Sweden Closing Smorgasbord To Immigrants Who Won't Assimilate

What is it with people moving to a country, freeloading off the locals, and not even bothering to learn the language?

No, I'm not talking about L.A. I'm talking about Sweden. Read all about it in the New York Times. See if this sounds familiar:

"All this does not sit well with Mr. Nilsson and his wife, Ann-Christine, 51, who say that immigrants are not only failing to pay their way, but that they also are refusing to learn the ways of their host country.  

“They do not respect Swedish people,” Mrs. Nilsson said. “As long as they learn the language and behave like Swedes, they are welcome. But they do not. Immigration as it is now needs to stop.”

Six Reasons To Question The Whole Global Warming Thing

Warming been berry berry good to me.

Thanks to Amy Alkon for finding the following email exchange between a reporter and a retired Princeton physicist, posted at The Independent, a British newspaper.  Here's my favorite passage from retired Professor Freeman Dyson:

First, the computer models are very good at solving the equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly.

Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer.

Villaraigosa Must Be Racist Since He Wants To Build A Wall

Hey, Tony, how dare you call them "trespassers?" They are merely "undocumented houseguests," you hypocritcal bastard. So tear down that wall . . . application, Mr. Gorbaraigosa!

And hey, LA Weekly, it's not HIS mansion. It's OUR mansion. He lives there rent-free, and gets a free butler, a free gardener, free utilities, and on and on. If he wants to live in a more private building, let him spend some of that excessive salary we pay him to buy or rent a condo in one of those high-rise buildings downtown, with a guard at the door. You don't ruin an historic neighborhood just so one freeloader who's hardly there anyway can have a wall.

Villaraigosa's Housing Commissioners Are Ripping You Off

Don't thumb your nose at us taxpayers, lady.

David Goldstein of KCBS Channel 2 in Los Angeles had a great report last night on how the people Villaraigosa appointed to the City's housing commission are spending your money to go on lavish trips, stay in luxurious hotels (the Ritz-Carlton), and run up outrageous tabs for food and booze.

Plus, to make it even worse, they make you pay for their feeding frenzy AND they collect an excessive per diem that is supposed to cover same. It's "either/or," ladies, not "both/and." While we're at it, what are the qualifications of any of these commissioners? Buncha chowhounds.

Anyway, this six-minute report is worth watching. Here's the video:

Villaraigosa and City Council Screwed You Again

Kiss another $823,698 of your hard-earned money good-bye.  The Spring Street Gang handed it to an outfit calling itself "Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California" for this noble purpose:  "To operate 5 day laborer hiring sites - term of contract from April 1, 2010 through March 31, 2011." 


Excuse me, but doesn't Home Depot already provide that service for free in its parking lots?


City Hall tacked on $55,984 to this boondoggle on February 11, 2011.


Don't you dare vote for any local tax hikes on March 8, 2011. Don't fall for the "libraries" trick, or the "oil wells" trick. The crooks in City Hall have too much of our money as it is.

Huizar Goes Butt-Head

City Councilman Jose Huizar has been in office for years and years. Now it's time for him to try to convince voters to re-elect him, to leave him in a group of 15 people who vote on the City's $6-billion annual budget.

Can he point to ANY accomplishments of his own? Can he point to any improvements in the City's condition during his watch? Nope and nope.

Judging from the mailer he sent out today, the ONLY reason he can think of give voters to "support" him is that in the 1990s, his opponent actually had the temerity to support the right of private property owners to decide for themselves whether to allow grown-ups to smoke on their property.

That's IT? That's your re-election pitch? Pathetic.

And hey, Huizar, on March 9, when you suddenly find your brilliant attempt to attack the other guy failed miserably, you might want to read "The Case Against Smoking Bans" by Thomas Lambert, a law professor.

Hey, Huizar, care to rag on Obama for smoking? Didn't think so.

Villaraigosa's Parking Lot Ripoff Was Always About Cronies

Do have change for a penny?

You already know that the City Council nixed Villaraigosa's scheme to sell the City's parking lots at fire sale prices. This is understandable, since half of the Council Members intend to run for Mayor or City Controller in 2013, and therefore must start pretending to care about you taxpayers.

But what you may not realize is that Villaraigosa's scam was never going to put a significant dent in the deficit his and the Council's years of overspending have caused.

As I mentioned in a recent post, the City's budget for 2010-2011 assumes revenues of $6.7 billion -- which is more than the City received in 2005, even adjusting for inflation.

L.A. Near Bankruptcy Despite Near Record Revenues

You already know the City of Los Angeles is teetering on bankruptcy. 

What no one besides yours truly ever tells you, however, is that Villaraigosa and the Spring Street Gang "accomplished" this despite the fact that the city is receiving near record revenues. 

See if you can spot any revenue crisis in the following chart:

Is Councilman Wesson Paying Telemarketers To Lie To Voters?

"Volunteer" is defined by the software that came with my computer -- an authoritative source if ever there was one -- as "a person who works for an organization without being paid."


That pretty much sums up your understanding, right?


Voters, moreover, are presumably more impressed by candidates who are supported by volunteers than by paid cronies. After all, if someone volunteers his or her own time to help a candidate, well, that candidate must be at least somewhat inspirational.


That is why it is disturbing that City Councilman Herb Wesson has filed a telephone script with the City Ethics Commission which is labelled "PAID PHONE SCRIPT," but which instructs the caller to say, "MY NAME IS _______________________________I AM A VOLUNTEER FOR THE RE‐ ELECT HERB WESSON TO THE CITY COUNCIL CAMPAIGN."

Team Huizar Forms Circular Firing Squad AGAIN

Did you know City Councilman Jose Huizar is a lawyer?

Did you know that in 2008, Huizar was fined $15,000 for violating the City's ethics laws?

Now, Huizar has been in office for years, but he has accomplished absolutely nothing for the public interest in that time.

So guess what he and his campaign mismanager are talking about to try to win votes? Go ahead. Take a guess.

That's right: City ethics laws.

Huizar and his brain trust, Parke Skelton, claim you should vote for Huizar because . . . wait for it . . . the owners of pot shops are supposedly spending their own money to support Martinez, but are not reporting those expenditures to the City Ethics Commission.

Catch And Release

Speaking of our border, the Los Angeles Times reports that 18 "suspected illegal immigrants" -- the legal term is "illegal aliens," not "illegal immigrants," BTW -- were arrested in a boat off Dana Point, trying to pull the old "two if by sea" trick.

What will happen to them? Not a danged thing. Here's what your government does when it catches people red-handed:

The group, all of whom told authorities they were from Mexico, were taken to a Customs and Border Protection station, where they will be fingerprinted and questioned about who arranged the smuggling operation, said Michael Jimenez, a spokesman for the agency.

If a criminal and immigration background check does not turn up anything that would warrant holding the suspects, they will be allowed to voluntarily return to Mexico, he said.

Thanks for nothing, Michael Jimenez. What's to stop them from trying again tomorrow night? They illegally entered our territory, did they not? Isn't that still a crime under federal law? 

The Six Percent Border With Mexico

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) issued a 17-page report on "border security" yesterday. Allow me to summarize it with two sentences and two graphs from the report.

1.  Here is the border:

What About The Education Election On March 8, 2011?

You already know how you should vote in the City Council election on March 8, 2011, but what about all the people running for the school board and the college board?

Did you forget about them? Me, too. So here's a cheat sheet:

City Councilman Cardenas's Obscene "Free Lunch" Tab: You Paid $10,000 For 15 Of His Outings

You REALLY need to dump City Councilman Tony Cardenas in the upcoming election. This guy is such a @#$%, that he spends City Council funds to treat himself to lavish meals -- as in, $10,000 in 15 visits to the "E3rd Steakhouse & Lounge" -- rather than spending his own money, i.e., any portion of the six-figure salary we pay him for the privilege of watching him push the City into bankruptcy.

Read all about it at the LA Weekly, then help elect David Barron.

California's Super Bowl Ads Prove Taxes Are Too High

If you were wondering at all about whether Governor Brown's proposed tax hike might be a good idea, then, well, boy are you dumb. The same people who want you to believe you're under-taxed just spent $14.5 million of your money for Super Bowl TV ads to pick on smokers.

And don't tell me the tax money for that could "only" be spent for anti-smoking ads. Laws can be passed, amended and repealed. As long as Sacramento is squandering money on Super Bowl ads, just say "hell no" to higher taxes.

Oh, and do you by any chance have a light?

What Will Villaraigosa And The Spring Street Gang Hock Now?

Villaraigosa's scheme to "paper over" the budget crisis resulting from his overspending just fell apart. He can't hock the parking lots any more. So what will he try to sell next? Golf courses? Parks?

And will this cause enough of a crisis fast enough to get voters in the even-numbered districts to dump their feckless City Councilmen on March 8, 2011? Stay tuned.

City Attorney Trutanich Properly Prosecuting Pinhead Protesters

My solution? Look at the picture below.

You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to speak out.

But you do NOT have a right to tie up traffic for hours, thereby stealing the time of tens of thousands of people.

Protestors who chain themselves together and lie down in intersections deserve to have their self-absorbed selves dragged to the sidewalk and thrown in jail.

Hey, your cause is so super important you have to interfere with other people's commute? Great. Then it's important enough for you to spend some jail time.

Villaraigosa Should Follow Brown's Lead And Cancel Fire Sale

Governor Brown did the right thing today by cancelling the proposed fire sale of state buildings. He pointed out, as yours truly did a while ago, that it was essentially just a deal to hock the buildings to borrow money.

Now it's time for Villaraigosa and the Spring Street Gang likewise to renounce their planned fire sale of City parking structures, street parking, golf courses, and other assets that belong to you and me, the taxpayers.

Owning those assets did not bring the City to the brink of bankruptcy. Rather, Villaraigosa and the City Council caused the problem by super-sizing the City's spending over 32% in the course of five years. To balance the budget, don't sell our assets. Just cut spending. And cut it at the CRA, not the libraries.

Hey, Huizar: What Did You Know, And When Did You Know It?

New Official Team Huizar Campaign T-Shirt

City Councilman Jose Huizar has some serious 'splainin' to do.

Think about it:  Dufus campaign mismanager Michael Trujillo's "between the forehead" email cannot possibly be his first of that ilk, can it? After all, no one goes "psycho" overnight.

Huizar, moreover, showed Trujillo the door only after someone let the Satan's dogs out. There is no evidence that Huizar had any intentions of deleting Trujillo from the campaign team until then.

So we get to ask Huizar two of the most fun questions ever:  What did you know, and when did you know it?

In other words, when did you know Trujillo was such an f-tard, and when did you know it?

Janice Hahn Running For CONGRESS? Let's Hope She Hires Trujillo

Me so Hahny!

You're kidding, right?

Janice Hahn plans to run for Congress? Oh, that's exactly what we need in Washington, D.C. right now: a politician, elected solely by virtue of her last name, who somehow helped bring America's second-biggest City to the brink of bankruptcy despite near-record-high revenues.

Hey, Janice, may I suggest you hire Michael Trujillo to run your campaign? He's got some time, and he did a spectacular job on your campaign for Lieutenant Governor.

Karmapalooza Continues For Michael Trujillo

Mike Trujillo:  Dog of Satan

A second politician has gone Donald Trump on "professional" campaign mismanager Michael Trujillo.  David Zahniser has the story in the Los Angeles Times.

Richard Vladovic is running for the LAUSD school board.  He is also now running away from Trujillo who apparently considers himself a Christian dog of Satan -- whatever that means --  and whose command of the English language is such that "between the forehead" sounded right.

City Councilman Huizar Fires Dufus Campaign Mismanager Michael Trujillo

City Councilman Jose Huizar finally made his first smart move in his campaign to dupe the voters of his district to re-elect him:  he FIRED his dufus campaign manager, Michael Trujillo.

Read all about it in the Los Angeles Times.

Yours truly wrote an essay back in December 2010 referring to Huizar's hiring of Trujillo as "assisted political suicide."  In other words, "Hey, Jose, baby, I told you so, didn't I? But you didn't listen." Cassandra's and my life story.

Anyhow, given Trujillo's track record in his chosen field of political consulting, and his skill set, I'm thinking he should consider career options that involve using a leaf blower. That way, he can continue to blow hot air, but in a productive fashion, instead of, say, falsely calling people "racists" merely because they'd like some honest elected officials for a change.

What comes around goes around, Mikey. Wake up and smell the karma.

It's time to get rid of the Huizar types and the Trujillo types, and give someone else a chance. Vote for Rudy Martinez, would you? Let's put someone in office who's actually run a business, someone who's made a payroll, someone who understands providing service.

If You Live In Cardenas's District, Boost Your Home's Curb Appeal With A "Barron For City Council" Yard Sign

Yard signs are the best endorsement possible. Not only do they "wake up" your neighbors to the fact an election is coming, but they generate that crucial name recognition on election day. If you live in Council District 6, get a free "Barron for City Council" yard sign, and get rid of Cardenas.

Huizar's Badge Of Desperation

Huizar just gave new meaning to "stinkin' badges."

There's an expression in law that goes like this: "When the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. When the law is on your side, pound on the law. When neither one of them is on your side, pound on the table."

City Councilman Jose Huizar just started pounding on the table with both fists, stamping his feet, and screaming -- all in an effort to distract voters from the fact that there is no reason to re-elect him.

Huizar has accomplished exactly nothing in the years and years he has collected a six-figure salary as a City Councilman.  He and the rest of the Spring Street Gang have brought the City to the brink of bankruptcy despite near record revenues.

So what does Huizar do the day after the Los Angeles Times endorses his opponent, Rudy Martinez?

Even The L.A. Times Recommends Kicking Huizar To Curb

It's unanimous: dump Huizar.

When the Los Angeles Times and Walter Moore both agree to support the same candidate, well, who could argue otherwise?  We both agree it's time to kick Huizar to the curb and give Rudy Martinez a chance.

Hey, I even contributed to Rudy's campaign, and I'm on "recession lock-down." So spread the word would you?  (I mean about dumping Huizar, not about my being on lock-down.)

City Councilman Koretz Sums Up L.A.'s Financial Condition

From the Los Angeles Times:
"We're already on a tightrope," Councilman Paul Koretz said. "One wrong step and we could push the city into bankruptcy."

Why Taxpayers Should Pass On The Football Stadium

Villaraigosa wants to co-sign your name on a $350 million loan to AEG to build a stadium in the City of Los Angeles.  That's what it would mean for the City to issue bonds -- guaranteed by you -- to raise the money for AEG.

Do you want to co-sign a loan for a stadium, even when you will not receive any stock in the company or other ownership interest or share of the profits therein?  No.

If AEG cannot raise the money from the private sector, what does that tell you?  It tells you the risks outweigh the rewards.

If sophisticated investors refuse to bet their own money on this project, why in God's name would you let Villaraigosa bet the City's tax dollars on it -- tax dollars needed to pay for police, fire, etc.?  You should not.  Villaraigosa is not an investment banker at all, much less one with a record of success.  Those people are not willing to fund this venture.  You should likewise refuse.

You should likewise refuse to let Villaraigosa give your land to AEB for the site of the stadium.

Taxpayer money should not be used to fund private ventures.  Don't fall for more welfare for the rich.

Is FBI Investigating Huizar For Income Tax Fraud?

Don't you wish hats were still "in?" Way cool look.

Tax question for you:  If you get $10,000 worth of repairs done to a rental property you own, but you don't actually pay for those repairs, should you deduct the cost of the repairs, or should you instead report it as income, or perhaps a gift?

The question comes to mind because apparently the FBI has been questioning City Councilman Huizar's staff and a contractor about some work done several years ago to a rental property Huizar owns.  The contractor billed Huizar, but Huizar didn't pay -- until his most recent election campaign began.  You can read all about it in the Los Angeles Times.

Brown's Democracy Hypocrisy

According to Bloomberg, "California Governor Jerry Brown said the state’s residents should be given the chance to decide whether to extend tax increases to limit budget cuts, calling Republican opposition to a vote 'unconscionable.'"


Let me get this straight, Mr. Governor.  You're saying it would be "unconscionable" for Republican legislators to vote the way their constituents want them to vote? You're saying that, even though they were elected specifically because the promised to fight tax hikes, they should now refrain from fighting tax hikes?


"Unconscionable" is not the word you're looking for. It would actually be unconscionable if the Republican legislators betrayed their supporters' trust by supporting your desire to raise taxes even higher than they are now -- during a recession.