously by his wife.  This meant that his wife had a judgment lien on Weintraub, so the city’s effort to collect would be in second position.  

Krekorian understood what he had to do.  In the interest of the taxpayers,  we’ll have to settle and cut Weintraub a great deal on all the transit occupancy money he owed.  Wow, we thought.  Got ‘em. 

The Residences at Sportsmen’s being proposed is a continuation of the hijacking of Studio City interests by outside opportunists.   How do they do it?  Hiho burgers.  

I am looking for the lawsuit and countersuit between Midwood and Erewhon Market. Parking issues are part of the complaint. 

Electioneering:

People in the United States received an estimated 1.29 billion messages related to the election on their cellphones last month in October.  

Fighting absurdity with Sarcasm is a time-worn tradition. 

One twitter said, “The risk in attending an election-watching party now is that you will be eating wings and drinking punch in front of the TV for six weeks.” 

Another said, “I'm building a fence around my yard to keep the democracy in. I wish it’d end in Cali. I’ve had about all the democracy I can take in my state.” 

"Democracy Dies In Vegas” --could be a book title.   

“My fear is not so much one party or the other, it's the extremists of any stripe who can only see their narrow perspective. “ 

Google Maps has added a "democracy-blue/totalitarian-red" selection to its layers. 

"When the political class says “Democracy is ending”  right before they lose a white knuckle grip on power is what they think is the end of democracy. We know better. Democracy doesn’t end. It begins anew every Election Day.” 

“Democracy giving me politicians I don’t agree with = the end of democracy.”   

“I've been stockpiling democracy in my cellar for the last 2 years, expecting this moment.” 

Au Revoir:

They're all professionals at KNX 97.1, for god sake.  Imagine, standing around wherever need be in the southland, bringing it live to people.  

Claudia Pesschiutta worked the city hall beat for KNX for a long time before shuffling from the 24/7 news channel to be an editor at KPCC for a year, before landing at the real, NPR.  

She was one of Huizar's Angels, flanking the CM as he took his famous walk of shame.  Lap dissolve, to 2022 and you have Craig Fiegener going after Karen Bass like a junkyard dog.   

Reminiscent of a young David Goldstein, cornering Ed Buck in the parking structure… I digress. 

Fiegener has been trying to get a straight answer about Bass’s  $95,000 scholarship from USC and her various comments about her application.   

Not very interesting, but Fiegener gets credit for affixing his bite to the pant leg and refusing to let go.   

He spent eight years working in Vegas.  Maybe he'll be assigned to the mayor's office if Rick Caruso wins.  

Covering the flow:

“The aqueduct is the reason why modern-day Los Angeles exists, but we’re not using it smartly enough.” —  Mitchell O'Farrell, candidate 

Since 1911, the Daily News has been reporting and writing accurately and fairly, shining a light on injustice and defending the public’s right to know. 

In 1912, New Mexico become the 47th U.S. State.and The RMS Titanic, a luxury steamship, sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912, off the coast of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic after sideswiping an iceberg during its maiden voyage.  

The aqueduct, which opened in 1913, provided nearly 40% of Los Angeles’ water supply each year between 2016 and 2019, but the city has lessened its reliance in recent years. 

Fortunately, the Daily News and KNX 1070 and 97.1 all had the story from the desk of Mitchell O'Farrell, currently in a tough fight for CD13 against Hugo Soto Martinez.  

His committee signed-off on an examination of the potential to generate photovoltaic power over Los Angeles Aqueduct, so something less than approval, really.  That will take time... 

The proposal is to investigate state and federal grant options and create a report outlining water evaporation issues specific to the Aqueduct, with the dual goal of reducing water evaporation and generating power. Signed MItch O'Farrell and Paul Koretz October 7, 2022. 

(Record scratch sound)  Another document was seconded by Krekorian?  Sneaky MItch.  

 Was it Paul Koretz or Paul Krekorian?  Accidental on-purpose.  

(Eric Preven is a longtime community activist and is a contributor to CityWatch. The opinions expressed by Eric Preven are solely his and not the opinions of CityWatch)