Happy Holidays (and Count Yourself Lucky)

Not to be the holiday party buzzkill, but a quick glance at the leading local stories in the L.A. Times from the 21st through today is enough to inspire most of us to count our yuletide blessings. Here's a smattering:

Officer kills knife attack suspect
A rookie Los Angeles police officer shot and killed a 27-year-old man early Monday after the man attacked his former roommates with a 6-inch butcher knife, police said.

Man is shot to death in Los Angeles
A man was shot to death on Christmas night outside his apartment in Silver Lake, authorities said.

Hollywood woman, 56, dies in fire
A 56-year-old Hollywood woman was killed Saturday night when she was trapped by flames inside her home after an artificial Christmas tree apparently caught fire, officials said.

3 security guards are shot outside nightclub
Three security guards were shot and seriously wounded outside a nightclub early Saturday, police said.

Girl dies, 2 men injured as car slams into a wall
A girl died and two men were injured Saturday after their car slammed into a wall and tree and burst into flames, authorities said.

Killings of youths tied to L.A. County child protection system soar in 2006
The 79 homicides were more than twice the 37 at-risk children slain in 2005.

Area's homeless can't find shelter
Even the supplemental cold-weather services are filled to capacity on cold and windy nights.

11 taken to hospitals after Blue Line train hits firetruck
About 250 rush-hour commuters were aboard when accident occurred at Washington and Central, a 'notorious bad intersection.'

Suspect held in hate crime slaying of girl, 14
Los Angeles police detectives have arrested a Latino suspect in the killing of a 14-year-old African American girl in what police say was a hate crime.

4 accused of smuggling women for prostitution
Four women from Guatemala have been arrested as part of a scheme in which young women were lured into the U.S. with promises of good jobs and forced to become prostitutes in Los Angeles.

Memorial service puts name, face on year's dead in skid row
The event gives 'these people the honor of saying, your life meant something,' mayor says.

Fiery crash kills 3 teenagers
The youths die early Wednesday after the driver veers off Los Feliz Boulevard and strikes a tree near Griffith Park. Two passengers pulled from the vehicle survive.

Not Gonna Do It!

Much to my chagrin, I can say with certainty that Al Gore is NOT running for President of the U. S. of A. Never mind the hype -- he's not gonna do it.

Last week I had the chance to 'meet' Al Gore at an event that was hosted by the Directors Guild of America (DGA). As you can expect, VP Gore was there to talk about this film, "An Inconvenient Truth" -- not to campaign, as I would have hoped.

After a few seconds of small talk with the handsome yet portly Gore, I built up the courage to say to him, "Mr. Gore, I hope you will consider running. The country could use your leadership." Never have I seen an elected official react with such an immediate scoff. (I think scoff is the best way to explain his action.) After the aforementioned statement, he quickly moved on to the next in the crowd. He appeared annoyed, if not agitated, by the thought that someone would ask him to consider running for the position he once won.

I was mildly upset. Not only was I scoffed at by a man that I have grown to admire and respect, but, more importantly, I was convinced from his reaction that Gore's mingling in the Presidential name dropping game is a ploy to continue his effort to keep his name a household one. For a good cause, of course. He is on a quest to save the world and it only helps the cause to have such a big name in the world working so hard on the subject.

I am going to start looking for a new candidate. Take down the website -- http://www.reelectgore.org/ -- because it ain't gonna happen.

Globalize L.A.?

American Apparel is about to go public.

Emblazoned with the command "Legalize L.A.," American Apparel's factory is as much a fixture of the downtown Los Angeles cityscape as its hyper-sexual and socially progressive brand is a fixture of American youth culture. The company's politics are a bit more elusive, however, than the image it has crafted would lead one to believe. Despite its pro-immigrant, anti-sweatshop labor practices and public pronouncements, in 2003, American Apparel's founder and owner Dov Charney defeated a UNITE-HERE union organizing drive at his downtown factory by employing standard union-busting tactics familiar to workers in meatpacking plants and nursing homes.

Whether American Apparel is a renegade company swimming upstream in a globalized race to the bottom or a shrewd manipulator of the political sympathies of its target consumers is anyone's guess. Now the answer may become a bit more discernible.

When Google went public, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin chose to structure the deal with "dual class voting," which allows management the authority to make decisions on behalf of the company that may not be popular with stockholders. This was because Google felt that stockholders' focus on short-term gain should play second fiddle to the founders' commitment to the company's long-term, core mission. The latter includes both its risk-taking entrepreneurialism and its charitable goals.

So far, no such precautions against the stock market impinging upon the "non-rational" priorities of a mission-based company like American Apparel appear to be forthcoming in the $244 million deal. Perhaps outsourcing is in American Apparel's future after all, or perhaps investors will leave the company's anti-sweatshop policies alone as long (and only as long) as the image helps move product. Either outcome would indicate an accomodation between the corporate rebel and the globalized free market forces it was ostensibly created to reject. American Apparel may be on its way to becoming Global Apparel, which is to say to becoming a facsimile of every other garment manufacturer in the world. Which, in a sense, would not be such a radical departure from its mission, which concludes with the statement:

"Not to suggest that we are more ethical than the next business. We're just out to try something different, to make a buck, to bring people the clothes they love, to be human, and have a good time in the process. So far, so good."

All of that can be accomplished as easily from China as from downtown L.A.

Happy Monday

No smog in Smog Land today. It's one of those crisp, cold days that make L.A. in the winter feel like the East Coast in the fall. A couple pictures from this morning.

Flipping Birds

If you live or drive in L.A., you're probably familiar with the accompanying image. You may even have pondered its meaning and origin, while waiting for the light to turn green.

The crack investigative reporters at Metroblogging Los Angeles have solved the mystery with this exclusive interview with The Creator Himself.

Apparently, however, he's not too hard to find if you know where to look. He has his own MySpace page, and even a blog (composed entirely of pictures).

Adding the blog to our blogroll now, because when you think about it, what better can be found on the internet than photos of hot young people getting trashed and having fun?

Friend of the Animal World

Assemblymember Lloyd Levine has got to be one of the most eclectic lawmakers in Sacramento. Levine's crusade to liberate elephants from their prison cells at California zoos and circuses is yet another Levine original to add to a list that mocks the virtue of a coherent legislative agenda. Slot that into this hit list of legislative priorities straight out of Philip K. Dick's imagination:

• Ban on pet cloning (Is this for real? Apparently so.)
• The California Vampire Slayer Act of 2006 (Again, no shit: "Vampires" are "electronic devices that continue to 'suck' electricity even when you think they are turned off.")
• Assisted suicide bill

Ok, so assisted suicide is a pretty serious issue. The point being, though, that none of these issues are big polling winners in the West San Fernando Valley, or really anywhere else on earth. It's hard to imagine some hard-nosed political consultant saying, "Ok, Lloyd, I've crunched the numbers, and this is what we've got to do to win: Pet cloning, energy-sucking electronic devices, euthanasia and elephants."

Which brings me to my second point: Lloyd Levine has got to be one of the most principled lawmakers in Sacramento. Because there's no way he's taking on Big Zoos just to position himself for his run at Senate District 23. Santa Monica might be liberal, but this probably isn't the hallmark issue of the district.

As hard as it is to imagine, it seems like Lloyd Levine is just a guy who finds certain issues morally important, and takes them on for that reason alone. And you'd have to be quite an asshole to argue against the morality of saving animals from dying of heat stroke while stuck in unattended vehicles. Whether in cars or cages, captured animals don't have a lot of powerful actors looking out for them, and Levine, for one, is stepping up to the plate.

When it comes down to it, zoos and circuses are monuments to voyeurism and captivity, and civilization would be better off without them. Lloyd Levine is trying to do something practical to make them a little more humane, and could give a shit what political dividends result from it. In the context of today's brand of transactional politics, that makes him a goddamned hero.

Carpetbagging the 45th

Kevin De Leon, the new Assemblymember for the 45th district just north and east of downtown, had his district swearing-in ceremony this week. Reports back estimate attendance at forty.

To put that in perspective, Assemblymember Mike Eng's swearing-in was attended by somewhere around a thousand.

What a difference actually living in the district makes!

Not that De Leon doesn't have a residential address in the district somewhere. Surely getting one was high on his to-do list at the very outset of his campaign, somewhere between setting up a state PAC account and finding a good mail consultant.

But if you listen to former 45th Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg, there's apparently a difference between running for a seat in a community you've never had a relationship with because the Speaker is your boyhood friend and can twist a lot of arms to get you the right endorsements, and actually sharing a history with the constituents you're running to represent. Go figure.

Goldberg, by the way, endorsed Elena Popp to succeed her. But as beloved as Jackie is in the 45th (and she is, and for very good reason), she ain't the Speaker of the Assembly, and can't more or less instruct the big organizations where to put their campaign cash.

And as the California Nurses Association never tired of reminding us this election cycle, big money controls elections. So even though De Leon was trailing badly at the beginning of the race, once those independent expenditures started kicking in, out went the whole "relationship with the community" crap (who needs it!) and in came the unearned votes. And thus the 45th District inherited an Assemblymember nobody's ever heard of, let alone trusts.

Except maybe those forty people who bothered to show up to his swearing-in ceremony (I wonder how many of them live in the district?). Hopefully the new Assemblymember took notice of the fact that however wrapped up he might have things in Sacramento, being the Speaker's BFF and all, he has a lot of work to do back here in L.A.

Two Senators Have Brain Surgery

News reports today inform us that two Senators have had brain surgery in the past day.

The State Senator from the SF Valley, Alex Padilla, underwent surgery to remove a 'malformation' from the lining of his brain. The former city councilman (and future State Senate President) is said to be recuping well and should be back to work in January when the State Senate convenes. Always the workaholic, Alex says this experience will help us this year when the state legislature begins its work on healthcare reform.

In more frightful news, Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota yesterday, experienced stroke-like symptoms and was taken to a Washington DC area hospital. Doctors revealed that the 59 year old Senator did not have a stroke, but instead was suffering from bleeding of the brain. He had surgery last night and is now in critical, yet stable condition.

This is bad bad news for a number of reasons. The US Senate is divided with 51 Dems and 49 Republicans. Should Johnson be unwilling or unable to serve out the rest of his term, South Dakota's Republican Gov Mike Rounds would be able to appoint someone to fill out the rest of his term, thus spliiting the House of Lords 50/50. (Would it be possible that GOP Gov Rounds would appoint someone other than a Republican -- NOT!) Under such a scenario, the Reeps would have the advantage since VP Cheney could cast the deciding vote in any 50/50 tallies.

You may remember in 2000, when the Dems and the Reeps were divided 50/50, they agreed to a power sharing agreement where the Reeps were the majority party, yet the parties had equal representation on committees. This was until Jim Jeffords of Vermont switched parties and gave the Dems a one vote advantage -- that they eventually lost in the 2002 mid term elections.

Given the most recent election and the sinking feeling Reeps must be experiencing, I would not expect them to agree to such a power sharing scenario.

Lets wish Senator Johnson well. Not only for him and his family, but for the country.
Its sometimes hard to believe that so much is relying on the heart beat of one man (or woman).

Exurban America

Antelope Valley falls into the taxonomical category of "exurb," which means, as far as I've been able to glean from the contexts in which I've come across the word, "shitty hinterland beyond the suburbs, where rural chauvinism still persists despite several decades of creeping sprawl that has already done in all the quainter aspects of bumpkin culture, and mixes seamlessly with the angst, alienation and nascent blight of emerging urbanism." In other words, it's a vast expanse of car dealerships, Wal-Mart superstores and jacked-up trucks where nobody farms for a living anymore but everyone who's been there more than five or ten years still pretends to hate the city "down below" (that's what they call L.A.) that happens to fuel the region's entire economy (mostly by driving up the housing market) and, since this is still (barely) L.A. County, provides the tax base for its water, electricity, fire and police services.

Or at least that's what it USED to be. Thankfully, this exurb is going the same direction as exurbs all over the country, which is to say that it's becoming a SUBurb.

Antelope Valley is composed of the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, and a ring of bedroom communities surrounding them. Lancaster and Palmdale are a lot like Springfield and Shelbyville. Lancaster is where the old school kids came up. Lancaster is used to running the show in the High Desert. That is, it was until Palmdale came along and started growing a mile a minute, its shiny new multiplex cinemas and shopping malls taking all the glory away from stodgy old Lancaster. Now the siblings want to strangle each other in their sleep, and it's not just about vanity: rumor has it that the Republican political machine that runs the Valley is so reliant on the kickbacks it receives from local businesses that when the two cities' governments, in a rare effort at partnership, tried to figure out where on the border between them to locate a strip of car dealerships whose property tax base could be divided by the two cities, they couldn't come to terms because they couldn't agree on how to divide the extortion money. Now, there are two car dealership rows in the Antelope Valley.

Back to the main story: the suburbanization of Antelope Valley. If you grew up in the eighties and had any sort of anti-establishment sympathies, "suburb" used to be a bad word. But then, we didn't have the word "exurb" in the eighties, did we? Well, now after a couple more decades of sprawl, get used to "suburb" being that which we hope all of these Bush-loving exurbs will some day become.

As The New York Times has pointed out, though the exurbs were once considered by both parties to be safe Republican stomping grounds, that's started to change:

"Something happens as these suburbs age," said Robert E. Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, a research body focusing on the factors that shape metropolitan growth. "It's not, 'Honey, we've got an attached dwelling unit, it's time to vote Democratic.' It's a difference in the type of people who move there. With density, you get more racial diversity, singles and retired people."

Well, guess what, Antelope Valley? James Dawson is moving to town!

One night not long ago, Mr. Dawson’s wife, Dorothy, turned to him in bed and popped the question he knew would eventually come: “What do you think about moving to Lancaster?”

It was not a question, really. He knew her mind was made up. Their son Jihad, having given up on Watts, was already there, more than 50 miles north in the high-desert constellation of subdivisions. And who could begrudge his wife, Mr. Dawson remembers thinking, after all they had been through?

What they had been through was losing their first son in a random shooting, a case of mistaken identity.

Mr. Dawson's story is not altogether uncommon in Antelope Valley. More and more Angelenos are escaping the blight of L.A. to the fresh air of the High Desert. Back in the '80s, a similar phenomenon was known as "White Flight," but this is far from a repeat of that regrettable episode. Rather, these are African-American and Latino middle class families finding their slice of the pie in the relatively-more-affordable outer reaches of L.A. County. And with them comes: WORKING CLASS POLITICS! Yay!

We're not quite there yet, so don't get too excited. Jesus Freaks Sharon and George Runner are still the most popular politicians in town. But hot on their heels is Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, who, though Republican (wink wink nudge nudge), ran for Assembly on an unapologetic pro-labor platform. He got trounced, but hey! He was a credible candidate who gave it a shot, and it was a calculated effort, based on a realistic estimation of which way the winds were blowing on the High Desert plains.

We're not there yet, but we're not that far away, either. L.A. County is not Bush Country, and Antelope Valley is L.A. County. Which means smog, traffic, breast implants -- and Democratic politics.

Born to Run - Born to Chase Everyone Out of the Race

If you like politics the way I do, you were probably (unsurprisingly) shocked to hear the mysterious news that both Felipe Fuentes and Cindy Montanez were dropping their bids to replace Alex Padilla on the LA City Council. Given the most recent machinations in San Fernando politics, it seemed unlikely that three heavyweights would actually end up running against each other. As expected, it appears someone came in and "banged heads" to maintain peace in the Valley.

What was most interesting about the potential race was the early attention it recieved. While most folks were not enthused about the other seats that were up, many were interested in the race to replace Padilla. I hope everyone had a chance to read the L.A Times' comical poke at Richard for announcing his plan to regain his City Council seat, after leaving the Senate in order to run for Assembly, only to return to the City Council, (because his bid for Mayor last year did not go so well?). I found the piece more a poke at term limits in California, than about Richard personally.

The theater started early in this race -- very early. Within days of announcing her bid Cindy was first to fire away at her old mentor with some opening salvos in the L.A Weekly. You could tell Cindy was not too happy about Alarcon challening her for this seat. She must have thought she would walk into the seat. Keep in mind that she announced she was running for it on the very same night she was defeated in her bid for State Senate and before she even lived in the district. But it was clear that Cindy did not take well to her old boss' announcement. Maybe it was this quote that kinda gave her away:

“We have a responsibility to serve at least a term when we get elected,” she added. “I don’t know what his motivation is, aside from the obvious, which is that it’s a higher salary with a pension.”

Ouch! A few folks had mentioned to me that Alarcon was interested in the higher salary and the nicer pension paid to those on the dais at 1st and Main, but you could tell that Cindy wasn't holding back. What a mess!

To complicate the matter even further, I should note that the term limit extensions known as 'Measure R' have been brought to court and stand some chance of being overturned by a judge. Should the term limit supporters prevail and the judge overturn the voter approved initiative, Alarcon's stay in City Council could be short. He has already served in the body before, and would only be eligible for about a year of service - I think. Now that would really complicate this further, right?

This race was the one hope political junkies had of having something to talk about this March. Now the cocktail parties and late night bar gatherings will be filled with the chattering pundits rapping on Alvin Parra's effort to take out Jose Huizar by using his old bosses' calendar and rolodex against him. Ouch! Only time will tell if Alvin has a story to tell about Councilman Jose going to the American Express Luncheon in Beverly Hills rather than stopping by the Center for Deformed Children's Annual Christmas Toy Giveway over in his district somewhere. That will hurt.

But, for now, junkies like you and I will have to wait for a Battle Royale between the popular and seasoned Alarcon, the smart and passionate former Assemblymember Montanez, and the intelligent, connected Felipe Fuentes. We'll return to the peace and calm of the San Fernando Valley, where bedroom communinities can enjoy the political quiet for a while. And where Richard Alarcon will become the next City Councilman from District 7, and the talented Felipe Fuentes will be crowned with the 39th Assembly seat, and where Montanez will find a soft landing somewhere deep in the Mayor's governing apparatus. Ahh! I guess this is why it's called 'politricks.'

Don't you feel like someone must have pulled this together and cut a deal to prevent this political junkie's wet dream. My guess: Mr. Mayor.